10 Times NXT Black & Gold Was Better Than Literally EVERYTHING
2. NXT Wins Survivor Series 2019
This one is a bit more kayfabe than the rest, but it would've been silly to disregard the night that WWE put over NXT in the biggest possible way. Survivor Series brand warfare as a concept is typically easy to mock because who has a particular stake in Raw over SmackDown or vice versa? Adding NXT into the mix in 2019 changed that attitude completely. Simply put, NXT fans really cared about their show as the little underground runt of WWE's brands and it was suddenly trading blows with the established TV shows.
It was one of the rare years that Survivor Series kept proper score across the board, with the show going off the air alongside a startling image of a victorious Shayna Baszler and the final standings 4-2-1 to the Black and Gold.
The night got off to a hot, intriguing start when Lio Rush overcame cruiserweights on the other two brands, the NXT ladies won the 5-on-5-on-5 tag match and Strong beat Nakamura and Styles to give NXT a heavy lead. At this point, SmackDown could only hope to tie. Shockingly, that wasn't the case.
Tribalism in wrestling may be stupid, and it was all booked this way to improve NXT's profile for better TV rights deals, but for this one night it wasn't just shown as on equal footing as Raw and SmackDown - it viciously stomped on their feet.