7 Ups & 3 Downs From Last Night's NXT (23 Jan)

2. Shotzi Blackheart

What a debut Shotzi Blackheart had. Arriving the battle royale for the Women's Championship number 1 contender she eliminated the former two-time champion and, arguably, the standout name across all of 2019 for the division, Shayna Baszler. We were even treated to a great promo package for her at the start of the night to really ram home who she is. What a debut.

By the end of the first hour of the show though, a lot of that good work had been dropped on the floor, walked over a few times, put in the wrong bin, fished back out, and then just booted out the window. Despite an (in parts) valiant effort she was fed back to Baszler and tapped out in the space of a few minutes. Why?

The big win for her was eliminating Baszler from the battle royale, and within a week she's now lost that. 7 days on from the biggest moment of her wrestling career and she's now less over than she would have been if they'd just left her off TV. Unless she was going to score some fluke roll-up win, or take her opponent to the absolute limit, there was no need to book this match at all. A baffling decision, even if we got a decent-ish match out of it.