7 Ups And 3 Downs From NXT Stand And Deliver 2023

by Scott Carlson

1. Cardiac Event

Wow. Just wow.

The NXT North American Championship five-way match was a fantastic display of talent and athleticism that had fans on their feet the entire time. If that sounds like a clichéd statement, it’s because there’s no way to adequately describe the action. It was a frenzied blur that saw each man get plenty of shine, beating everyone else into tar.

One spot worth singling out: On the weekend that Rey Mysterio was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, there was a nice little nod to him and Eddie Guerrero when Axiom hit the same moonsault DDT off the top rope onto JD McDonagh, a callback to Rey and Eddie’s 1997 Halloween Havoc classic.

The end saw champion Wes Lee nail the Cardiac Kick to on Ilja Dragunov to retain his North American title. But seriously, you could pull up the match and find plenty of spots where each of the five men stole the spotlight.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.