Oba Femi Wins NXT Title, Will Face Cody Rhodes At Saturday Night's Main Event (WWE News)

by Andrew Pollard
NXT Deadline 2025 Oba Femi
WWE

With NXT Deadline now in the books, Oba Femi is your new NXT Champion.

In the opening match of the show, Oba picked up the win over Ricky Saints to become a two-time NXT Champion... and put himself on a collision course with WWE Champion Cody Rhodes next weekend.

For those who may have missed this past Friday's SmackDown, Saints and Femi were featured in a backstage segment with Cody and Nick Aldis, where it was announced that the winner of their Deadline match would face the American Nightmare in a non-title match at Saturday Night's Main Event. Not just any Saturday Night's Main Event, of course, but the SNME where the wrestling world will see the final match of John Cena's legendary career.

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While some fans predicted that we'd get Ricky Saints vs. Cody Rhodes next weekend, it will instead be the Ruler who'll be facing off against Rhodes. For Absolute, his first match in AEW - before he was technically signed to Tony Khan's promotion - was against Cody Rhodes back in June 2020 as part of Cody's TNT Title open challenge. So, for Saints to then have his first official match on main roster WWE programming - discounting three enhancement matches years ago - to be against Cody, that would've been a nice call-back. That said, Rhodes locking horns with the powerhouse Oba Femi has the prospect to be a whole lot of fun, and could serve to introduce Oba to the wider WWE audience in a major way.

As for Deadline, Ricky Saints twice hit Oba Femi with his patented Tornado DDT, only for Oba to kick out. From there, Saints would kick out after being hit by Femi's Fall From Grace, before Oba finally sealed the deal with another Fall From Grace for the 1-2-3, bringing the Stroke Daddy's reign as the NXT Champion to an end at 70 days. Post-match, Saints offered a handshake to Oba Femi, which was accepted by the 6'6" 310 lbs-er. Already, fans are speculating that this could be leading to a main roster move for Ricky, but that remains to be seen.

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Up next for Oba Femi, NXT Deadline closed out with Je'Von Evans winning the men's Iron Survivor bout, earning himself a shot at the NXT Title at New Year's Evil on 6 January. As Deadline went off the air with Femi and Evans having a face-off, though, the Young OG's celebrations were cut short as he was laid out by the returning Tony D'Angelo.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks/Saints, Jamie Hayter, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.