It was a history making night in Philadelphia at the Tower Theater as WWE held their first NXT show in Philly. The event was headlined by a NXT Women's Title match as Sasha Banks defended the title against her biggest rival Charlotte. Banks won the match that went about 20 minutes and drew a huge reaction from the fans who showed a lot of respect for the divas. It's very rare to see two women headlining a WWE live event. Normally live events are reserved for the bigger male stars. In NXT's case, they wanted to reward two of their best performers and they happen to be women. In terms of TV main events for women, Lita did beat Trish Stratus in a Raw main event match in 2004. We also saw Stephanie McMahon and Brie Bella headline Raw a few times last summer leading up to SummerSlam although those were promo segments rather than a match. Here's a tweet by Triple H from ringside with a short video of Charlotte hitting a Powerbomb and the crowd breaking out into a "NXT" chant. https://twitter.com/TripleH/status/599031359420628992 The top match for the men saw Kevin Owens defending the NXT Title against Finn Balor and Tyler Breeze. That could be the main event of NXT Takeover next Wednesday since both Hideo Itami and Sami Zayn are dealing with shoulder injuries. Neither an wrestled at the live event in Philly. There were some notable names ringside for the event including WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley, former ECW announcer and the current man in charge of WWE.com Joey Styles and of course Triple H was there as well. WWE has another NXT live event in Philadelphia tonight and then on Saturday they head to Albany. It's the first NXT tour in the northeast. It's interesting to note that Styles mentioned that Baron Corbin wanted to face another ECW original tonight. Bubba Ray Dudley tweeted saying "Is that so..." to suggest that it could be him. It's great to see continuing to do the right things with the NXT brand by making it different from the main roster in a good way.
John wrote at WhatCulture from December 2013 to December 2015. It was fun, but it's over for now. Follow him on Twitter @johnreport. You can also send an email to mrjohncanton@gmail.com with any questions or comments as well.
