The way I see it, we could go in four directions.
Option A) Jordan Devlin vs. Santos Escobar to determine who the real champion is. Escobar would win and the title’s lineage would retroactively be changed to say he became the true champion once he won that tournament and was crowned interim champion.
Option B) If they aren’t ready to have Jordan Devlin back in the mix, a different No. 1 contender would have to be established. This would likely be either just Isaiah “Swerve” Scott getting another opportunity (based on current feuds) or there would need to be another No. 1 contender’s match of sorts. To me, this is a little bland, but it might be a necessity if travel issues come into play.
Option C) Devlin fights someone. Escobar fights someone. Travel problems means we can’t settle who the proper champion is, but we just continue to have two champions at the same time until that can be sorted out down the line. This is my least favorite scenario.
Option D) My preferred option would be to have a Fatal 4-Way ladder match wherein Escobar thinks he’s the rightful champion and is set to defend the title, while Devlin thinks he’s never lost it and Escobar doesn’t deserve the honor of defending HIS belt, so he sets up a match for himself, too. Then, Johnny Saint and William Regal agree to merge the matches as Jordan Devlin vs. his No. 1 contender vs. Santos Escobar vs. his No. 1 contender and you have to grab both belts. As far as the challengers would go, I’d say Scott for the USA side of things, while UK could be a number of people. I’d actually go Noam Dar as he’s one of the few cruiserweights who isn’t involved in the tag situation, but A-Kid is a solid backup option if you wanted a babyface.
NXT Tag Team Championship
Breezango do have a title match against Imperium next week, but I can’t imagine they’ll just drop those titles back and reset everything to a few weeks ago. That makes their title win utterly pointless beyond just saying they are in the record books. So let’s assume Tyler Breeze and Fandango are the champs I’m working with.
Sadly, NXT doesn’t have a strong tag team division at the moment. There are a few options, but none of them strike me as super interesting.
Danny Burch and Oney Lorcan could have a solid match, but I doubt anyone would care. Indus Sher isn’t ready. Ever-Rise is an absolute no. Brendan Vink and Shane Thorne have been MIA long enough that it wouldn’t move the needle as they have no momentum. I’m not jumping the gun by having Drake Maverick and Killian Dain as a true tag team, either.
We’re pretty much working with Undisputed ERA and Legado del Fantasma. The latter, we’ve seen enough that I’m not too thrilled with that being on the card unless there’s a special gimmick that will spice it up, but I can’t think of any that would be worth it. A lumberjack match with other tag teams involved could work, but meh.
Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish is the better match. People love The Undisputed ERA, so they’ll be a more featured attraction. Plus, I think we’re past the idea of just giving the belts to The Undisputed ERA once again, so we might as well have them lose a match against Breezango and pave the way for new champions to come down the line.
Maybe, if you want to have the best of both worlds, you can make it a Triple Threat match and involve Legado del Fantasma along with them, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Raul Mendoza and Joaquin Wilde will already take part in the cruiserweight title match, so they’ll have a spot on the card there.
NXT North American Championship
I fully expect Damian Priest to retain the North American title against Timothy Thatcher. That’s no slight on Thatcher, though. It’s just far too early for Priest to drop the belt.
Moving on from there, who would be the best challengers for Priest? Thankfully, he has a lot of potential picks. Some of the standouts are Austin Theory, Bronson Reed, Cameron Grimes (been there, though), Dominik Dijakovic (doubtful), Johnny Gargano, Kushida, Roderick Strong, Tommaso Ciampa and Velveteen Dream.
Since we’ve already seen Reed and Grimes, I’d eliminate those options and focus more on Theory, Gargano, Strong and Dream as the best heels who can put up a good fight. Ciampa/Priest doesn’t strike me as the way to go. For that matter, Gargano seems off to pick, too. While I think Theory would be a great challenger, it’s a little early for him to look like he could actually win the title.
That narrows it down to Strong or Dream. Both would be solid matches and both are currently involved in feuds with other people. We have to pick one based on some other factors.
Dream vs. Priest is a better feud, so it shouldn’t happen here. That may seem like strange logic, but hear me out. On an event like Clash of Champions, you don’t need any reason for two people to be feuding other than the title being on the line and that challenger being the No. 1 contender. It’s a good excuse to have matches that require little to no setup.
I think Dream’s extravagant nature and Priest’s party guy lifestyle coincide and clash in a way that could invite some interesting story elements. They can discuss the difference in their personas and see common ground on some of the things where they overlap. That’s something that can develop over weeks and have twists and turns, whereas Strong is pretty much just “some guy for Priest to fight who wants that title again.”
Going with Strong is the less interesting option of the two, but that’s okay. The match would be great and I doubt anyone would complain. Priest retains and we move on to the Dream feud for the December TakeOver.
NXT Women’s Championship
Io Shirai hasn’t had the most awesome reign so far, from my perspective. It’s been on the bland side and I think that’s not necessarily her fault, but it’s also something she doesn’t have the ability to fix. She’s more of a wrestler’s wrestler and not a storyline performer, so without NXT writing intriguing feuds for her, she’s just going to continue fighting people for the sake of it.
Sadly, that has to happen here, too. There isn’t a single person on the roster available to fight Shirai that I think I could get an interesting enough story out of to really dive into. Even the Rhea Ripley option is just “I was the champion and WWE screwed me over with this Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania plan, then put the belt on you instead, so can I have it back?”
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