It’s Wednesday and that means another iteration of the Wednesday Night Wrestling War. There’s excuses to throw around and plenty of reasons one can think of, but ultimately the facts are what they are, and last week, for really the first time, NXT quite handily beat AEW in the ratings. The key demos still skewed in Dynamite’s favor, but the total viewership was an easy victory for NXT. It appears that putting them over so strong at Survivor Series did what it was intended to do, elevate their perception to being more level with that of Raw and SmackDown’s. As a result, it would seem a bigger portion of the Raw and SmackDown audience ended up tuning in on Wednesday.
That makes this a key week for them, as they’ll be wanting to capitalize and continue that momentum. There is the question of whether or not some people came into NXT last week assuming there’d be more invasion happenings, even though all signs pointed to that being finished. They had the buzz last week, so how long does it last?
Unfortunately, a major advertised match will be missing from the show.
A huge bout was scheduled to take place tonight, featuring Damian Priest taking on Killian Dain. The two talented big men were part of a triple threat at TakeOver: WarGames alongside Pete Dunne, in which the winner challenged Adam Cole for the NXT Championship. That obviously positions the both of them high up on the totem pole, so the two of them together in a one-on-one match would have a fair bit at stake as far as future contention would go.
Sadly, they’ve since said that Damian Priest is still dealing with a rib injury, seemingly sustained over that hectic weekend, that will keep him out of action tonight. Whether Dain will get a replacement opponent or the match will be rescheduled to a later date is unknown.
NXT is dealing with a rash of injuries to major stars right now, with Johnny Gargano and Velveteen Dream among others on the shelf. Thankfully, Kushida was just taken off that list earlier today.
