With less than a month to go until the first WWE NXT Takeover event outside of the US, speculation has been rife regarding the matches we may or may not see at the Wembley event on December 16th. This week's edition of NXT finally put all of that the rest, for the men's singles events at least, as we received conformation that not only would Apollo Crews be meeting Baron Corbin's challenge at the London Live recording, the main event would be a title match between Finn Balor and Samoa Joe.
For those that have been following these developments closely, this announcement brings more of a sigh of relief and the words "I told you so" than any sort of shock or surprise.
For one thing, the men's locker room has been looking a little thin on the ground with the absence of Sami Zayn and Hideo Itami (both due to injury) the call-up of Prince Pretty Tyler Breeze and the apparent disappearance of Rhyno. In addition to this, this has clearly been brewing since the Battle Royal.
The Battle Royale was the catalyst to Joe's advancement.
The Battle Royale was where Crews won the number one contendership and earned the right to take on Finn for the belt, taking out many competitors during the match, and Joe lost out due to the dirty, although well-received, tactics of Tyler. The speed with which WWE put on the resulting championship match and gave Joe his revenge against the departing Breeze was the first clear sign that the anticipated feud between Finn and Joe would indeed come to a head in London.
Speculation on triple threats and other stipulation were still in the air but that was until the climax, or perhaps Joe. From there it was pretty much set in stone - Balor vs Joe and Crews vs Corbin at NXT Takeover London. This week's show just gave us official confirmation.
Next week, on the November 25th outing, we are set to see the contract signing for the first ever NXT main event to be televised on foreign soil and whether we had predicted the match-up all along or not, we cannot help but feel excited about what might happen next. Either the demon rises out of that Coquina Clutch to retain the belt or a new, dominating champion is crowned.
