Tommaso Ciampa Wins Vacant WWE NXT Championship
LA Knight, Tommaso Ciampa, Von Wagoner (the former Cal Bloom), and Pete Dunne battled it out in a Fatal 4-Way Match to determine a new WWE NXT Champion on Tuesday’s episode of NXT on the USA Network.
The title became vacant when it was announced on Sunday night by Samoa Joe that he was relinquishing it due to an undisclosed injury. At the time, he said that he wouldn’t be out of action for very long, but didn’t say what the exact injury was.
WWE had NXT General Manager William Regal announce that the planned Fatal 4-Way Match that was supposed to determine the next contender for the title would see the winner become the new champion.
O’Reilly was supposed to be in the match, but was pulled after an attack by Pete Dunne and Ridge Holland. Wagoner ended up replacing him. The match was a typical fatal 4-way with Knight being busted open. Ciampa pinned Knight to become the new champion. This marks the second time Ciampa has been NXT Champion.
Joe became the champion when he beat Karrion Kross at last month’s NXT TakeOver 36 event. Although at first he was placed in an on-screen role, he later became an active in-ring wrestler as NXT did a feud between Joe and Kross. With the company already having a feud in place and needing to get the title off Kross since he was called up to the main roster, a title change was done.
