Three champions walked into this tag match carrying gold.
Thea Hail walked in carrying a point to prove.
By the end, she was the one getting her hand raised.
Hail and AAA Reina de Reinas Champion La Catalina defeated NXT Women’s Champion Kelani Jordan and NXT Women’s North American Champion Zaria after Hail somehow turned an attempted F5 into a tight roll-up for three.
It was a smart finish to a match that understood exactly what each of its four wrestlers needed to be.
Jordan looked ridiculously athletic. Zaria looked frighteningly strong. La Catalina found another crowd willing to play along with everything she did.
And Hail?
Hail did the work.
Three Champions and Thea Hail
There was something immediately funny about looking at the four women involved and realising just how much championship gold was standing around the ring.
La Catalina had the AAA Reina de Reinas Championship. Zaria had the NXT Women’s North American Championship. Jordan had the big one, the NXT Women’s Championship.
Then there was Thea Hail.
No championship. No physical advantage. No reason, on paper, to be the most important person in the match.
Except she had already forced Zaria to submit the previous week, putting the North American Champion in a Kimura Lock and creating a pretty straightforward question: if Hail could do it once, what happened if she got another opportunity?
That previous confrontation gave this match its purpose, but WWE didn’t need to turn it into something unbearably serious.
Hail and Catalina entered together and immediately looked comfortable as an odd little pairing.
Hail even stole Catalina’s entrance hat.
For about half a second, Catalina looked like she might be reconsidering the entire friendship. Then she laughed it off.
Good. That’s enough.
They are babyfaces, they like each other, and they have chemistry. Wrestling does not always need another 14-minute backstage segment explaining why two people have decided they can coexist.
Jordan and Zaria were different.
They entered separately.
Of course they did.
Zaria Looks Like She Could Throw the Ring Away
Zaria looked particularly imposing here.
The slightly fresher trim around the shaved section of her hair sharpened an already intimidating presentation, while physically she looked enormous. Her back and lats in particular were almost cartoonishly pronounced.
There was no attempt to hide what her role was supposed to be.
Zaria is the wall.
You can run at it if you want.
Hail did.
The opening exchanges between them established that dynamic immediately. Hail went after Zaria, even threatening the same damaged arm she had attacked with the Kimura the previous week, while Zaria answered by simply being considerably bigger and stronger.
Then Jordan tagged herself in.
Zaria’s expression said plenty.
Booker T and Vic Joseph had already established the important point on commentary: Jordan and Zaria weren’t suddenly a tag team. They were two champions temporarily occupying the same corner because they had a common problem.
Or, as Joseph put it, they were “two people sharing one common cause: beat down the competition.”
That distinction mattered throughout.
Zaria wasn’t happy Jordan tagged herself in.
She didn’t explode.
She didn’t abandon the match.
She just looked at her with the unmistakable expression of someone thinking: fine, do what you want.
Kelani Jordan Moves Differently
Jordan and Hail immediately increased the speed.
There was some lovely athletic movement between them, with Hail able to match Jordan’s pace without the sequence becoming one of those overly cooperative exchanges where wrestling briefly starts resembling two people rehearsing gymnastics.
Then Catalina entered.
And the match got considerably more colourful.
Her Perro Attack is hardly the most elaborate move in professional wrestling. Fundamentally, Catalina runs across the ring and launches herself backside-first into somebody trapped in the corner.
Yet she gets a reaction from it every single time.
That is useful.
Wrestling can become obsessed with complexity when sometimes the important thing is having one move where the crowd knows exactly what is coming and wants to see it anyway.
Catalina hit Jordan with it, Hail followed with the Meteora, and soon everybody was spilling outside.
Catalina flew through the ropes.
Hail launched herself from the turnbuckle.
Then, having successfully wiped out the opposing champions, Hail and Catalina celebrated by doing their strange little elbow dance.
I don’t know what to tell you.
It works.
Thea Hail Does the Hard Yards
After the break, the match became increasingly about Hail surviving.
That was probably the best decision they could have made.
Jordan showed another side of herself by slowing Hail down, stretching her and repeatedly preventing her from reaching Catalina.
The athleticism is the obvious part of Jordan’s game. She moves with an ease that very few wrestlers possess, and when she starts springing around the ropes it can feel like everybody else is operating with slightly different gravity.
Here, though, she also had to control somebody.
She stopped Hail reaching the corner and used a clever rope-assisted suplex sequence to keep her isolated.
Then Zaria came back in.
Different problem entirely.
Jordan makes you chase her.
Zaria makes you survive her.
The North American Champion threw Hail around, including a Broken Arrow and a discus lariat during the champions’ strongest spell. Jordan and Zaria even briefly managed to combine effectively, producing the uncomfortable possibility that these two might actually be devastating if they ever decided they liked each other.
Hail kept crawling.
Stopped.
Crawled again.
Stopped again.
Simple wrestling, but effective wrestling.
Every failed attempt to reach Catalina made the eventual tag feel more important.
Then Zaria tried the cannonball.
Nobody home.
There was the opening.
La Catalina Doesn’t Need Much
Catalina came in hot.
Missile dropkick. Headscissors. Suplex.
Then came the Perro Attack again.
And again.
And again.
The crowd knew exactly what they were supposed to do.
Catalina’s greatest strength in this match might have been how uncomplicated her connection with the audience felt. She doesn’t need to spend five minutes manufacturing excitement. She can point, run across the ring, smash somebody in the corner and suddenly the building is with her.
That’s a skill.
It also complemented Hail nicely.
Catalina generated the burst of energy.
Hail absorbed the punishment required to make that burst matter.
Eventually Hail was legal again, and the match returned to the pairing that mattered most.
Thea Hail and Zaria.
Thea Hail Just Pinned the Champion
Zaria went for the F5.
This should have been the end.
That is the wonderful thing about Zaria’s offence. Once she has somebody on her shoulders, there is a moment where the match appears to have become physically unfair.
Hail couldn’t overpower her.
So she didn’t try.
As Zaria rotated her into position for the F5, Hail shifted her weight and turned the entire movement into a compact prawn-hold roll-up.
One.
Two.
Three.
Done.
Thea Hail had pinned the NXT Women’s North American Champion.
Again, look at the four women involved.
The NXT Women’s Champion was there.
The NXT Women’s North American Champion was there.
The AAA Reina de Reinas Champion was there.
The only wrestler without a championship was standing in the middle of the ring having scored the deciding fall.
Better still, nobody really lost anything.
Jordan remained protected because she wasn’t pinned.
Catalina got another strong showcase and demonstrated how quickly she can get an unfamiliar audience responding to her.
Zaria can absolutely absorb this kind of defeat. She’s so physically convincing that being caught by a clever counter doesn’t suddenly make her less intimidating. If anything, it reinforces the emerging problem for her: Hail has discovered that she doesn’t need to beat Zaria physically to beat her.
And Hail received exactly what she needed.
Not domination.
Credibility.
The finish subsequently earned her an NXT Women’s North American Championship match against Zaria, which is precisely where this story needed to go.
That is what made this such a useful television match.
Everybody got something.
Kelani Jordan got to be fast, fluid and spectacular.
Zaria got to look like she could fold another human being into carry-on luggage.
La Catalina got to demonstrate that sometimes getting a crowd involved really can be as simple as repeatedly throwing your backside at somebody in a corner.
And Thea Hail?
She got the three count.
Three champions entered the match.
The woman without a belt left with the biggest result.
