AEW and NXT Wednesday Night Wars: 3 winners of night #7

A shocking debut, a surprise victory, and mic work from arguably the best villain in the industry headline this week’s best of the Wednesday Night War.

On this past Monday’s RAW, WWE once again dug into their bag of distasteful angles and grabbed the always-yucky “fake pregnancy” plot device, attaching it to an already-uncomfortable storyline that no one outside of Vince McMahon could possibly be enjoying.

Fortunately, the shows not run by a man who thinks pushing unsuspecting people into pools is fun picked up the slack, mainly the ones participating in the Wednesday Night War: NXT and All Elite Wrestling (AEW): Dynamite. But who stood out the most amongst the entertaining shows? That’s what we’re here to find out.

If you’ve followed this weekly series, you know how this goes: I’ll pick three wrestlers/teams/etc. from NXT and Dynamite who distinguished themselves from their colleagues. But first, some honorable mentions:

Bayley:  The SmackDown Women’s Champion finally got some blows in on NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler, attacking “The Queen of Spades” during the closing moments of this past Wednesday’s NXT.

Matt Riddle: After eating a 1916 on the floor from Finn Balor the previous week, Riddle gained a measure of revenge on the former NXT Champion, sending him scurrying out of the arena. It was later announced that Riddle would face Balor at NXT TakeOver: WarGames, likely due to Johnny Gargano’s reported neck injury.

Darby Allin: Allin won an entertaining triple threat match that also involved Shawn Spears — who didn’t take the deciding fall — and Peter Avalon. After the match, Allin answered the open challenge issued by Jon Moxley earlier in the night, with the dream match set for the next episode.