NXT New Year’s Evil Match Card Predictions

Who will be the winners at NXT New Year’s Evil on Jan. 6? Let’s make some predictions on the winners of the four announced matches.

Since the last NXT TV special, Halloween Havoc, had five matches, it’s fair to assume that NXT New Year’s Evil will have that same magic number of matches on Jan. 6 at the Capitol Wrestling Center. So far, four matches have been announced, including an NXT Title bout between Finn Balor and Kyle O’Reilly that is a hyped-up TakeOver rematch.

But how about the other world champion on the brand Io Shirai, who will she face? Let’s predict her opponent for the NXT Women’s Title match and pick the winners for those four already-announced matches.

Tommaso Ciampa vs. Timothy Thatcher, Fight Pit Match

Timothy Thatcher has been one of the unsung heroes of NXT over the past few months, and those of us who crave hard-hitting, technical wrestling cannot get enough of Thatcher’s work. He’s also quite good on the mic, as his horrible, self-serving coaching segments have certainly gotten over with the fans.

Tommaso Ciampa and Thatcher had a brilliant match at TakeOver WarGames, and these two men really were meant to fight each other. I also think they’re meant to tag with each other, as my colleague Raphael Garcia so wonderfully penned post-WarGames.

Maybe we could get that tag team pairing after this Fight Pit match, which could feature one hell of a show of respect.

I think Ciampa wins, but both men will come out of this match looking awesome. By the way, big ups to Ciampa for making Tyler Rust look great in defeat. Rust has a ton of potential.

Prediction: Tommaso Ciampa