Kelani Jordan is the first-ever Women’s North American Champion.
Jordan defeated Sol Ruca, Michin, Lash Legend, Jaida Parker, and Fallon Henley in a ladder match that opened Sunday’s NXT Battleground event. The finish of the match had Jordan give Michin a split-legged moonsault on a ladder, then climbed another ladder to grab the North American title, becoming the first-ever champion.
The ladder match featured an assortment of crazy spots, including all five participants throwing Lash Legend out of the ring and onto a ladder on the outside. Ruca also ended up hitting her sol snatcher finisher twice, including one off a ladder.
The title was introduced back at NXT Stand & Deliver on April 6 during WrestleMania weekend. Later that month, Ava announced the six-woman ladder match for Battleground, holding a storyline combine to determine the top twelve contenders for the title. From those twelve, six ended up winning qualifying matches with Thea Hail, Brinley Reece, Izzi Dame, Ivy Nile, Tatum Paxley, and Wren Sinclair failing to advance to the ladder match.
The final two wrestlers have qualified for the NXT Women’s North American title ladder match.
Michin and Kelani Jordan both won qualifying matches on NXT to advance to the Battleground premium live event next Sunday, where they will go against Fallon Henley, Jaida Parker, Sol Ruca, and Lash Legend to determine the first-ever champion.
The show opened with Ava and Sexxy Red revealing the physical NXT North American Women’s Championship belt. As Red was holding the title, Tatum Paxley entered the ring and attempted to take the title away. Michin came out for the save and the two had their qualifying match, with Michin winning after eat defeat.
Later in the show, Jordan defeated Wren Sinclair to advance following a split-legged moonsault. Fallon Henley, who was on commentary, smirked at Jordan after the match.
Here is the updated lineup for Battleground:
NXT North American Championship: Oba Femi defends against Joe Coffey and Wes Lee
NXT Women’s Championship: Roxanne Perez vs. Jordynne Grace
Ladder match to crown first-ever NXT Women’s North American Champion: Sol Ruca vs. Lash Legend vs. Jaida Parker vs. Fallon Henley vs. Michin vs. Kelani Jordan
NXT Underground: Shayna Baszler vs. Lola Vice
NXT Tag Team titles: Nathan Frazer & Axiom defend against The OC (Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson)
Two matches have been announced for Tuesday’s edition of WWE NXT.
Eddy Thorpe vs. Dijak is now scheduled for the show. Thorpe interfered during the men’s Iron Survivor Challenge last night at Deadline, costing Dijak a chance to win the match.
Eddy Thorpe I swear on my children with God as my witness that I’m going to absolutely end you once and for all.
Also announced for Tuesday is a six-person mixed match pitting Meta Four’s Noam Dar, Oro Mensah, & Lash Legend against Josh Briggs, Brooks Jensen, & Fallon Henley. This comes after the two groups were involved in a backstage brawl last night at Deadline.
The 2023 NXT Men’s Breakout tournament will also begin on Tuesday. Riley Osborne, Keanu Carver, Tavion Heights, Dion Lennox, Luca Crusifino, Myles Borne, Trey Bearhill, and Oba Femi have been featured in videos promoting the tournament.
WWE NXT on December 12, 2023, announced lineup:
Eddy Thorpe vs. Dijak
Meta Four’s Lash Legend, Oro Mensah & Noam Dar vs. Fallon Henley, Josh Briggs, & Brooks Jensen
Kelani Jordan is one of the five participants headed to tonight’s NXT Deadline to compete in the women’s Iron Survivor Challenge, competing against Tiffany Stratton, Lash Legend, Blair Davenport and Fallon Henley for a future NXT Women’s title shot.
She earned her spot with a late-November win over Kiana James.
Ahead of the biggest matchup of her young career, I talked with the former gymnast about her time thus far in wrestling and tonight’s big opportunity.
Her fast rise
Given that WWE NXT is a developmental brand, fans have seen a lot of talents grow on the weekly program with Jordan as one of them. While she had primarily had been working on NXT Level Up and the NXT house show loops for the better portion of 2023, she wasn’t on NXT TV until June when she took part in a battle royal.
Fast forward to October, Jordan was named as one of the eight women taking part in the 2023 women’s Breakout Tournament. After wins over Izzi Dame and Arianna Grace to advance to the finals, she got some good crowd reactions and showcased her athletic ability in an eventual defeat to Lola Vice.
Now, she finds herself on the doorstop of a big opportunity.
“It’s so rewarding. It’s amazing because, like you said, about six to seven months ago, I had my first debut match on Level Up. And so now to see how far I’ve come to be on a major PLE, in the Iron Survivor Challenge, the second one ever, it’s so rewarding. I’m just so happy because I never would have thought so. I’m like, ‘Well, if I can do this in six months, imagine the next six months how far I’ll be.'”
Transitioning from gymnastics
Like a lot of the new crop of developmental students at the Performance Center, Jordan excelled at a different sport before pursuing wrestling. Jordan’s athletic background stems from gymnastics.
While she was attending Michigan State in 2022, she was finishing her fifth year in gymnastics when she received a direct message on Instagram from the WWE recruiting account, asking her if she was interested in attending their tryout at SummerSlam.
Jordan says that when she received the message, she was surprised WWE reached out to her. She ended up taking a chance and ended up getting selected by Paul “Triple H” Levesque to further her training at the Performance Center.
“At first, I’m like, ‘Is this real?’ There’s no way that WWE is contacting me and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to go for it.’ So I went down to Nashville, I did the tryout, and thankfully I was blessed with the opportunity for Triple H himself to offer me to come to the Performance Center and start training.
“And that’s how I got into pro wrestling. I never would have thought in a million years that I would be a WWE superstar so being here is so surreal.”
Once she began training, she said that learning how to be safe and rolling in the ring was the easiest part for her to learn, revealing that the most “painful” thing was learning how to hit the ropes.
“So learning how to just control your body with safety, like rolling and stuff, that was the easy part. But hitting the ropes the first time was so painful and just learning how to bump and stuff. That was probably the most painful thing, the most difficult thing ever. Hitting the ropes was the most difficult.”
Given how quickly she has taken to wrestling, Jordan explained to me how her background in gymnastics has attributed to her learning this new sport so quickly.
“I will say it’s very, very different. It’s foreign to me. But then again, the physicality of it helps me a lot because I’m able to catch on to the small details easier, I would say just because in gymnastics, everything is based on perfection. So I have to make sure I know all the details to make sure the margin of error is very small.”
She emphasized that her background in gymnastics has helped her a lot with body control and what she calls “air awareness.”
“I believe that helps me in the ring with like body control and details. Just making sure I’m aware, I have air awareness. So, I believe gymnastics helped me. But then again, it’s so different because I’m not used to having someone hit me or being in the ring with someone else. In gymnastics, it’s just me by myself.”
Key influences
Given that Jordan is so new to the world of professional wrestling, I asked her who are some of the performers she studies. Three very different wrestlers were her answer: Rob Van Dam, Bryan Danielson and Bianca Belair.
“Starting with in-ring wise, I would say RVD is someone whose style I absolutely love. I love also how authentic he is, how unapologetically himself he is. And that’s something that I want to strive to be. I want people to be able to relate to me.
“And then also Bianca Belair: someone because she’s so elegant, but she’s also so powerful and even she has this sass to her where she doesn’t let anyone walk over her.
“And then for promo wise, I love hearing (Bryan Danielson) cut his promos. He’s very energetic and it’s cool to see his evolution of how he started promos to where he was doing promos.”
Two more have advanced to the Iron Survivor Challenge matches at Deadline next month.
Kelani Jordan and Bron Breakker qualified on Tuesday’s NXT. Jordan was the first to qualify, hitting a split-legged moonsault on Kiana James for the win. The finish of that match had James being distracted by Roxanne Perez, who rang the bell early. Breakker, meanwhile, defeated Eddy Thorpe to advance after pinning him with a spear.
It was announced later in the evening that two ‘last chance’ qualifying matches will take place on next week’s NXT. Those two matches will be Carmelo Hayes vs. Eddy Thorpe vs. Joe Coffey vs. Tyler Bate and Fallon Henley vs. Roxanne Perez vs. Thea Hail vs. Kiana James.
Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler announced his choices for the qualifying matches earlier this week. Other WWE Hall of Famers who have made matches for the Iron Survivor Challenge include JBL, Lita, and Mick Foley.
Here is the updated card for NXT Deadline, which takes place December 9 in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
NXT Championship: Ilja Dragunov defends against Baron Corbin
NXT North American Championship: Dominik Mysterio defends against Wes Lee
Men’s Iron Survivor Challenge: Dijak vs. Trick Williams vs. Josh Briggs vs. Bron Breakker vs. ???
Women’s Iron Survivor Challenge: Tiffany Stratton vs. Lash Legend vs. Blair Davenport vs. Kelani Jordan vs. ???
Kelani Jordan is the first to advance in the NXT Women’s Breakout Tournament.
Jordan defeated Izzy Dame in the first round, scoring the win with a split-legged moonsault. With the win, she advances into the semifinals where she will face the winner of Ariana Grace and Jakara Jackson.
The 2023 Women’s Breakout Tournament was announced last month, with participants being revealed during NXT No Mercy this past Saturday. Other matches in the opening round will have Karmen Petrovic face Jaida Parker and Dani Palmer will take on Lola Vice.
Jordan has been regularly featured on NXT television since June, defeating Tatum Paxley in her official NXT debut. She first started out with an association with Dana Brooke, but that ended once Brooke was released from WWE last month. Since then Jordan has been on her own, most recently losing to Blair Davenport in a kickoff match prior to Saturday’s No Mercy.
This is the second year in a row a Women’s Breakout Tournament has taken place. Last year saw Roxanne Perez defeat Tiffany Stratton in the finals.
Jordan will be one of the participants in NXT’s upcoming Women’s Breakout Tournament. The full bracket is set to be revealed during No Mercy.
Davenport was supposed to face Gigi Dolin on NXT this week. Instead, there was an angle where Davenport took out Dolin in a backstage attack.
The No Mercy pre-show begins at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. The main card then starts at 8 p.m. Eastern. The show is airing live on Peacock/WWE Network.
Here’s the full lineup for No Mercy:
NXT Champion Carmelo Hayes defends against Ilja Dragunov
NXT North American Champion Dominik Mysterio defends against Trick Williams (Dragon Lee will be the special guest referee)
NXT Tag Team Champions Tony D’Angelo & Stacks defend against Bronco Nima & Lucien Price, The Creed Brothers, and Angel & Humberto in a fatal four-way match
NXT Heritage Cup Champion Noam Dar defends against Butch
Another match may be added to the card for NXT No Mercy.
After Tuesday night’s NXT went off the air, WWE uploaded a post-show video where Kelani Jordan challenged Blair Davenport to face her at No Mercy. The event is taking place at Mechanics Bank Arena in Bakersfield, California this Saturday (September 30).
Davenport was supposed to face Gigi Dolin on NXT last night, but the match didn’t end up happening. There was instead an angle where Davenport took out Dolin in a backstage attack.
Jordan, a former college gymnast, made her in-ring debut on NXT Level Up earlier this year. She won her televised NXT singles debut by defeating Tatum Paxley this July.
Jordan will be one of the entrants in NXT’s upcoming Women’s Breakout Tournament. The winner of the tournament receives a future Women’s title shot.
The full bracket for the Women’s Breakout Tournament is being revealed at No Mercy.
Jordan recently had a partnership with Dana Brooke in NXT. Brooke was released by WWE in last week’s roster cuts.
WWE hasn’t confirmed if Jordan vs. Davenport will be part of the No Mercy main card or if it will be on the pre-show. The pre-show airs live on Peacock/WWE Network starting at 7 p.m. Eastern time this Saturday. The main card then begins an hour later.
Here’s everything that’s been officially announced for No Mercy:
NXT Champion Carmelo Hayes defends against Ilja Dragunov
NXT North American Champion Dominik Mysterio defends against Trick Williams (Dragon Lee will be the special guest referee)
NXT Tag Team Champions Tony D’Angelo & Stacks defend against Bronco Nima & Lucien Price, The Creed Brothers, and Angel & Humberto in a fatal four-way match
NXT Heritage Cup Champion Noam Dar defends against Butch
Two matches have been added to the lineup for NXT this week.
WWE announced today that Blair Davenport vs. Kelani Jordan, and Ivy Nile vs. Kiana James will take place on Tuesday’s show.
Jordan called out Davenport in a social media post over the weekend after Dana Brooke told her to find her “killer instinct” on last week’s show.
“Dana told me to call somebody out and find my killer instinct and I’ve been thinking about her advice over and over again, so why not take it? I’m calling out one of the most feared women in NXT, Blair Davenport,” Jordan said in a video posted on 8/5.
Nile comes into her match against James following a loss to Tiffany Stratton in her last match on the 7/11 show. James defeated Gigi Dolin in her last televised match on 7/18.
Former Michigan State gymnast Lea Mitchell will make her WWE NXT debut as Kelani Jordan this week.
While Jordan took part in a Halloween-themed battle royal at an NXT live event last October, her first match on WWE programming was filmed on Tuesday from the Performance Center. She wrestled Wendy Choo in a match that will air Friday on NXT Level Up.
Jordan also previously appeared on NXT programming as one of Grayson Waller’s “Waller Girls” at NXT Vengeance Day in February.
Jordan was signed to WWE after taking part in the company’s tryouts over SummerSlam weekend in Nashville last year. She was one of the 14 out of 50 who attended the tryouts to be signed.
