Six Brands, 20 Women, One Opportunity: NXT's Battle Royal Is Everything I Love About the Match
Give me a battle royal and I'm paying attention. Maybe I'm a little biased. I competed in at least 20 battle royals throughout my career as a professional wrestler, and I loved them! They're chaotic. They're unpredictable. They're crowded. And when they're done correctly, they're one of the most efficient story-telling tools professional wrestling has. As long as the participants work together to make each other look good instead of being solely self-serving. After all, it is an art and the performance needs at least two people.
Next week's WWE NXT is about to put that theory to the test on a pretty incredible scale. NXT has announced a 20-woman battle royal featuring talent from NXT, Raw, SmackDown, TNA, AAA and EVOLVE, with the winner earning an NXT Women's Championship opportunity against Kelani Jordan at Halloween Havoc on October 31.
Six brands.
Twenty women.
One ring.
And an awful lot of stories that can collide before someone finally goes over the top rope.
This Is Bigger Than Finding Kelani Jordan's Challenger: The premise is simple. NXT Women's Champion Kelani Jordan needs a challenger for Halloween Havoc. Rather than simply naming one, NXT General Manager Robert Stone announced that the decision will be made through a 20-woman battle royal.
But look at who's coming through the door.
The announced field includes:
Arianna Grace
Layla Diggs
Indi Hartwell
Xia Brookside
M by Elegance
Heather by Elegance
Ivy Nile
Kiana James
Lady Shani
Adelicious
Lizzy Rain
Thea Hail
Skylar Raye
Zaria
Izzi Dame
Kali Armstrong
Reina Volcan
Nikkita Lyons
Chantel Monroe
La Catalina
That's not simply an NXT battle royal with a couple of guest appearances sprinkled in. You have TNA Knockouts World Champion Xia Brookside entering the same match as TNA Knockouts Television Champion M by Elegance. You have AAA Reina de Reinas Champion La Catalina from off of a win against Roxanne Perez. You have NXT Women's North American Champion Zaria. You have EVOLVE Women's Champion Nikkita Lyons...
And they're all walking into the same ring with women representing different brands, promotions, histories and motivations. That's where this gets interesting! Although I do sometimes wonder at the blurred lines of companies as of late...
Why I Loved Battle Royals: Having competed in at least 20 battle royals myself, I can tell you that they're a very different animal from a traditional wrestling match. You're constantly processing information.
Where is everyone?
Who is behind you?
Who is already fighting?
Who can you trust for the next 30 seconds?
Who absolutely shouldn't you trust?
Am I positioned for the next spot?
Do we need to slow it down?
Where is the perfect camera angle?
Are the fans with us or distracted?
And where is that top rope?
So. Many. Variables...
There can be ten different things happening around you at once, but your responsibility as a wrestler remains the same: make sure whatever you're doing means something. That's what I always loved about them. A battle royal doesn't have to be 20 people randomly throwing punches until only one wrestler remains. At its best, it's organized chaos with purpose. Which is where I thrive so consider it my circus and my monkeys haha!
Twenty Wrestlers Means Twenty Plus Stories: One of the greatest advantages of a battle royal is how much television you can squeeze into a relatively small amount of time. Twenty wrestlers don't require ten separate matches. They require one ring where they all converge. You can introduce a new character. Continue an existing rivalry. Start another one. Tease a future match. Give someone an impressive elimination. Let an underdog survive much longer than expected. Have two rivals become temporary allies because neither can eliminate someone alone. Put champions from different promotions face-to-face without immediately giving away a singles match. You can even have someone lose without actually making them look weak.
That's an incredible amount of story-telling real estate... Possibilities are vast and plentiful!
And with six different wrestling brands represented, next week's match has more possibilities than most. What happens when a TNA champion comes face-to-face with an NXT champion? What happens when AAA and WWE talent collide? Does someone from Raw or SmackDown immediately target one of the younger women? Do wrestlers from the same promotion work together?
And if they do, how long does that alliance survive once they remember there's only one championship opportunity waiting at the end? Every elimination can mean something. More importantly, every interaction can become something later.
This Is Where Cross-Promotion Gets Fun: We've spent a lot of time talking about wrestling's increasingly interconnected landscape, as well as my concerns with that, and this battle royal might be one of the clearest examples yet.
WWE has NXT.
It has EVOLVE.
Its relationship with AAA has opened another pipeline of talent and styles.
And despite recent questions surrounding the visibility of the WWE-TNA partnership, TNA wrestlers are very clearly part of this match. Not hidden in the background, either. The reigning TNA Knockouts World Champion is walking into an NXT ring with the opportunity to earn a shot at the NXT Women's Championship.
That's interesting.
Because once you start putting champions from different wrestling worlds in the same ring, fans naturally start asking questions. Who would win? Who matches up well? What would that singles match look like? Could we see it again? is I take away legitimacy from the other promotions? Is this like a modern cross over from the territory days?
That's how wrestling creates possibilities. Sometimes you don't need to announce the dream match. You just need to let two wrestlers stare at each other across the ring. The audience will do the rest.
Everyone Gets a Chance to Show Us Who They Are: This is another reason I've always loved battle royals. Not everyone needs five minutes and a microphone to establish a character. Sometimes you can learn everything you need to know about a wrestler by watching what they do when the bell rings and 19 other people are standing around them...
Does someone immediately attack?
Hide?
Form an alliance?
Target the biggest threat?
Try to manipulate everyone else?
Throw caution completely out the window?
Those choices tell us who that wrestler is.
And for talent coming from TNA, AAA or EVOLVE who may be unfamiliar to portions of the NXT audience, that's valuable television time. You might enter the match as someone a viewer has never seen before. One memorable confrontation, one incredible save or one shocking elimination later, that viewer remembers your name. I've seen firsthand how valuable those little moments can be. You don't always need to win the match to win the audience.
And Then There's Kelani Jordan: While 20 women are fighting for an opportunity, there's one woman who gets to watch all of it unfold. Kelani Jordan. Jordan made it clear on NXT that she wasn't interested in simply handing out championship opportunities. Robert Stone solved that problem for her. Now her next challenger has to survive 19 other women to get there.
Reina Volcan already made her intentions known by attacking Jordan following the announcement, giving the champion an immediate reminder that she may not have to wait until Halloween Havoc for the danger to begin. That's another thing a good battle royal does. The champion doesn't even need to compete for the story surrounding their championship to move forward.
Give Me the Chaos: Professional wrestling sometimes has a habit of making things more complicated than they need to be. This isn't complicated. Put 20 talented women in a ring. Give them something important to fight for. Give each at least one 'WOW!' moment. Bring together wrestlers from six different corners of the wrestling world. Then let their personalities, rivalries, alliances and ambitions collide.
I loved competing in battle royals because somewhere inside all that chaos, there was always a story to find. Usually several.
Next week's NXT has 20 women and six brands worth of them.
And only one gets to leave with a date against Kelani Jordan at Halloween Havoc.
That's exactly the kind of chaos I'm looking forward to.