On Saturday, September 27th, WWE NXT returned to Fort Lauderdale, FL, at the FTL War Memorial for its big event, “No Mercy.” The event saw a ton of big moments and amazing matches, including Ricky Saints defeating Oba Femi to become the new NXT Champion, ending Femi’s dominant reign.
The main event of the show saw Oba Femi put his NXT Championship on the line against the newcomer, Ricky Saints. In the end, Saints lands four DDTs on Oba, including one on the announce table and one on the floor, to win the NXT Championship. This was a fantastic match, and Saints deserves a strong run as the new NXT Champion.
Ricky Saints Deserves A Strong Run as the NXT Champion
After 263 days, Saints did the unthinkable, defeating Femi to win the NXT Championship. With this victory, Saints has officially become just one of only three men to pin Femi since 2024. That’s saying something with how dominant Femi has been booked on NXT. Now, fans of Saints will finally get to see the booking he should have had for a while now inside a WWE ring.
Fans of Saints have waited a long time to see him succeed on national television. He became a special talent at All Elite Wrestling, but sadly, it just didn’t work out for him there. Now that he’s holding the NXT Championship, WWE must let the true power of Saints flow and show the fans why they love him so much.
During his AEW and even his NWA run, fans saw the name “Ricky Starks” as a main event performer. While he’s had his chances in each company, he was never “the guy.” He challenged MJF for the AEW World Championship and came up short, to the surprise of nobody. It was MJF’s first defense after all.
Fans hoped that this title shot would lead to more shining moments for Starks. However, that never came. Even after angles with the likes of Bryan Danielson, CM Punk, and Adam Copeland (which we may want to forget that third one), Starks never had an actual AEW singles title. To make matters worse, he was benched before showing up on NXT with a new name.
The transition to NXT came with a ton of hype. However, it quickly did not live up to some expectations set for him right off the bat. Many blamed WWE’s inability to book him correctly, and some even said that it was an intentional move by WWE. Either way, he was cooled down more than any fan could have ever assumed.
Now, does winning the top prize in NXT immediately fix that? No. However, it’s an amazing start. The NXT men’s division is growing, but it’s still far from great. There are a few names like Ethan Page, Myles Borne, Tavion Heights, and Je’Von Evans to look out for, but there’s a lot left to be desired, especially compared to the depth of the current NXT women’s division.
Having Saints at the top of the mountain in NXT gives Shawn Michaels and NXT as a whole a perfect opportunity to fix the entire division. He needs a long and strong run as the NXT Champion. After all, he did just defeat Femi, which is no easy task. A run around at least 250-300 days is a great move for his development and turning him into a main roster star.
He could feud with some of the names mentioned previously, even reigniting the blood feud with Page. Maybe even a main roster challenger every once in a while would go a long way in allowing Saints a chance to spread his wings and remind us who he was as Ricky Starks and why this is such a long time coming.
Despite cooling off a bit, Saints reaching the top of the mountain in NXT seemed pretty obvious since he first set foot in NXT. Now, the moment is here. Everyone knows how good Saints is. He has the charisma and talent to back up all of his amazing mic skills. Giving him a strong run as champion is not only good for the performer, but also the entire men’s division.
What do you think? Share your thoughts, opinions, feedback, and anything else that was raised on Twitter @PWMania and Facebook.com/PWMania.
Until next time,
Scott Mitchell
You can follow me on Instagram (@Scott44Mitchell), X (@Scott44Mitchell), Facebook (Scott’s Scoop), & YouTube (Scott’s Scoop)
