Tonight's episode of WWE NXT furthered along the road to crowning a new NXT Champion for the men's division, following the previous champion (Oba Femi) vacating the title when he relinquished the belt on January 6th.
It had been announced last week that there will be a ladder match on the February 3rd episode of NXT with six Superstars vying for the title and one of those spots automatically going to Ricky Saints, who had been granted a bye since he was the previous champion and was due a rematch.
On this episode, WWE LFG season 2 winner Shiloh Hill defeated Josh Briggs to earn another spot, before both were attacked by Tony D'Angelo.
Later on, "Super" Sean Legacy—arguably the face of WWE EVOLVE and the WWE ID program—defeated another WWE ID prospect in Eli Knight to qualify as well. Both Legacy and Knight just signed to NXT over the past week as an effort to help bolster the roster after several stars have been called up to the main roster, such as Je'Von Evans and of course, Oba Femi himself. Naturally, both Legacy and Knight also were attacked by D'Angelo to keep that trend going. He willingly surrendered himself over to Ava's security team, who arrested him.
It was announced that the three remaining qualifiers are Andre Chase vs. Keanu Carver, Joe Hendry vs. Jackson Drake, and Myles Borne vs. Dion Lennox.
Another title match will go down on February 3rd as a backstage segment with Ava, Robert Stone, Lola Vice, and Thea Hail took place wherein Hail asked for a shot at regaining the NXT Women's North American Championship from Izzi Dame, while Vice was also asking for a shot at that belt. Ava went with the simple option of booking them both against Dame in a Triple Threat match.
Speaking of Triple Threats in the women's division, ZaRuca (Sol Ruca and Zaria) won the main event Triple Threat tag team match from tonight's show, beating the WrenQCC and Fatal Influence to earn an opportunity for the TNA Knockouts World Tag Team Championship titles. When they will face The Elegance Brand for those belts has yet to be specified.
Lastly, it was set up that OTM will face DarkState for the NXT Tag Team Championship on next week's episode, with The Culling's Shawn Spears and Niko Vance on the hunt for whoever walks out with the belts.