Injury Changes New Year’s Evil NXT Card, Match Canceled

Card subject to change. Wrestling is a unique form of entertainment in that it takes place every week live, or at least mostly live to tape. You can edit a few things here or there, but most of the time, the company is stuck with what happens live. That also means you can have some changes take place at any time and unfortunately that seems to be the case again.

This week’s edition of NXT is a stacked card under the name New Year’s Evil. The show will feature several major matches, some of which are going to have a few extra rules thrown in. All of the matches on the card have been set up over the last several weeks and the show looks great. Unfortunately one of the matches that was set does not look like it is going to happen.

NXT reporter Mackenzie Mitchell has sent out a tweet saying that NXT General Manager William Regal was seen walking into the trainer’s room. Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter said on Twitter that this was likely related to Tommaso Ciampa and Timothy Thatcher, who are scheduled to face each other in a Fight Pit match on NXT. One of the two is injured and the match is no longer listed on the official WWE.com preview.

Just saw @RealKingRegal walk into a closed door meeting with @WWENXT medical personnel. As soon as I get an update on what the meeting was, I’ll report back.

— McKenzie Mitchell (@mckenzienmitch) January 6, 2021

This likely has to do with Ciampa vs. Thatcher. One of the two is injured and as of yesterday it wasn't a sure thing if the match would happen or not. https://t.co/D2K75cieAP

— Dave Meltzer (@davemeltzerWON) January 6, 2021

Opinion: This is rather disappointing as the match sounded very interesting on paper. The silver lining is that the match can still be a huge main event later on. What matters here is that no one is too badly hurt, so hopefully this is little more than a small, short term injury that isn’t going to cause that much trouble. I’m looking forward to the match and while it’s a shame that it won’t happen this week, I hope the wrestlers are healthy enough to have it sooner than later.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. Thank you for reading!