WWE NXT September 22, 2026 brings the return of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic tonight, but a familiar tournament cannot do all the work for a brand still sorting through the fallout from Heatwave. Fourteen teams enter the competition, while AAA Reina de Reinas Champion La Catalina and Thea Hail face NXT Women’s Champion Kelani Jordan and NXT Women’s North American Champion Zaria in a match that could sharpen two championship he rivalries. Zilla Fatu also joins Sean Legacy and Dorian Van Dux against BirthRight after last week’s rescue became another chapter in an increasingly crowded tag division. Elsewhere, Mason Rook has earned the next opportunity against NXT Champion Grayson Waller, and Myles Borne has made Tavion Heights pay for trusting him again. Tonight’s show airs from the WWE Performance Center in Orlando at 8 p.m. ET on The CW. With NXT Halloween Havoc scheduled for October 31, the challenge is giving those developments consequences that last beyond another attack or staredown.
Here’s everything announced for tonight’s show
● The 2026 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic begins with opening-round action. The latest advertised lineup has not specified tonight’s participating teams.
● AAA Reina de Reinas Champion La Catalina & Thea Hail vs. NXT Women’s Champion Kelani Jordan & NXT Women’s North American Champion Zaria (non-title tag team match).
● Zilla Fatu, Sean Legacy & Dorian Van Dux vs. BirthRight (six-man tag team match).
Last week’s NXT produced four winners: Kali Armstrong, DarkState, Vanity Project and Mason Rook. It also produced a familiar problem. Three of those matches involved interference or an illegal assist at the finish, and several of the night’s biggest developments depended on somebody attacking an opponent who was already occupied. The episode moved people into position, but too much of that movement came through variations of the same shortcut.
There were worthwhile decisions. Rook getting the championship opportunity gave the main event a different direction. Bringing back the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic supplied the tag division with an actual competition. La Catalina’s arrival broadened the women’s title picture. Those developments deserve follow-through, particularly when the alternative is another week of contenders announcing that they deserve more without getting closer to anything.
The Dusty Classic is the strongest organizing tool NXT has introduced since Heatwave. Robert Stone announced its return on September 15, and the field has since expanded into a complete 14-team lineup representing NXT, RAW, SmackDown, EVOLVE and AAA. The tournament last took place in 2024, when Bron Breakker and Baron Corbin won. Tonight begins a new competition with enough established teams to test the less experienced combinations immediately.
The most consequential detail is the inclusion of the champions. NXT Tag Team Champions Brad Baylor and Ricky Smokes of Vanity Project receive a first-round bye, as do AAA Tag Team Champions El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. and Galeno. Both teams enter in the quarterfinals. The other 12 entrants have an additional match to survive before reaching the same stage.
That advantage is easy to explain. The champions have already won something that separates them from the field. It also gives their prospective opponents a complaint that can be settled in the ring: while the champions wait, everyone else has to work. For Vanity Project especially, the arrangement fits a team comfortable enjoying privileges while insisting it deserves even more.
Julius Creed and Brutus Creed bring the clearest historical objective. The Creed Brothers won the tournament in 2022 and have already expressed their intention to win it again. Their September 8 victory over Noam Dar and Romeo Moreno established that their return comes with competitive expectations. A second Dusty Cup would give that return a concrete achievement; an elimination could give another team an equally valuable breakthrough.
Fraxiom’s Nathan Frazer and Axiom offer a different measuring stick. Their inclusion raises the standard for timing, movement and communication. A team cannot simply trade spectacular moves with them and claim to have arrived. Beating Fraxiom would mean surviving a partnership whose combinations are a major part of its identity. That is a useful test for a division containing several talented wrestlers still establishing why they belong together.
The remainder of the field is broad. BirthRight enters Channing “Stacks” Lorenzo and Uriah Connors; DarkState enters Cutler James and Osiris Griffin. Noam Dar and Romeo Moreno, Sean Legacy and Dorian Van Dux, and Hank Walker and Tank Ledger are also involved. Rayo Americano and Bravo Americano represent Los Americanos, while Mini Vikingo teams with Chaz “Starboy” Hall. Tokyo Bad Boys, Harley Riggins and Jaxson Presley, and Shido Ash and Viktor Zanov complete the tournament alongside the Creeds, Fraxiom and the two championship teams.
That range should produce more than a succession of introductions. Give viewers a reason to remember how each team wrestles. One pair might control an opponent’s corner. Another might win by forcing a faster pace. A less experienced combination might survive through one rehearsed sequence while exposing gaps elsewhere. Those distinctions build a division more effectively than presenting every entrant as an interchangeable collection of impressive moves.
The presence of two sets of champions also makes the tournament’s reward worth explaining. Previous editions have created championship opportunities, but the advertised information for this year does not establish a new title-shot stipulation or a Halloween Havoc final. Neither should be assumed. A trophy has value, especially one bearing Dusty Rhodes’ name, but the audience should understand what winning this particular competition changes for its winner.
Last week’s tag matches showed why that structure is useful. Sean Legacy and Dorian Van Dux generated much of their offense against DarkState through speed and repeated aerial attacks. Griffin and James answered with their size and power, and the match gave both teams room to demonstrate what separates them physically. The deciding factor, however, came from outside the scheduled contest.
Dion Lennox struck Van Dux while the referee was occupied. DarkState capitalized with its double-team powerbomb and won. Legacy and Van Dux had an explanation for losing, while Griffin and James left with a result they could carry into the tournament. DarkState’s numbers remained useful even after the group’s split with Saquon Shugars.
The downside is that protection does not automatically create progress. Legacy and Van Dux can be entertaining, wronged and impressive in defeat all at once, yet still fail to establish themselves as a team that wins important matches. The Dusty Classic gives them a chance to replace that familiar explanation with results. It gives DarkState an opportunity to show whether Lennox supplements a dangerous team or repeatedly rescues one.
BirthRight then attacked Legacy and Van Dux after the match. Fatu’s intervention connected tonight’s six-man tag to the previous week, when the faction punished his refusal to join by putting him through the announce table. He returned the favor by helping the two men fight the group off, including getting his hands on Charlie Dempsey.
The rescue worked because the help eventually went both ways. Fatu arrived to stop the attack, and Legacy and Van Dux recovered to support him. That makes tonight’s alliance easier to accept. They have already demonstrated a reason to cooperate beyond sharing the same dressing room or being assigned the same opponents.
BirthRight’s side consists of Lexis King, Lorenzo and Connors. The group’s advantage is familiarity, and the match should make use of it. Isolating one opponent, controlling the exchanges and forcing Fatu to wait for a tag would give the faction a more substantial identity than simply arriving with extra bodies. Dempsey remains central to the broader conflict, but he is not one of the three announced competitors tonight.
For Fatu, the challenge is extending his offense into a match with a developing story. His arrival can generate an immediate burst of attention; keeping that attention requires opposition capable of making him work. BirthRight has already established that it will hurt him when he refuses to cooperate. Tonight offers a chance to show how he responds when the fight takes place under match conditions.
Legacy and Van Dux also deserve an active role in the outcome. They were the men attacked last week, and both have tournament ambitions of their own. Treating them as bodies waiting for Fatu’s entrance would weaken the partnership that the rescue created. A meaningful contribution from either man would help tonight’s result carry into the Dusty Classic.
Vanity Project enters that competition after beating Cruz Montana and EK Prosper in a non-title match last week. The bout grew out of Prosper apologizing for the previous week’s six-man defeat and Montana defending him when the champions interrupted. Montana’s willingness to stand beside Prosper gave the pairing a straightforward purpose, and their offense showed enough coordination to make the champions uncomfortable.
The finish preserved Vanity Project’s preferred method. Jackson Drake struck Montana at ringside and was ejected, with Myka Lockwood also sent away. That intervention being caught did not end the cheating. Smokes trapped Prosper in a pin, and Baylor held Prosper’s legs from the apron to prevent the escape.
There was a useful distinction in that finish: removing the extra accomplices did not suddenly make the champions fair competitors. Baylor and Smokes still found a way to assist each other illegally. Their relationship has a recognizable rhythm, which is part of why they work as a team. The tournament can challenge that rhythm by placing them against opponents prepared for it.
Montana’s position is less satisfying. He showed leadership, backed a younger wrestler and threatened the champions, but his team still lost. Repeatedly explaining why a wrestler was protected becomes less persuasive when his results never catch up with his presentation. Prosper can benefit from Montana’s support; Montana also needs his own reason to remain important after the conversation ends.
Drake’s interference leaves room for tension with Montana, although no singles match between them belongs on the confirmed card. The North American Champion should have a program that develops his reign as well as his faction’s interests. At present, last week’s attack gives NXT an opening to build one without inventing a contender from nowhere.
The main championship picture has made a firmer decision. Rook earned his opportunity by pinning Tony D’Angelo in the September 15 Triple Threat Match with Shugars. The route began a week earlier, when those three won the six-man qualifier against Montana, Prosper and Keanu Carver. Rook took the deciding fall in that match after tagging himself in, then returned to defeat one of his temporary partners.
That progression gives his push continuity. He went from claiming credit within a team to securing an individual opportunity. Beating the former NXT Champion also carries more weight than beating an opponent introduced solely to lose to him. D’Angelo was pursuing the championship he lost at Heatwave, and Rook interrupted that route back.
The match made effective use of Rook’s size without limiting him to standing still and absorbing offense. D’Angelo managed major lifts earlier, while Shugars used movement and quick attacks to create openings around both larger opponents. The closing sequence then returned to the physical problem Rook presented: D’Angelo attempted another lift, his back gave out, and Rook finished him with a Blue Thunder Bomb followed by a top-rope splash.
Tristan Angels’ interference complicates the victory without erasing it. Angels pulled the referee out during a Shugars pin attempt, drawing Shugars into a fight outside. Rook still pinned D’Angelo, but Shugars has a legitimate grievance about how his opportunity ended. That is different from saying Rook won an uncontested test against both opponents.
The next task is giving Waller and Rook a championship issue beyond their contrasting physiques. Waller spent much of last week’s show on a treadmill before appearing at the end with his title. The running gag kept him visible, but the final confrontation supplied very little conversation between champion and challenger. A match announcement can establish when they wrestle; their interaction must establish why this pairing deserves sustained attention.
Rook’s background package offered useful material by showing his experience outside WWE and discussing the setbacks on his route to NXT. That gives him something to speak from. Waller is well suited to testing how a challenger responds to provocation, but Rook cannot spend the entire build silently accepting whatever description the champion gives him. His confidence should come from the opponent he just beat and the opportunity he earned.
D’Angelo, meanwhile, has to respond to losing the match that could have restored his title pursuit. Immediately handing him another route to Waller would reduce the consequence of Rook’s win. A changed approach, a different opponent or frustration with his own mistakes could all move him forward. Repeating that he wants his championship back would leave him where he was before last week’s bell.
Shugars has a more immediate target in Angels. Their backstage argument supplied the motive for the interference, with Angels questioning whether Shugars belonged in the championship conversation. The attack then allowed Angels to make himself relevant to an opportunity he had not earned.
That gives Shugars something specific to answer. After separating from DarkState and beating Lennox in their August 25 Weaponized Steel Cage Match, he had begun moving toward a different level of competition. Angels has interrupted that progress. A match between them could give Shugars a chance to settle the interruption and resume his climb, provided the feud does not become an excuse to keep him away from meaningful wins indefinitely.
Myles Borne and Tavion Heights present a more personal problem. Borne’s apology last week drew on their shared history, including Heights’ earlier role in the breakdown of their partnership and the success they later achieved together. Heights initially resisted. He explained that Heatwave had cost him both his championship and the person he regarded as his closest ally.
That was the emotional center of the segment. Heights was being asked to trust somebody who had attacked him at the moment he already felt he had lost everything. Borne redirected the conversation toward their previous reconciliation and the idea that neither man had handled the relationship perfectly. Heights eventually accepted the apology, and the two embraced.
Borne then hit Borne Again, sent Heights through the ringside barricade and attacked his leg with a chair. The apology became a way to get Heights close enough to hurt him again. Whatever uncertainty remained after Heatwave, this attack was staged after Borne had been given time to reflect and an opportunity to make amends.
There is a stronger villain in that decision, but there is also a cost to Heights. Sympathy can sustain a betrayed wrestler; repeated gullibility can undermine him. The next meaningful development should give Heights agency, whether through his eventual response, a refusal to engage on Borne’s terms or a plan for revenge once he can compete. Another conversation about whether they can still be friends would exhaust what the segment already settled.
Borne has also raised the standard for the explanation he eventually gives. Losing championships and fearing betrayal might explain the anger at Heatwave. They do not fully explain arranging a public reconciliation to inflict another attack. He now has to own that choice. A vague claim that Heights made him do it would waste the more deliberate cruelty shown last week.
Their conflict could support a Halloween Havoc grudge match because the physical escalation has already occurred. The chair attack gives the eventual contest a reason to feel harsher than an ordinary disagreement. However, neither Heights’ return timetable nor a match date has been announced. The injury angle should have consequences before it becomes decoration for a stipulation graphic.
The women’s tag match offers the most direct opportunity tonight to develop championship challengers through competition. Last week, Jordan celebrated her position as NXT Women’s Champion, her successful defense against Jaida Parker and her recent RAW appearance. La Catalina interrupted with a championship of her own and a stated ambition to raise the level of the women’s division. Zaria and Hail joined the confrontation, and the exchange became a brawl.
The format was familiar enough to predict where it was going. One entrance interrupted another until four women were positioned for a tag match. The value was in the relationships underneath it: Catalina challenging Jordan’s claim to be the standard, and Hail confronting a champion she had already forced to submit during an unsanctioned fight.
Hail’s case against Zaria is particularly straightforward. On September 8, she made the Women’s North American Champion tap outside an official match. Last week, the medical-room scene acknowledged the effect on Zaria’s arm, even as the champion insisted she was fine. Izzi Dame then questioned how somebody so confident in her dominance had been hurt by Hail.
Tonight gives that detail a purpose in the ring. Hail should have a reason to seek the arm, and Zaria should have a reason to prevent her from reaching it. Jordan’s involvement creates the possibility of a tag that rescues Zaria from a dangerous position. Catalina’s presence means Hail also has support when the champions try to control the match. The story is already there without requiring another person to interrupt it.
Hail is the only wrestler in the match without a current championship, but she should not be treated as the expendable participant. Her submission threat is one of the clearest established weaknesses facing either NXT champion. If she loses, the manner of the loss should preserve that threat through what she does in the match, rather than relying on commentary to insist she remains a contender afterward.
Catalina brings a different kind of pressure to Jordan. She arrives with the AAA Reina de Reinas Championship and now has fresh exposure from last night’s RAW. She competed against IYO SKY and Roxanne Perez in a Money in the Bank qualifier, with Perez pinning SKY to advance. Catalina did not qualify, but she also did not take the deciding fall.
That result leaves tonight as an opportunity to turn visibility into a victory. Jordan can present her own RAW appearance as proof that her reach extends beyond NXT, but Catalina can now make the same argument while standing across from her. Their exchange becomes more interesting when Jordan has to confront another champion who refuses to be impressed simply by her presence.
The partnership between Jordan and Zaria is equally worth watching. Both are accustomed to asserting their superiority, and neither benefits from being the champion who costs the other a match. Cooperation could make them difficult to beat; competing for credit could create an opening. The match can explore that tension through tags and decisions instead of adding an unrelated dispute after the bell.
There are several useful outcomes. A Hail fall over Zaria would reinforce an existing title claim. A Catalina fall over Jordan would create a direct argument for an NXT Women’s Championship opportunity. A champions’ victory could force the challengers to reassess how they approach them. Those are possibilities, not announced stakes, and the match is not a championship unification contest.
Wren Sinclair and Kendal Grey remain part of Jordan’s larger story even though neither is advertised to wrestle tonight. The September 15 medical-update segment kept Grey out of competition with continuing balance issues and supplied no clearance date. Sinclair remained beside her while still suspended following the attack on Jordan and a referee the previous week.
That leaves Jordan dealing with multiple grievances, but NXT should preserve the distinctions between them. Catalina wants to establish herself against another champion. Sinclair has unfinished business rooted in the attack and her connection to Grey. Grey’s eventual return would carry its own championship history. Compressing all three into another crowded confrontation would discard the separate reasons each woman has to care.
Armstrong’s victory over Lizzy Rain also deserves a place in that discussion. Rain countered the stronger wrestler’s offense, found openings with her speed and kept the match competitive. Armstrong eventually landed the Kali Connection for the pin, giving her a win after arguing that she deserved more recognition in the Women’s North American Championship picture.
Skylar Raye’s attack immediately redirected the attention. Raye then told Stone that she needed to make people notice her. That is a usable starting point for a wrestler seeking an opening, but it still leaves the more specific question of why Armstrong was the target. Answering it would give the new conflict something beyond two people independently complaining about opportunities.
Armstrong can pursue that fight without pretending her championship ambitions disappeared. Raye has put herself between Armstrong and the attention she wanted, which creates a natural source of resentment. Rain, meanwhile, needs more than another competitive loss to define her place. There was enough resistance in last week’s match to build from, but somebody has to follow up on it.
Shiloh Hill’s mist experiments occupied a very different corner of the episode. His attempt to investigate Naraku’s weapon led to a sequence involving hallucinated talking raccoons. The comedy gave Hill a distinctive setting and manner, although its usefulness depends on whether the experiments eventually affect his decisions against Naraku. A strange vignette can deepen a character; repeating the joke without a wrestling consequence would leave the rivalry waiting.
The response to last week’s show reflected those competing strengths and frustrations. Some viewers welcomed Rook’s elevation and looked forward to the Waller match; others preferred Shugars or questioned whether Rook was ready for that position. There was enthusiasm for the Dusty Classic, alongside frustration with repeated attacks and the handling of wrestlers such as Heights and Rain. That range of reactions does not support calling the episode universally praised or universally rejected.
The underlying criticism is still fair. NXT can introduce new faces, stage difficult moves and announce a respected tournament while leaving viewers unsure which developments will survive the following week. Tonight’s tag-heavy lineup offers an opportunity to connect those pieces. The tournament establishes advancement, the women’s match can strengthen specific title claims, and the six-man tag can make the BirthRight conflict more competitive.
Halloween Havoc is 39 days away. That leaves time for rivalries to develop through decisions rather than a rush to fill the card. Rook has earned a title opportunity; Hail has exposed a champion’s weakness; Borne has turned reconciliation into another assault. Each story begins from a different problem. Giving them different routes forward would do more for the October 31 show than attaching the same interference finish to all three.
Current NXT Halloween Havoc 2026 Match Card
NXT Halloween Havoc is scheduled for Saturday, October 31, with a U.S. broadcast on The CW.
● Confirmed matches: None announced as of this preview, ahead of tonight’s September 22 episode.
Rook’s earned NXT Championship opportunity has not been assigned to Halloween Havoc. The Dusty Classic final, potential women’s title defenses and a possible Borne–Heights match also remain unconfirmed for the event.
Final Thoughts
Tonight has an appealing foundation. The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic creates a reason to follow the tag division from one result to the next. Catalina and Hail have specific opponents to beat, while Fatu, Legacy and Van Dux have a direct score to settle with BirthRight. There is enough established conflict here to carry the show without another parade of interruptions.
The quality of the follow-through will decide whether tonight improves the road to NXT Halloween Havoc. Tournament winners should leave with identities beyond the moves they performed. The women’s match should clarify somebody’s championship pursuit. The stories outside the advertised lineup, especially Borne’s treatment of Heights and Rook’s challenge to Waller, should advance when they return to television.
Last week supplied the new contender, the renewed betrayal and the tournament announcement. Tonight is where the tournament starts producing results and the advertised rivalries get their next test. NXT has given itself several useful directions. It now has to make the audience want to follow them.
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