Following a pair of dueling entrances for the ages, Bobby Roode and Shinsuke Nakamura finally went toe-to-toe on Saturday night in the main event of NXT TakeOver: San Antonio. Roode tried to capture the NXT Championship after facing some truly unstoppable dog-based comparison insults, while Nakamura was trying to cement his legacy as possibly the greatest and most dominant NXT Champion of all time.
The story of the match was whether Nakamura would be able to hit his Kinshasa finisher. Roode, on the other hand, tried to cheat to win, as is his nature. Roode played possum and tried to roll up Nakamura, and later tried to pin Nakamura using the ropes for leverage, but neither tactic was successful.
Nakamura hit a diving knee strike on Roode off the top rope to the apron, but injured his knee on the landing. He finally managed to land the Kinshasa, but was unable to capitalize, as he clutched his knee in agony. A trainer came to the ring to check on Nakamura, and despite being in horrendous pain, Nakamura insisted on continuing the match.
Roode immediately hit the Glorious DDT as Nakamura struggled to get into the ring, but the champ kicked out. Roode then locked in a single-leg Boston Crab, but Nakamura was able to escape. Frustrated, Roode hit a second Glorious DDT for the pin, and the title.
Nakamura, the second two-time NXT Champion ever (who defeated the first two-time champion, Samoa Joe, to begin his second reign), had held the title for 55 days when Roode defeated him, and between his two reigns, he held the belt a combined 147 days. Combined, he has held the belt for the fifth-most amount of days as anyone.
This is, of course, Roode’s first WWE or NXT title of any kind, but he was a two-time world champ in TNA, and held the tag team titles roughly a billion times during his decade-plus with that company.
