“The Prize Fighter” turned up at the first WWE NXT show of the New Year of 2024 on Tuesday night.
During this week’s special annual “New Year’s Evil” episode of WWE NXT on the USA Network, Shawn Michaels teased that a former NXT World Champion would be appearing on the program.
In the main event, which saw Grayson Waller challenge Trick Williams for his guaranteed future NXT World Championship opportunity due to Ilja Dragunov being medically uncleared to compete tonight, Kevin Owens made an appearance.
Near the end of the match, Carmelo Hayes, who was asked by Trick to stay backstage during the match, ran down to the ring for seemingly no reason as Trick had Waller dead to rights and ready to be pinned.
Just as it looked that Hayes’ unnecessary distraction to Trick was going to cost him the match and his future NXT World Championship opportunity, Waller recovered only to be knocked out by Kevin Owens at ringside. This allowed Trick to get the win and keep his future title shot against Dragunov in-tact.