LA Knight and Roderick Strong got a look on the main roster before Friday Night Smackdown went live on FOX. The two NXT stars worked a dark match from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, TN with Knight going over.
Over the last two weeks, Tommaso Ciampa and Pete Dunne have faced each other in dark matches at SmackDown in addition to WWE’s tapings for Main Event before Raw both this week and last week.
This week’s main event of NXT 2.0 featured Strong in action as he lost to WALTER, who announced after the match that his new name is Gunther.
The Diamond Mine stable is currently feuding with WALTER’s Imperium faction, which is why the match was booked. A brawl between the two groups closed this week’s NXT as The Creed Brothers made the save for Strong when Marcel Barthel and Fabian Aichner attacked him with WALTER adding in some strikes.
Earlier this month on the New Year’s Evil edition of NXT, Strong lost a title unification match against NXT North American Champion Carmelo Hayes as he was NXT Cruiserweight Champion going into that match. WWE decided to retire the title and Hayes is recognized as the North American Champion.
