NXT Announces Commercial-Free NXT Championship Match, AEW Dynamite Responds

12/16/2019 08:01 pm EST

NXT dropped some major news early Monday morning when the brand announced the NXT Championship match between Adam Cole and Finn Balor would not only open the show, but it would air commercial-free on the USA Network. Balor has had his eyes set on taking back the NXT Championship ever since he returned ot NXT on Oct. 2, and he finally punched his ticket to a title shot by beating both Keith Lee and Tommaso Ciampa on last week's episode. The announcement also means that the NXT Women's Championship match between Shayna Baszler and Rhea Ripley will serve as the main event for NXT's final live show of 2019.

In the buildup for the match, Cole has cut a number of promos swearing he'll beat Balor and prove that he's the best NXT Champion of all time. Balor still holds the record for longest reign with the title at 292 days.

Not wanting to be outdone, AEW announced that Dynamite's final 2019 episode would open with a tag match between The Lucha Brothers, Kenny Omega and Hangman Page. That match would also air commercial-free, this time on TNT.

Other matches confirmed for the show include Britt Baker vs. Kris Statlander for a future shot at the AEW Women's World Championship, Cody Rhodes & Darby Allin vs. The Butcher and The Blade, Awesome Kong vs. TBD, Chris Jericho vs. Jungle Boy and an AEW World Tag Team Championship match between SCU and The Young Bucks.

AEW also announced on Wednesday that it had officially sold more than 100,000 tickets since first launching as a promotion at the start of 2019.

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