Keith Lee vs. Karrion Kross: What’s The Right Finish For NXT TakeOver XXX?

The Case To Beat Keith Lee

Keith Lee is in essence the face of NXT right now. He’s far and away the most successful babyface going and he is quite rightly beloved. But one major way that NXT differs from it’s main roster counterparts, is that the top face in NXT very rarely gets a long run with the gold. 

There are exceptions, like Finn Balor, who perhaps had enough of an edge to him with his Demon persona to curtail this. But if you look at the various top babyfaces of NXT, I’m talking the Daniel Bryan level groundswell of support figures, you’re looking at this title’s shortest reigns. Sami Zayn and Johnny Gargano were era-defining babyfaces at their peak, and they held the gold for 62 and 57 days, respectively. The only shorter reigns come from Shinsuke Nakamura and Samoa Joe, the only two men to have held the title twice. Going by combined days, Zayn and Gargano are the shortest by a solid month. 

If Keith Lee were to drop the NXT Championship at TakeOver XXX, he’d join this club of super popular babyface champs with the shortest reigns. In fact, he’d beat the “record” of both of them, as his reign would end at a mere 52 days. 

This might seem baffling on some level, but there is a logic to this. It’s the Tommy Dreamer mentality, that a top babyface is always better on the chase. They have to win sometimes or else people will give up hope, but their victories are fleeting so they always feel like they have something more to achieve. I definitely think they believe in this strategy. It’s all the more powerful due to the disdain dominant figures like John Cena and Roman Reigns tend to get with hardcore audiences, and NXT is essentially completely made up of WWE’s hardcore audience.

I would argue though that while Zayn and Gargano fit the mold for this type of champion, being natural underdogs already, it feels strange to apply that logic to Keith Lee. He’s actually loved partly because he’s so dominant. He’s what the modern day larger than life superface looks like, able to pull off the kind of ridiculous feats that Hulk Hogan could only proclaim as possible in promos. He is pretty far removed from a Tommy Dreamer archetype. Still, when faced with a challenge like Karrion Kross, perhaps they can achieve the same vibe. Maybe they feel they’ve found the one guy that can make Lee into an underdog.