WWE Raw star and the inaugural WWE Universal Heavyweight Champion Finn Balor who is also a former two times WWE Intercontinental Champion recently looked back at winning his first NXT Championship at Japan back in 2015 and he revealed how he felt after winning the title.
In 2015 WWE organised a Japan based pay per view event naming it WWE Beast in the East where Kevin Owens who was the NXT champion back them defended the title against Finn Balor. Balor was an Indie sensation back then and he was famously known as Prince Devitt. He earned a huge fan base after he joined WWE in 2014.
Finn Balor Remembers Winning The NXT Title In Japan
Balor when on to become one of the biggest stars of the NXT and when he joined the main roster back in 2016, WWE had big plans for the Irish professional wrestler. He went to become the first ever WWE Universal champion. But he was forced to vacate the title due to an injury. He could never regain his main event push after that.
In 2019 he was sent back to the NXT once again where he became NXT Champion once again. In 2021 he was brought back into the main roster and he continued his mid card status. In 2022 he became the leader of the Judgement Day and he earned some big victories. But it does not look like he would ever be lifted to a main event status in WWE again.
Finn Balor who is also a former two times WWE Intercontinental Champion recently spoke to Rob Armstrong from BT Sport where he looked back at winning his first NXT Championship at Japan back in 2015 and he revealed how he felt after winning the title. He said;
“That was one of the most full-circle moments that I’ve had in my career because not only it wasn’t in Japan, but it was in Ryogoku, which was Sumo Arena, where we wrestled for New Japan quite a lot. I actually had my final match for New Japan, in that arena, in the paint also, against Taguchi. When I left that night, I figured, ‘I may never return here ever again.’ I think it was maybe almost a year to the day that I returned.
“I was in the ring against Kevin Owens, someone I didn’t know very well going into NXT apart from, like, on the indie circuit, and we bonded over the journey we were making, adapting to life in NXT, in WWE, in the USA; to get the share the ring with him that night was very cool.
“An even more special moment for me was when I actually lost the title against Samoa Joe, and we’d done that on a house show. That was something that was so rare, and I remember this sheer surprise and shock of the people in the front row that just couldn’t believe what they had witnessed on a house show.
“After [292 days], I had been champion, and Joe pins the champion at a house show in Lowel. That was a special night. That, for me, is probably the coolest moment of my career, I think. Just the sheer shock and then joy of the fans; having Joe as champ, you know, someone who’d had such a long career and really paid his dues and had become such an integral part of NXT. The, for me, someone who had learned so much from, not only in NXT but before that. We obviously have a very close relationship as well. So that was one of my favorite nights of my career.”
H/T and transcribed by Fightful