WWE news: Finn Balor is the new NXT champion by defeating Adam Cole
Finn Balor became a two-time NXT champion on Super Tuesday II as he defeated Adam Cole to open the show.
In a battle of the two longest reigning NXT champion's ever, it was Balor who won his first title in more than four years.
Balor and Cole contested a fatal-four-way iron man match last week with Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa to crown the next NXT champion following Karrion Kross' injury.
That match ended in a draw with Cole and Balor level on two wins apiece, so they settled the score last night.
In a high energy contest where Balor was aggressive from the outset and Cole played the babyface for one of the first times in his NXT run.
Although Cole managed to kick out of the Coup de Gras, Balor did hit a 1916 DDT from the top rope to end the contest and crown himself the new champion.
Balor originally departed NXT in 2016 and made his debut on the main roster in WWE becoming one of the focal points of the show almost immediately.
Very quickly he became the inaugural Universal champion, but he got injured that same night and took several months off to recover.
It's fair to say he was never booked as strongly again and while he always had a role on the show, he wasn't the top star as he was originally booked.
Balor explained to CBS Sports why he decided to make his return to NXT last year.
"It was just that the workload was so heavy," Balor said of the WWE main roster. "I worked 172 matches that year and that's in different cities every night, so you have to add in probably an extra 50 days of travel.
"So, I wasn't really home for a couple of years. I hadn't really taken a break. Having come straight out of an eight-year run in Japan and straight into five years solid in WWE, I had become kind of encapsulated in the WWE bubble. I had distanced myself so much from family, friends and what was reality.
"I just realised that I needed to take a little step aside and reset everything and get a new perspective on what was important. I feel like taking two months off - people say I was taking a break, but it was two months.
"It's not that long when you've been working for 20 years, nonstop, 230 days a year on the road. It was a vacation. I got married and came back and felt more focused and rejuvenated.
"Also, I feel like when you're doing something for so long, you kind of get caught up in the cycle of doing something the same way and relying on what you know works.
"I felt like I needed to change my style a little bit in the right. It's very hard to transition a style overnight, so getting to step away and kind of lose sight of what everyone else is doing around you - even though we don't want to be influenced by the people around us, subconsciously, when we're so deep in the WWE environment, you automatically start performing like a WWE wrestler because it's a certain cadence.
"The matches are at a certain tempo, and gradually everyone starts performing the same even though it's not intentional. It's kind of like a subconscious performance.
"I felt like I needed to step away from that and reset my performance and feel like it was kind of more me making the decisions and not my subconscious going out there and following the pattern of what was a WWE match."