The Thea Hail NXT North American Title win has caused some major changes in NXT.
Thea Hail beat Blake Monroe on the December 16 NXT in an unplanned finish.
One NXT staff member told Fightful Select that the situation happened at the worst possible time, as the brand was finishing up filming for the year so talent could go home for a Christmas break. As a result, weeks of creative had already been finalized and filmed. After the title change happened, there was a pretty frantic rush to try to correct things that had already been filmed in order to make sense of them. There was actually an error on WWE's website briefly, indicating Blake Monroe had won.
The belief internally was that Blake Monroe had the wind knocked out of her prior to what was supposed to be the kickout attempt, but that wasn't confirmed as the case.
The decision was quickly made to lean into it, with it being blasted all over social media and graphics being made. WWE had obviously not planned the segment that ran with Thea Hail being confronted by Blake Monroe after the match. That was done on short notice and added.
One NXT higher up said that this was going to cause some heavy shifting in policy among talent, with wrestlers booked being required to stay until the end of tapings moving forward. Pretapes are often done on Mondays in NXT, and even talent that do that are likely to be required to stay through the following day's show.
We're told that a rematch is already being discussed internally. Many we've spoken to expect it for NXT New Year's Evil, but that hasn't been confirmed.
This situation isn't unheard of. Men on A Mission, Mickie James, Razor Ramon, Hardcore Holly, Kevin Owens among others have won titles in WWE that were not planned.
