WWE NXT Takeover: Respect will happen tonight, live on the WWE Network. All of our favorite NXT stars, like NXT Champion Finn Balor, Samoa Joe, Bayley, and Sasha Banks will all be there, just to name a few. The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic will also end at Takeover, and the winners will have bragging rights for a very long time. Who will win is not yet known, but there is a story that is set to come out of it.
Whether NXT Champion Finn Balor and Samoa Joe win the tournament or not, one is set to turn on the other. It is rumored that Balor will be the one to do so, but it is unknown why either would do so just yet. This comes right at the time when there is said to be yet another story developing. Who attacked Hideo Itami?
According to Cageside Seats , WWE NXT star Hideo Itami is expected back soon. Next month, he will be cleared to return to action. However, it was indicated before that he would be cleared this month. WWE may very well bring him back to television soon, and that very well could be tonight at the NXT Takeover event.
Itami added fuel to these rumors by tweeting out the following.
He who has never hoped can never despair.
I won’t give up. Because I’m a dreamer. #illbeback #HideoItami
— KENTA aka Lil’K (@KENTAG2S) October 2, 2015
The planned idea this past summer when he got hurt was for Hideo Itami to win the No. 1 Contenders match and go on to Japan to defeat Kevin Owens for the NXT Championship. WWE was then considering the idea of having Balor turn on Hideo so that he could get into a program with Itami, which is something people have wanted to see for a while now.
When Hideo went down, WWE went ahead with the No. 1 contenders match, where Finn Balor took on Tyler Breeze and ended up beating him. As we know, Balor went on to capture the NXT Title in Japan in a hard-fought match with Owens.
The idea was then rumored that WWE was going to alter the original plans for Hideo Itami and Finn Balor. Balor may very well turn on Samoa Joe tonight, but then his next rival could very well be Hideo Itami. The rumored idea is that Balor was the one who attacked Itami. There is a concept that Balor did this only so he could get the spot over Hideo, because Itami was competition that he didn’t need in his way.
This whole angle with Itami being attacked before the NXT Takeover event was only done due to a real-life shoulder injury he sustained.
He had to have surgery and he had to miss several months due to it. While many didn’t expect to see him back until the first of the year, it does look like he is healthy enough to return sooner than that. Sami Zayn, who is out with a similar injury, has a while longer. He won’t be back in January, and many feel he could make a surprise return at the Royal Rumble . That would mean he would bypass NXT and go straight to the main roster, as he was supposed to do after his match with John Cena this summer.
Hideo Itami is expected to confront his attacker soon, whoever it is. While Kevin Owens was the prime suspect beforehand, it does not look like WWE is going to go with him. Rather, it is set to be a babyface that the company will turn. There is a rumor stating that this angle on who attacked Itami very well could start tonight. We will have to wait and see if it does happen, however.
[IMG Credits: 411mania, YouTube, WWE Network]