Shayna Baszler may not have been too happy after receiving the news that the odds would be stacked against her in Fatal 4-Way competition, as she didn’t need to be pinned to lose her prized NXT Women’s Title, but as she’s shown over the last two TakeOvers, adversity is the champion’s energy drink. Previous battles against Kairi Sane at TakeOver: WarGames II, Bianca Belair at TakeOver: Phoenix, and a brush with Io Shirai in Six-Woman Tag Team action on the Feb. 6 installment of NXT prepared The Queen of Spades to survive the madness.
At the start of this frenetic brawl, all four competitors laid into each other with unbridled fury. Almost immediately, Baszler squared up with Shirai, while Belair slugged it out with Sane. After tossing out their rivals, Baszler and Belair soon went at it, picking up where their previous one-on-one battle left off. But like New York traffic, things soon got out of hand. At one point, there was a double powerbomb superplex by all four competitors from the top of the turnbuckle, and then there was a Gorilla Press Slam from Belair that tossed Shirai over Sane and Baszler. Then there was tandem offense by Shirai and Sane, which included an alley-oop In-Sane Elbow that launched The Pirate Princess over the top rope to the outside onto Belair and Baszler, the latter of whom was folded with a dazzling moonsault by The Genius of the Sky.
After a frantic back-and-forth that even saw Shirai and Sane put their friendship to the backburner, Belair delivered the must-see moment of the night when she used her overwhelming strength to elevate both Sky Pirates over her shoulders and land a K.O.D. Though The EST looked seconds away from a victory, The Queen of Spades once again silenced the noise by vacuumed Belair into a Kirifuda Clutch. Belair did everything she could to escape the deadly maneuver, thrashing on the canvas frantically clawing at the titleholder’s face, but The EST of NXT eventually had no choice but to submit, allowing The Queen of Spades to retain her title with a gritty victory.