Kelani Jordan will challenge Kendal Grey for the NXT Women’s Championship at Heatwave, and Grey let her pick the date herself.
The match came together on the August 11 episode of NXT on The CW, when Kali Armstrong walked to the ring to call Grey out and demand a title shot of her own. Jordan cut her off, told Armstrong she had no claim on the championship, and pointed back to the July 14 triple threat won by Lola Vice, arguing she scored a pinfall the referee never saw.
Grey’s music hit and the champion came out with Wren Sinclair, contract in hand. Grey told Jordan that she and Sinclair were sick of hearing her complain, handed the paperwork over, and told her to name a time and place because she wanted to find out who the best woman in the division really is.
Jordan noted that Grey may not be cleared to compete next week and said she had no interest in wasting the opportunity in front of an Orlando crowd. She signed for NXT Heatwave on Sunday, August 30.
Earlier in the night, a medical official told Grey that her ear needed at least another week to heal after the damage she took in the NXT Underground match against Lola Vice on August 4. Armstrong, furious at being passed over, swung at Sinclair and caught Grey’s bandaged ear instead. Jordan and Armstrong then beat Sinclair down and stood tall over both of them.
Jordan’s First Real Crack At NXT Gold
Jordan has been on the NXT roster since 2022 and made history as the inaugural NXT Women’s North American Champion at Battleground 2024, but Heatwave will be her first televised one-on-one match for the NXT Women’s Championship. She has been loud about that gap for weeks, telling Grayson Waller backstage on the August 4 show that she would win the title on her first attempt.
She and Grey already have a body of work. Grey beat Jordan in a No. 1 contender’s match on the June 9 episode of NXT, then took the championship from Vice at Great American Bash on June 28 before Vice earned one more shot in July.
Grey has since turned back Nattie and ended Vice’s Underground streak in a match AJ Styles helped produce. Heatwave runs Sunday, August 30 from Bert Ogden Arena in Edinburg, Texas, airing at 3 p.m. ET on The CW in the United States and streaming on Netflix internationally, directly after AAA’s Ola de Calor from the same building.
