NXT Battleground 2023: Dragunov and Dijak Go to War as Carmelo Hayes Owns the Homecoming

Battleground opens with the safest possible choice: three wrestlers who can begin at television-closing speed without needing ten minutes of setup. Joe Gacy's role is to keep the friendship-turned-competition between Wes Lee and Tyler Bate unstable. Whenever Lee and Bate begin to settle into a direct contest, Gacy intrudes, and whenever they cooperate against him, the title immediately reminds them that cooperation has an expiration date.

Bate supplies the most visually inventive stretch, including the airplane spin while Lee is simultaneously swung into the sequence. Lee wrestles like a champion forced to solve two problems at once rather than a champion waiting to hit his finish. The repeated saves are quick enough to feel competitive instead of formulaic, and the final run gets everyone into position without a long choreography pause.

The Cardiac Kick finish is clever because Gacy's own unusual handstand-lariat setup creates the opening. Lee does not steal the match; he reacts faster than the challenger. The bout is not deep, and Bate sometimes feels like the third man in a story more directly involving Lee and Gacy, but as a twelve-minute opener it is almost exactly the right amount of excess. Cagematch's match-guide score in the mid-7s and the reported 3.5-star Observer rating fit the experience.

The first Heritage Cup defense on the NXT brand in the United States has two jobs: make the rules understandable and make the match feel competitive despite the stop-start format. Dar and Dragon Lee handle the wrestling portion well. Dar attacks the arm, Lee uses speed to force him backward, and the short rounds create several natural bursts where one wrestler has to decide whether to chase a fall or preserve position for the next period.

Dar's first fall arrives with the kind of opportunism that suits him, and Lee's equalizer gives the final round a clean competitive premise. The problem is everything added around that premise. Oro Mensah becomes Dar's cornerman, Jakara Jackson distracts the referee and Lash Legend eventually strikes Lee with a bucket. By the time Dar lands the Nova Roller to win 2–1, the match has accumulated too many moving parts for a format that already asks the viewer to monitor the clock, rounds and fall count.

There is good wrestling here, and the structure does produce urgency that a normal fourteen-minute match might not. But Battleground never proves that the British Rounds Rules improve Dar versus Dragon Lee. Cagematch's rating in the high-6s and the reported 3.25-star Observer mark capture the split: respectable execution, limited emotional payoff.

This is the show. Dijak tells his family during the entrance that he does not want them to watch, and the match spends the next sixteen minutes making that warning feel reasonable. There is no exploratory phase. Boots, chops and steel arrive immediately, and the first major spots are not treated as invitations to accelerate into another sequence. Both men sell them. The count matters from the beginning.

That detail separates the match from a generic weapons brawl. Dijak's offense is built around the idea that Dragunov can finally be made to stay down. A chokeslam on the apron, Feast Your Eyes, repeated kendo-stick strikes and chair shots are not random escalations; each is a new test. Dragunov's answer is not invulnerability. He bleeds, collapses and regularly reaches his feet with almost nothing left. The drama comes from the difference between surviving and recovering.

The steel steps become a recurring object rather than a one-use prop. Dragunov's Coast-to-Coast with the steps and the closing leap from the steps into a forearm that drives Dijak's head into the chair give the match visual continuity. The final ten count therefore feels earned: Dragunov has not discovered a magic move. He has finally found the one collision Dijak cannot answer before ten.

External consensus is emphatic. The reported Observer rating was 4.75 stars, Cagematch's match guide sits near 9/10 with hundreds of votes, and multiple contemporary reviews called it the clear match of the night. It is brutal without losing its story and dramatic without asking the referee to ignore obvious recovery. This is among the best WWE matches of 2023.

The tag title match has a useful physical contrast. Gallus are compact, grinding champions; the Creed Brothers are explosive athletes who can turn a routine exchange into a display of absurd power. The best stretch belongs to Julius Creed, who begins throwing repeated belly-to-belly suplexes and turning a conventional hot tag into a demonstration of what makes the brothers different from almost every other team on the brand.

Brutus provides the same kind of abrupt athletic punctuation with the Brutus Ball, and for a few minutes the match looks ready to become a showcase for the challengers. Gallus are good enough at structure to keep the bout coherent, but the champions never develop a comparable hook beyond surviving the Creeds' bursts and waiting for outside help.

That help is the problem. Joe Coffey distracts the referee, Ivy Nile intervenes, Ava arrives and sends Nile into the post, and Gallus hit their finishing combination. One match after the Heritage Cup has ended with layered interference, another title match reaches the same destination. The result protects ongoing television stories, but it reduces the value of the premium-event climax.

The reported 3.25-star Observer rating is kinder than the low-6 Cagematch match-guide score but both point to the same range: competent work with flashes of spectacular athleticism, held down by a finish that feels more like weekly episodic booking than a decisive championship match.

The tournament final succeeds because it gives two ascending wrestlers a clear problem instead of asking them to perform a generic showcase. Valkyria's knee becomes the pivot. Once it buckles, every attempted comeback carries uncertainty: can she still plant, can she still hit the spinning kick, and can she survive long enough to turn Stratton's aggression against her?

Stratton is still visibly developing in 2023, but the match turns that into an advantage. Her offense is spectacular enough that every opening feels dangerous, while Valkyria's counters force her to adjust rather than simply move from one signature spot to the next. The missed moonsault creates the strongest false opening for Valkyria, and the rope break after the leg lariat keeps the challenger alive without making Stratton look foolish.

The finish is clean and substantial. Stratton counters the top-rope powerbomb attempt, hits the Death Valley Driver and lands the Prettiest Moonsault Ever. There is no faction rescue, no disputed count and no attempt to protect Valkyria beyond the established knee damage. The vacant championship receives a champion rather than an angle.

The bout drew a reported 3.5-star Observer rating, a Cagematch match-guide score in the mid-7s and second place in Pro Wrestling Dot Net's best-match poll. That is fair. It is not the night's classic, but it is the match where Stratton stops looking like someone who might eventually be champion and becomes one.

The Stand & Deliver match transferred the championship. Battleground's main event has to prove the transfer was not temporary, and the simplest way to do that is to let Bron Breakker be the monster while Carmelo Hayes survives him in front of a crowd that desperately wants the champion to win. Breakker's heel turn improves the chemistry immediately. His strength and explosiveness no longer need to be presented as admirable; they are threats Hayes has to solve.

Breakker works the ribs and controls enough of the early match that Hayes' bursts feel like escapes rather than evenly traded offense. The top-rope hurricanrana is an absurd reminder of Breakker's athletic ceiling. The match's enduring highlight comes later when Hayes launches from the ropes and Breakker spears him out of the air. The timing is perfect and the kickout gives the hometown crowd the last major surge it needs.

Hayes' response is appropriately fast. Superkicks, the springboard attack and Nothing But Net arrive in a compressed closing run rather than a long exchange of finishers. Most importantly, Hayes wins clean. There is no belt shot, referee controversy or Trick Williams rescue required to explain why he remains champion.

The reported Observer rating reached four stars, while Cagematch sits in the mid-7s and contemporary reviews generally placed the match below Dragunov-Dijak but above the middle of the card. WrestleFile lands slightly higher because the match succeeds both athletically and structurally. It is the right homecoming, the right result and a better use of heel Breakker.