[2026-10-20-WWE-NXT] Cruz Montana vs Dion Lennox

[Edwin]

I saw this live at Performance Center (haven't seen this on tape yet), but live this was a blast. Cruz Montana is the AFKA Mike Santana from LAX. He's been around for years now. Dion Lennox is a former NFL player which is a great background to use to transition to pro-wrestling. First time seeing him and he looked very good here, although this was mostly called by Cruz who's the veteran here. The story going into this is Cruz is a hot head with a sketchy past and who's had to work hard for everything he's achieved; meanwhile Dion is the pro athlete who is genetically gifted and who's won many opportunities due to his athletic abilities. Cruz is built as 5'10 and Dion at 6'2, but that can't be right as they were equally as big and both guys are much taller than 5'10. This genuinely felt like a true modern heavyweight pro-wrestling brawl where the high spots were kept to a minimum and the heat was brought by 2 big guys who had a score to settle. The match was built around the hot head Cruz putting a beatdown on Dion and boy did he. I'm sure at some point in his early career Cruz was on the end of some of those JAPW early 2000s Low Ki beatdowns and now 20 years later he's the one dishing it out because man did he put a beatdown on Dion. Everything Cruz threw looked tremendous. Dion was mostly on the end of the beatdown, but even then when on offense he was throwing heat back at Cruz. More one sided in favor of Cruz than evenly matched, but it worked in this scenario as it was Cruz fighting out of anger for everything Dion and his guys had said about Cruz and his personal issues. We don't get a clean finish, but again, it made sense given the story developing as Cruz completely loses it and wipes out Dion and his crew. This really came across like a clean and properly produced vintage JAPW brawl from the early 2000s. Made me want to watch more Cruz and Dion than anything else. As I mentioned previously, Cruz I was familiar with from his time in LAX, but as a singles he's truly come into his own and developed a lot. I went to the tapings to watch Wagner Jr.'s kids vs. the BirthRight (which was alright) and came out blown away by this. Really, really good under-the-radar match.