Mike Santana will be teaming with OTM against Dark State’s Osiris Griffin, Dion Lennox, and Saquon Shugars during next week’s “WWE NXT” in New York. 

Santana last wrestled on the brand during TNA x NXT Showdown in October last year, winning alongside the rest of Team TNA. 

But on Tuesday’s show he appeared as OTM filmed a backstage promo addressing Dark State, with whom they have been feuding for a while; Santana was introduced via satellite call, the TNA World title draped over his shoulder as he declared he would be in New York next week to fight alongside Bronco Nima and Lucien Price. 

OH YEAH! 🙌

OTM has enlisted the TNA Champion Mike Santana for their Six-Man Tag Team Match against DarkState NEXT WEEK! pic.twitter.com/WYvSjCPHnF

— WWE (@WWE) March 25, 2026

Dark State will be wrestling their first match since losing the NXT Tag Team titles to Vanity Project in February, and having each been dispatched by Tony D’Angelo over the past few weeks. They did beat OTM while the champions in January, and OTM have not won a match since December.

To determine a new number one contender to the NXT North American Championship, “WWE NXT” General Manager Robert Stone arranged a Gauntlet Eliminator Match with five participants. After a physical push, Johnny Gargano emerged victorious on “NXT.”

Per the match rules, two stars started the Gauntlet Eliminator, with the remaining three then entering at three-minute intervals. Eliminations could occur at any point in the match via pinfall or submission,

Vanity Project’s Jackson Drake and Shiloh Hill kicked off the match. Over the next several minutes, DarkStates’ Dion Lennox, Charlie Dempsey and Johnny Gargano followed with their respective arrivals. With Gargano being in a mental funk on the “WWE SmackDown” brand recently, his wife Candice LeRae tried to snap him out of it by bringing him back to “NXT,” a place in which Gargano memorably built his name.

The match’s first elimination came with some assistance from OTM, who attacked Lennox at ringside before dumping him back into the ring. Hill capitalized by dropping Lennox with a pop-up neckbreaker for a pinfall. Moments later, Hill repeated the move to secure two more eliminations, this time on Drake and Dempsey.

Before Hill could turn his attention to Gargano, who laid motionless and depressed on the apron for most of the match, Birthright’s Channing “Stacks” Lorenzo and Uriah Connors yanked him to the outside and slammed him into the steel steps. To further the damage, Dempsey delivered a German suplex onto the floor. Encouraged by LeRae, Gargano finally reached his feet in the ring corner, and with a push from her, he then fell perfectly onto Hill to gain the match-winning pinfall.

Gargano will now challenge Myles Borne for the NXT North American Championship at “NXT” Stand & Deliver on April 4.

The conversation about Trump also saw Ventura suggest that the President had staged the assassination attempt in July 2024 by Thomas Crooks. Crooks was shot dead by Secret Service snipers after killing one victim and injuring two others.

Trump was wounded on the upper side of his right ear. Morgan said he believed Trump was heroic for getting back up and saying “fight, fight, fight,” after the attempt on his life. To which Ventura said: “Oh yeah, right, right. You ever hear of a blade job?”

Morgan asked whether that was a suggestion that the shooting was staged, and Ventura said, “I don’t know. Where’s his scar today?”

Morgan then reiterated that he thought Trump was heroic on that day, with Ventura replying then that Trump had “accomplished what he wanted out of you guys.”

Ventura also said that he was working on something involving him potentially going to Washington to confront Trump directly, though he declined to share details. He went on to cut something akin to a promo about it. 

“We withstood the onslaught of the Gestapo in Minnesota… Well, now Minnesota is secure. We’ve repelled the onslaught from Trump. Now it’s time for us to go on the offense. Maybe it’s time to send the Navy SEAL to Washington. Maybe it’s time for a showdown between the Vietnam veteran and the draft dodger.”

Morgan pressed if that was meant to be a physical confrontation, to which Ventura circled back to the Hall of Fame: “He’s in the Hall of Fame. Let’s both get in the ring. After all, he’s in the Hall of Fame, isn’t he? Even though he’s never, ever had a match. Do you think he’d have the guts to do that?”

WWE legend Kevin Nash has debated the decision of certain WCW stars to join WWE before their contracts expired in 2001, noting how one star’s career was killed after he joined WWE. 

Nash was one of the WCW stars who decided to run out his WCW contract after the promotion folded, but some stars like Booker T and Diamond Dallas Page chose to sign with WWE before he did. On the “Kliq This” podcast, the WWE Hall of Famer highlighted how DDP and Booker T took contracts with less pay than what they had in WCW to join WWE and detailed their contrasting fortunes after signing with Vince McMahon.

“He [DDP] got killed [in WWE]. They killed him,” began Nash. “He went over [to WWE], his dream was always to work for the WWE. And so when Vince offered the buyout at 50 cents on the dollar, he took it. So he took the buyout, took, you know, a downside. So basically, it’s like now you’re going back to work to make what you would have got if you would have sat at home on the couch. He’s the biggest star that comes over in the first run besides Booker. Him and Booker were the two biggest stars that came. And I think that the lack of having any black superstars at that time at the WWE, they didn’t want to f**k with Book. But they fu**ed with Dallas bad. I mean, he did a job for Taker’s wife.”

Nash recalled telling the stars who were going to sign with WWE after the demise of WCW to wait it out and do the Invasion angle involving all WCW stars, rather than have them go over to WWE in phases. Unlike Booker T and DDP, Nash — along with Hulk Hogan and Scott Hall — returned to WWE after their original WCW contracts expired, reforming the nWo and debuting it in WWE.

When “WWE NXT” takes to New York City and the Infosys Theater at Madison Square Garden next week, two women will face off to determine who will become number one contender to the NXT Women’s Championship and face Jacy Jayne at Stand & Deliver on April 4. On Tuesday’s edition of the show, it was revealed former EVOLVE Women’s Champion Kendal Grey will take on AAA World Mix Tag Team Champion Lola Vice.

Grey and Wren Sinclair faced off against Fatal Influence’s Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid, and Grey scored the victory when she made Reid tap out. After the match, Grey got on the microphone and called out Jayne, who was ringside for the match, and said that now that Sinclair has the Women’s Speed Championship, and after her own victory, she was going to take the title from Jayne at Stand & Deliver.

That brought out Vice, who told Grey that everyone knows she’s going to be champion someday, but that’s not going to happen at Stand & Deliver, because she was going to take the gold from Jayne. “NXT” General Manager Robert Stone then came out and made the number one contender’s match between Grey and Vice official for next week.