TakeOver: Toronto will feature two women’s singles matches

Sat., Aug. 10 will bring the 26th NXT TakeOver to our screens. It will be the 27th live special on WWE Network from the brand (28th if you could the UK branch’s Blackpool show from earlier this year). Very few of those have featured multiple women’s bouts, and only a handful had two women’s singles matches.

Add 2019’s Toronto to the short list.

On the episode which aired tonight (July 31), WWE confirmed two matches for the night before SummerSlam in Scotiabank Arena. And both are one-on-one women’s bouts.

Mia Yim gets a shot at long-reigning NXT Women’s champion Shayna Baszler. Yim has spent the last couple weeks targeting Baszler’s friends and training partners Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir, so we were just waiting for the announcement on this one.

Candice LeRae and Io Shirai have, for my money, an even better story going than Shayna & Mia. But since NXT hasn’t had a non-title women’s match on a TakeOver since Ember Moon beat Billie Kay at Brooklyn 2, it wasn’t clear LeRae and Shirai would make the cut. But when Candice demanded a shot at the woman who betrayed her earlier this summer when she again failed to take the belt off the Queen of Spades, General Manager William Regal granted her wish.

TakeOver: Toronto precedes a SummerSlam show which has, as of this writing, three women’s singles matches - so it’s a big weekend for the ladies of WWE.

Here’s the updated card for Aug. 10:

- Adam Cole (c) vs. Johnny Gargano in a 2-out-of-3 falls match (one fall is a Street Fight, one “classic, old-school wrestling match”, the third under a stipulation chosen by William Regal if necessary) for the NXT championship

- Mia Yim vs. Shayna Baszler (c) for the NXT Women’s title

- Street Profits (c) vs. Undisputed ERA (Kyle O’Reilly & Bobby Fish) for the NXT Tag Team championship

- Roderick Strong vs. Velveteen Dream (c) vs. Pete Dunne for the North American title

- Io Shirai vs. Candice LeRae

On this evening’s broadcast, Mauro Ranallo also said the Breakout Tournament final between Cameron Grimes and Jordan Myles will take place in Toronto in two weeks. But WWE hasn’t announced that as a TakeOver match as of this writing, and it may be the dark match which airs the Wednesday after.

We’ll let you know when that’s confirmed. In the meantime, thoughts on the card we do have confirmed?