The Mixed Records of NXT Champions
Recent Releases highlight that Being the NXT Champ is no indicator of stardom
The WWE underwent their post-Wrestlemania tradition of releasing talent yesterday, and it brings up an interesting point.
Of the talent released, two are former NXT Champions. When you combine that with the recent release of Andrade, it means that a full 1/6 of NXT Champions have been cut by the company just in the last month.
NXT is designed by the WWE to develop new stars and yes, many stars have come through the NXT system. But how many of those men who have worn NXT’s top title had prolonged success in the WWE? Let’s take a look:
Seth Rollins: Well, he’s a two-time WWE Champion, two-time Universal Champion, the 29th Triple Crown champion, the 19th Grand Slam Champion, and won the main event of Wrestlemania. He’s doing just fine
Big E Langston: Before the New Day, before he was Dolph Ziggler’s heater, he was a singles star in NXT. It’s hard to really quantify what Big E’s impact has been since he lost his last name. For most of the last decade, he’s been a tag team competitor. It is just now that he is finally getting what looks like a main event push toward one of the top titles, and I assume we’ll be getting a Big E/Roman Reigns program soon. He’s made a lot of money. He’s sold a lot of merch. But I’m hard pressed to say that this is anything bot inconclusive so far.
Bo Dallas: All you had to do was “Bo-lieve” which is something that nobody in WWE management seemed to do after he got called up to the main roster. He wound up mostly a comedy act, in The Social Outcasts (which I forgot existed until I began to research this) and the B-Team. He was one of the cuts that the WWE made this year.
Adrian Neville: Neville won the NXT Title in a ladder match on the very first event on the WWE Network. He entered into an engaging feud with Sami Zayn. After being called up in 2016, he did not get much of a sustained push. He wound up turning heel and becoming a 2-time Cruiserweight Champion (winning the belt from current IMPACT World Champ Rich Swann). But like in many cases with guys who wound up out of the company, he got mad with his creative and eventually left the company. He resurfaced in Japan with his old PAC gimmick and is now part of Death Triangle in AEW.
Sami Zayn: A multi-time Intercontinental Champion, interacting with Logan Paul. Yet it’s still hard to say whether or not the WWE has gotten the most from Zayn. He’s had injuries. He’s had heat with management. He sat out during COVID. He’s been saddled with this conspiracy theory gimmick. 'I’m not sure that Zayn ever had the physique that the WWE prefers to become a main event level star, which may have hindered his growth.
Kevin Owens: The guy everybody said couldn’t fit into the WWE style because of his work and his physique have been proven wrong multiple times over. One of the biggest stars in the company.
Finn Bálor: When the company brought Prince Devitt over from Japan, people expected big things. They got them….at least in NXT. This is yet another situation where injuries torpedoed a main event push. You might forget that Finn Bálor was the first WWE Universal Champion. He was supposed to be the centerpiece of RAW. Except he had to give up the title the next night on RAW due to injury and his spot instead went to Kevin Owens.
He’s had many runs with the Intercontinental Title. He got a prime spot against Brock Lesnar. But he also has spent the last two years back in NXT, of his own choosing. Is he a success? I think so. But he is not nearly the megastar we all thought he should be.
Samoa Joe: The WWE wasted Samoa Joe. There is just no way getting around this. The fact that Joe, a former IMPACT World Champion, former ROH World Champion, didn’t get a run with one of the WWE’s two top titles is almost criminal. Joe has the skill and the mic savvy to be a monster heel who gets over on national television. They could have given Joe the ball and run with it if they just had him go over Brock Lesnar at Great Balls of Fire 2017 (still can’t believe a show named that happened) would have made Joe a killer heel and would have given him the opportunity to put over a fresh babyface down the line. But no, Vince McMahon loves letting Lesnar run with the belt if the money is right and instead kept the belt with Lesnar.
My prediction: Samoa Joe will be the World Champion in AEW or IMPACT within six months.
Shinsuke Nakamrua: The WWE is continuing to waste Nakamarua, who like Joe has never carried a top title. He even won a Royal Rumble but lost to longtime NJPW dance partner A.J. Styles. Nakamura is the biggest wrestler to jump from Japan to the WWE in the modern era, a guy who was a surefire mainstream star in the making with his natural charisma, and yet the WWE still found a way to screw this up.
Bobby Roode: One of the most over theme songs in the history of professional wrestler has led to little more than a few tag team title runs, a US title, and a 24/7 title. Roode was older than most of the guys on this list, and of course he had been a big star in TNA. But most people figured he would get a main event run that, so far, has not materialized.
Drew McIntyre: This was a more unusual case, the first time that a former main roster guy came to NXT and won the title. McIntyre has spent the last year as the top babyface on RAW, and got a pretty big pop at Wrestlemania over the weekend. This has certainly worked out.
And speaking of babyfaces, or is that baby faces, let us take you back to 2009:Andrade "Cien" Almas: He lost his last name on the way to the main roster, then just lost his way. Another situation where the talent and management did not exactly see eye-to-eye. I was always surprised that Andrade was the guy that was selected to get the NXT strap off of McIntyre, and I was more surprised when that did not evolve into a serious push for Andrade and his manager, Zelina Vega. Instead he wound up in a never-ending feud with Rey Mysterio, who’s been doing the same act for 15 years. Andrade was released a few weeks ago and is bound to show up in Japan or in AEW soon enough.
Aleister Black: Here’s a guy who was mega over in NXT, and was pretty over on the main roster too who has been completely wasted the last year of so. Heck, he was over in his first WWE appearance and showed up on the UK title show with his old Tommy End gimmick.
I still can’t figure out how he never had a program with The Undertaker, a guy ‘Taker could put over as he cruised toward retirement. Certainly would have been a better use of the ‘Taker’s last match as oppose to that A.J. Styles graveyard debacle. Black has potential still to be a huge star and he is hinting that he’ll be back soon. Hopefully that works for him, or else he’ll be on the post-Wrestlemania release list next year.
Tommaso Ciampa: Ciampa is going to be an NXT lifer. I’m convinced of it. He and Gargano had a short main roster run as a team but I’d hardly say that he will be getting a taste of either RAW or Smackdown. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s indicative of the importance that NXT took on after moving to USA. There were guys in the territory area who stayed in their territories for the most part too, and they did ok….
Johnny Gargano: …..but I think that Ciampa and Gargano being huge NXT stars was never part of the plan for the WWE. Remember, WWE signed these guys almost solely on fan reaction after they were working shows for the WWE. They got huge pops and did great ring work and they eventually got signed to full-time contracts, after they had already received pushes. I don’t think there have ever been plans for these guys to move out of Orlando. And that’s probably fine for both them and for the fans.
Adam Cole: The jury is still out on whether or not Cole because a main roster star. He’s currently engaged in a blood feud with Kyle O’Reilly (much as they have ended up in a blood feud in every company they work in together). It’s clear that the company trusts him: why else would they let him have a year-plus run with the NXT title, or have programmed him with Pat McAfee when he made his brief NXT run? Cole has been at NXT for about two years now and it seems like the time would be right soon for him to make the move to the main roster.
Keith Lee: Of course, getting recently moved to the main roster has been no guarantor of success, either. Keith Lee won the NXT title from Adam Cole in July 2020, dropped it at the end of August, and made his main roster debut the same week, was in a big match at Survivor Series, receive a WWE title match against McIntyre and since then……has vanished. He’s said to be injured, though nothing seems to be out there about that. Vince McMahon is supposedly not enamored with his physique, and thinks that he needs additional conditioning and training. Who knows what to make of that, but Keith Lee is one of the most athletic big men to ever grace a WWE ring. A guy with his physical attributes and charisma could have legitimately main event Wrestlemania this year. I’d certainly have rather seen Reigns v. Lee than Reigns v. Edge.
Karrion Kross: An obvious incomplete. Won the NXT title in August, and immediately got hurt. He just started his second run with the title and we’re not entirely sure who he’s going to be programmed with yet.
So over the course of around ten years, the only unqualified main roster successes are Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens, with the jury still out on Big E and Bálor. Developmental is a fickle business, an while NXT has done a very good job of developing star talent, that cream has not always risen to the top while in NXT itself.