What If People Didn't Get Promoted To The Main Roster...

[andrew "the ref" coyne]

For me when a wrestler leaves NXT and goes to the main roster, often they can lose a lot of their shine, and matches they could of had in NXT are closed to the books of "what if". 

Then when some former NXT wrestlers do meet in the main roster it means nothing. Kevin Owens vs Nakamura would be just a quick 5 minute piss break match, when if handled right on NXT would of been a Takeover main event.

So what matches or fueds do you think we missed out on by moving people from NXT to the main roster?

The two that come to mind for me are:

1) Sami Zayn vs Finn Balor. When Finn Balor won the NXT title from Kevin Owens, Zayn was still the top babyface (at least in my mind). They would go on to have Sami Zayn lose to Samoa Joe to setup Joe vs Balor 3. But I can't help but feel that Zayn vs Balor could of been a great babyface vs babyface fued. Two top babyfaces put into a main event where you honestly had no idea who would of walked out the man. The unstoppable demon vs the ultimate underdog.

2) Nakamura vs Alistair Black. After losing the belt, I would of loved to of seen Nakamura kept strong but away from the championship. An eventual meeting between him and Black over the NXT championship would of been something. Two vicious strikers, both of who are near enough unbeaten, going at it. 

Any others?

[TildeGuy~!]

Io Shirai Vs Kairi Sane was one I was looking forward to ever since Shirai’s signing was announced.

They put them into a tag team which made sense and they worked really well together, I was hoping they’d be a turn at some point and they’ll end up facing each other at a Takeover event but within a couple of weeks of them forming a tag team Kairi got called up and that was that. 

At this point they’ll both be back in Stardom before they have a singles match together.

Edited June 22, 2020 by TildeGuy~!

[HarmonicGenerator]

Balor vs. Zayn main evented the NXT house show in Newcastle when they toured the UK. It was good!

[Wrasslin]

On 6/22/2020 at 11:24 AM, HarmonicGenerator said:

Balor vs. Zayn main evented the NXT house show in Newcastle when they toured the UK. It was good!

I actually can't think of a thing Zayn has done in his whole WWE tenure that he hasn't got the absolute most out of. 

Why they seem to want to sideline him as a manager (where he still shines) is beyond me.

[dopper]

Going slightly off-topic, but based on the title of this topic: It always annoyed me on Edge & Christian's podcast when Edge would say (pre-2019 TV deal) that he doesn't think of moving from NXT to Raw or SmackDown as a step up, more of a step across.

He meant it as a compliment to NXT and their wrestlers, believing their characters & matches are just as good if not better than on Raw or SmackDown.

But it's a ridiculous point when NXT wrestlers were at that time earning developmental money, not being seen on TV, and doing house shows in front of hundreds of fans as opposed to 10,000/20,000 fans on the main roster. Add in merchandise royalties too, and of course everybody in NXT must have been dreaming off moving up.

 

Back on-topic: Emma was moved up to the main roster (the first time) too quickly in my opinion, to team up with Santino in early 2014.

She was just coming off some very good matches with Paige and the character had really caught on, just as all four of the NXT horsewomen were starting to blossom too. So seeing Emma mixing with any/all of those characters would have been great. Particularly heel Charlotte and heel Sasha Banks.

When she then did return to NXT as a heel, it was around the time they had already made the jump so we just got that good match with Asuka at Takeover London and not much else.

[CavemanLynn]

32 minutes ago, dopper said:

Back on-topic: Emma was moved up to the main roster (the first time) too quickly in my opinion, to team up with Santino in early 2014.

She was just coming off some very good matches with Paige and the character had really caught on, just as all four of the NXT horsewomen were starting to blossom too. So seeing Emma mixing with any/all of those characters would have been great. Particularly heel Charlotte and heel Sasha Banks.

When she then did return to NXT as a heel, it was around the time they had already made the jump so we just got that good match with Asuka at Takeover London and not much else.

She was a real victim of the reduction of a character to one note or one move, missing the entire point of why the character was over. But then, how do you replicate it? The whole charm with Emma was watching her go from being an adorable klutz into a really good wrestler. I remember when NXT crowds used to rumble and then cheer when she finally landed her backroll over the rope on her ring entrance. Then somebody saw her dancing and the crowd cheering, and thought, "Ah. that must be it. It's the dancing." Not the months of storyline and character build.

That's probably the hardest thing for anyone coming up from NXT; you've got to acknowledge what got them over, but still provide something different. I think Buddy Murphy had a blinding intro, simply by having a solid but logical storyline to get him on TV. You could argue, of course, that he didn't have that defined a character in NXT, but it still meant he was able to transition and progress without being hamstrung from the off.

[Callum1993]

Remember when they did vignettes for months on Raw for her to re-debut as Emmalina then she debuted and denounced the character and went back to Emma. Great character development.