10 Great WWE NXT Storylines You Don't Remember
The NXT brand is highly regarded, but some prominent storylines have been lost to history.
NXT, as we know it, burst onto the scene in 2012 and provided WWE fans with both a look into the future and a different-feeling product from everything else the company had been doing. Up-and-coming stars mixed with Performance Center projects looking for a big break, and the result has been one of the most consistent, entertaining wrestling shows anywhere in the world.
The brand has helped develop a number of recognizable stars, such as Seth Rollins, Finn Balor, Sami Zayn, and Kevin Owens. It's also been a vehicle for some of the best storylines of the past ten years, including the wars between Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa and the transformation of Bayley into a legitimate force.
Like with every promotion, though, some angles and storylines are more memorable than others, many of which require deeper dives into the history books. In NXT's case, many of those involve prominent wrestlers and personalities, and for one reason or another, they don't get mentioned much. With that in mind, let's dive in, take a look at ten of them, and give them the respect they deserve.
10. Juice Eats "Crowe"
Juice Robinson and Sami Callihan are well-known for their exploits outside of WWE. However, both were in the NXT system in 2015, and they had a memorable segment that doubled as Callihan's on-screen NXT debut.
Playing his CJ Parker character, the man better known as Robinson stormed to the ring and staged a protest over not being booked on the recent TakeOver: Arrival. As he hung "caution" tape around the ring, a vignette aired advertising Solomon Crowe (Callihan), who was set to finally make his NXT TV debut after previous injury setbacks.
Crowe stormed the ring and destroyed Parker, and he did well enough to genuinely fire up the Full Sail crowd. He grabbed a microphone, said, "and now, we return to your regularly scheduled broadcast," and marched off.
If you're a historical completionist, you'll absolutely love watching this back. These are two guys who have drawn a fair bit of money in their careers, used in different ways that, as it turned out, neither was overly crazy about. There was never a payoff to this, but the Crowe buildup and debut were both well done and provided a solid introduction to a new character.