10 Specific Ways WWE Could Debut NXT Stars On The Main Roster
How to make it Purple Rain.
The current model is not working out.
At all.
WWE debuts a raft of NXT graduates on the flagship brands immediately following WrestleMania. The casual audience is left to interpret that these men and women and tag teams are stars because the hardcore set invariably receives them as such. The strategy is profoundly careless, given that we are rarely given any further reason to invest - and it's also profoundly counterproductive. The arrival of a new star should be a massive deal. It used to be. But because we are asked to process so much new information, we cannot register it all, hence why an act like Ember Moon was so quickly absorbed into the RAW fabric, hardly helped by the 50/50 booking that plagues virtually every main roster performer from Vince McMahon pet projects all the way down to those he deems living sneezes.
Why was Ember Moon even called up, if only to wander aimlessly around the midcard, defeating Liv Morgan (RAW, July 9) only to lose to Sarah Logan (July 16) only to defeat Liv Morgan (July 23) again? It was just her time, and the deathly connotations of those five words mirror the diminished mystique of her character.
A new moon must rise, and for WWE to alter the star-free skyline, the actual characters of the NXT roster must be considered.
10. Velveteen Dream
The Dream is driven by infamy.
The Dream has no time to waste against local competitors, nor the tragically unglamorous likes of Tye Dillinger. The Dream doesn't wrestle mundane matches; he provides his flock of fawning followers with "experiences". He wants you, desperately, to say his name, and you are not going to say it on a random episode of RAW as he goes 50/50 with Bobby Roode following a token two-minute win over a jobber on the post-'Mania RAW.
To serve and put over the most alluring and unique WWE self-creation in aeons, the Dream must immediately challenge and share his cherished spotlight with one of the main roster's leading lights. In this fitful era, in which we aren't to know who exactly will glow from one week to the next, he must also challenge one of the main roster's most protected and most enduring acts. Given the sometimes sloppy and disjointed nature of Dream's longer matches, he must also challenge a seasoned veteran to guide his shining light.
Enter AJ Styles.
There is quite the contrast between The Phenomenal One and The Dream. The Dream, you can imagine, would not appreciate the drab furnishings of the house AJ built, and so long as AJ remembers his PG surroundings, this tale of glamour versus grit writes itself.