10 Wrestlers Who Already Deserve To Be On WWE's Main Roster
Up, up and away...
"Call Me Up Vince".
Four words that were perhaps the ballsiest the brilliant Velveteen Dream espoused in all of 2018, and particularly powerful considering how he didn't even have to open his mouth to say them.
The boy-popping refrain was spray-painted on his own a*se on the gear he wore for his NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn 4 battle with EC3, though he was hardly talking out of it when making his cheeky request. The former Tough Enough competitor has offered something vital on the developmental brand beyond superlative workrate or matches showered with snowflakes, though he's been quite close to them on occasion too. Dream is a star. Dream has the palpable "it" factor. He has it to spare. He's 23-years-old and he's overspilling with the most crucial component a breakout star requires to make it in professional wrestling...but he shouldn't yet be on WWE's main roster.
SmackDown Live and particularly Monday Night Raw are typically framed as the aspirational end-points of all those coming through the increasingly varied feeder leagues around the globe, but NXT remains the perfect place for Dream to sharpen his other skills in the meantime. He's undoubtedly the envy of many of his contemporaries already, but another year working out the other kinks in his act could make him a peerless performer when he finally makes his main roster bow.
Staying put to hone perfection is sometimes a positive. Sometimes. Certain other exceptional men and women, though, should already be butting heads where the big boys (and girls) play...
10. Tyler Bate
Tyler Bate's UK TakeOver: Blackpool performance was a reminder when one wasn't remotely needed that the inaugural United Kingdom Champion is too good for this world - this world being the weird space he currently occupies carrying a team that are rather unfortunately carrying a brand.
That's not to say there aren't those on the NXT UK roster capable of levelling up and dragging the morribund-but-functional show with them, but Moustache Mountain's additional appeal is almost entirely down to how much they feel like Superstars compared to the others. And they have pedigree mostly because Tyler Bate is one of the very best in the world.
It's displays such as 2019's Blackpool one, or 2017's Blackpool ones, or his blockbuster TakeOver matches for the main NXT brand that have all served as refreshers or reminders of what WWE have on their hands with Bate, but either through their indecision (or possibly his), there's a certain sense that he's marooned being exclusively UK-based rather than offering out his freakish exploits to the world.
Bate's got the towering strength and grace and beauty of an old oak tree, but if he only takes falls on NXT UK and nobody's there to hear about it, does he even make a sound?