Former AEW Star Will Be At This Week's WWE NXT
Could the NXT roster be getting an impressive new addition?
Having already been spotted at the WWE Performance Center since leaving AEW earlier this year, Brian Pillman Jr. is set to be at this week's NXT TV.
Via PWInsider.com, Pillman will be at NXT on Tuesday, though it's not known whether the second-generation talent will appear on NXT tomorrow.
As alluded to, BPJ departed All Elite Wrestling last month after the expiry of his contract. That exit was said to be an amicable one, with the door very much left open for the parties to work together again in the future.
Mere days after the news broke of Pillman's newfound free agency, reports emerged that he'd partaken in a tryout at the WWE PC. A virtual signing event then had Brian Jr. note how he had a "huge opportunity" on the horizon; a huge opportunity that he couldn't go into further detail on at that time.
The Ohio native's last match for AEW came on 13 May, where he teamed with Brock Anderson in a losing effort against Austin and Colten Gunn on a House Rules live event. In terms of TV outings, the last AEW bout for Pillman was on the 1 February episode of Rampage in a defeat to Swerve Strickland.
The 29-year-old Brian Pillman Jr. has stayed busy on the independent scene since leaving AEW, and he last competed on 16 July against Lord Crewe for Kentucky's New South Wrestling.
Having trained at Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy in Calgary, Alberta, Canada - the same city where Brian Pillman Sr. trained at the Hart Dungeon and cut his teeth working for Stampede Wrestling - Brian Jr. made his in-ring debut in December 2017. Working across the independent scene for promotions like CZW and Rockstar Pro, Pillman would land in Major League Wrestling in the second half of 2018, where he'd become part of a new iteration of the Hart Foundation alongside Davey Boy Smith Jr. and Teddy Hart.
BPJ would make his AEW debut in the inaugural Double or Nothing's Casino Battle Royale in May 2019, and he'd officially sign with the promotion in the summer of 2021. Of course, with Griff Garrison, Pillman formed the Varsity Blonds, before that team was quietly broken up when Garrison got injured last year, and Brian found himself instead paired up with Brock Anderson.
Should Brian Pillman Jr. indeed have now signed with WWE, he follows in the footsteps of his father, who worked for the then-World Wrestling Federation from June 1996 through until his tragic passing in October of the following year.