Ranking All 29 WWE Returns And Debuts In 2022
The floodgates opened for WWE this year, but who made the biggest impact?
After years of trimming and slimming their rosters, you’d be forgiven if you thought in mid-July that a year-end list like this would be focused more on released superstars than a lengthy rundown of returning and debuting wrestlers.
But a massive sea change in leadership atop WWE prompted an incredible about-face that saw the company not only halt its multi-year policy of releasing wrestlers due to “budget cuts,” and instead actively seek out and rehire many of those callously and carelessly discarded performers.
At the same time, WWE began calling up several NXT superstars, further bolstering main rosters that were looking barren and boring as the year wore on. The result is a more robust roster of wrestlers, fresher matchups and some more interesting dynamics.
But not all returns and debuts are created equal.
Some of these new faces made a huge impact in WWE, while others barely registered a blip on the radar. Some came in with a ton of promise and faltered, while the jury is still out on others. We’ll do our best to rank these returnees and debuting superstars here, acknowledging that a lot can change in the coming weeks and months that will better determine their standing.
One last word: We’re counting superstars returning from injury or hiatus if they were out for a substantial amount of time (such as Bayley and Elias) but not wrestlers who were off TV for just a few short months (such as Becky Lynch).
Let’s get to it…
29. Bronson Reed
Let’s start with the newest addition to the main roster.
Bronson Reed debuted on the 19 December edition of Raw, helping Miz defeat Dexter Lumis (more on him in a bit) in a winner-take-all ladder match. There hasn’t been an opportunity for any follow-up yet for the former NXT North American Champion.
His grade, while incomplete, still doesn’t look good from
the outset given the crickets that accompanied Reed’s debut. WWE will need to
really give him some focus when Raw returns to live shows on 2 January.