Reason For Recent WWE NXT Call-Ups Revealed
Why Toni Storm, Shotzi and Nox were switched from NXT to SmackDown.
File under: "Well, everybody did warn you."
Dave Meltzer has reported in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Toni Storm, Shotzi (Blackheart) and (Tegan) Nox were suddenly promoted to the main roster - throwing existing NXT storylines into disarray - because middling-to-modest advance ticket sales panicked him.
He was panicked into the realisation, per Meltzer, that there was nobody "new, fresh or exciting" on the roster.
It's a stark and familiar tale. There are new, fresh and theoretically exciting stars on the roster; Rhea Ripley, for example, was only called up officially at the start of this year. If she does not resonate as new, fresh, or exciting, it is because WWE has positioned her as the next Charlotte Flair in the parameters of its own, bizarre fiction. Bianca Belair is hardly a main roster vet. Every bit as over as Ripley on NXT, she has suffered a similar fate by being scripted to sell for Bayley's profoundly obnoxious witch's cackle in yet another draining multi-match series.
All four women mentioned in the paragraph above are talented. This is not the issue.
It rarely is.
Regardless, there's your explanation: the man who books the same matches on a weekly basis, treating a residency rather too literally, can't fathom why nobody feels fresh.