10 Best WWE NXT Wrestlers Of 2017
4. Bobby Roode
The overarching dynamism of the wider 2017 in-ring style appears to have marginalised the superb body of work assembled by Bobby Roode - a CV inching ever closer to the shredder as a result of his problematic promotion to the main roster.
Increasingly, the classical WWE style - methodical and meticulous - is in danger of extinction. Which may render the Glorious One the last great practitioner of it; deceptively simple, Roode's wars with Shinsuke Nakamura were superb rewards for those with a patient appreciation for nuance. Rarely in WWE does the space between moves matter, but they did in San Antonio and Orlando; Roode attacked the knee of Nakamura with the classic, studious zeal of a Horseman in a seamless fusion of an on-paper rough styles clash.
Roode's successful defence of the NXT Championship opposite Hideo Itami pitched itself in a similar vein, with Roode providing a detestable platform on which to finally get the former KENTA over - proper - in what was otherwise a cursed NXT environment.
A great, mutually-beneficial traditional wrestling story with Roderick Strong and a surprisingly excellent title loss to the similarly stripped-down Drew McIntyre capped off a blinding year - or, sadly, half-year: Roode's criminally botched SmackDown run sadly obscured the shooting extent to which Roode, at his best, was a smug, searingly charismatic superstar.