10 Non-AEW Stars Who Should Challenge For The TNT Championship

7. Shota Umino

Zack Ryder TNT Champ
NJPW

The ever-optimistic wrestling fan still holds out hope for a working relationship to be made between AEW and NJPW. A win-win situation for everyone, surely? The stars of New Japan would slot into Wednesday TV like the proverbial glove, and some of AEW's inexperienced performers could learn a lot from busy stints working alongside men like Yuji Nagata, Hiroshi Tanahashi and the rest.

Is it going to happen? That is impossible to say, but 'Shota Umino appears on AEW Dynamite' may well be the first thing that happens if it does. A recent Young Lion, many experts have Umino penned in as a potential future superstar, and it takes a true cynic to disagree with that. Shota has the look, the skills, the charisma and the potential.

He also has an on-screen relationship with current AEW World Champion, Jon Moxley. Mox took Shota under his wing in NJPW, referring to him as 'Shooter' and forming a mentor-student pairing that seemed to benefit both men. The pairing was halted somewhat when Moxley turned his focus to AEW, but their paths will cross once again.

Give me a couple of weeks of Moxley preparing Shota for a shot at Cody's TNT Championship.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.