10 NXT Stars That Failed On The Main Roster (And Why)
3. American Alpha
It’s clear that Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn believe tag team wrestling is a placeholder, a sideshow, somewhere to breed future singles stars or for established singles stars to slum it for a few months.
Which is a shame, because decades of huge wrestling cards have proven that there’s a tried and tested tag team formula that the crowd doesn’t ever get tired of - one that supports a seemingly infinite variety of characters, gimmicks and angles.
As if to prove it, NXT’s tag team division has been the best thing on the show for years, with American Alpha and The Revival in particular regularly stealing the card out from under the main event during the spring of 2016.
American Alpha, with their little n’ large aesthetic, were the perfect valiant babyface partnership. No one fights from underneath quite like Chad Gable, and Jason Jordan’s hot tags are practically volcanic. One run with the NXT tag titles later, American Alpha were called up to SmackDown in the July 2016 Draft, where they were positioned to take the brand’s newly minted tag titles for a few weeks. And then?
You should know by now: Jordan was seen, incorrectly, as having singles potential, Gable not. The team was abruptly split - offscreen, no less... an inglorious end to one of 2016’s biggest wrestling success stories.