10 Ways WWE Fixed Broken NXT Call-Ups
They Were Not Your Kind.
NXT has never not been a little flawed.
To approximately 600,000-800,000 WWE fans a week, the black-and-gold brand is the company's most prestigious entity. Typically full of the best wrestling and booking the organisation is capable of it, it's also been home to much of what there's still been to love over the last decade.
TakeOver remains the most valuable pay-per-view commodity in wrestling, with only a few duds to speak of in its rich six year history. The wrestlers are generally well-protected by the weekly television churn, then asked to bring their supreme best for the brand's biggest stage. Then, if they're "lucky", they get the call and Raw or SmackDown alongside a canny fat pay rise.
This was once an aspirational pathway, until years of precedent highlighted the the main roster run as an assault course filled with obstacles sure to harpoon the dreams of the Full Sail hopefuls. More megastars-in-waiting failed than succeeded, to the point where NXT lynchpins Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa made public their wish to stay on the brand after narrowly avoiding an aborted permanent call-up in 2019.
The process might fail the talents, but what of those that live to fight another day and somehow find what appeared completely lost? These are to be celebrated almost as much as their original incarnations - survivors of the malfunctioning system, rather than just stars on the one that still works...
10. Becky Lynch
Becky Lynch was a non-factor in the WrestleMania pre-show battle royal just months before blood ran from her broken face as the biggest star in the entire industry.
This is the thing about the scale size of modern day WWE in contrast to creative lows - regardless of the quality of its opposition or the alternative things to watch instead of yet another three hour Raw, if a wrestler is earnestly pushed to the top of the card they are absolutely a big f*cking deal, no matter how much the company might have once deemed them surplus.
Becky Lynch was never that, but was about as close to "big f*cking deal" as she was doing an Irish jig in her 2014 debut. The accidental turnaround in fortunes following her snapping on former friend Charlotte Flair wasn't WWE's intent, but they did at at least capitalise when the opportunity became too blindingly obvious to pass up.
The Man came around, but they were lucky she did - the beloved Becky Lynch from NXT had been squandered.