10 WWE NXT Wrestlers Who Didn't Succeed Until Turning Heel
6. Tyson Kidd
Many WWE fans wrote off Tyson Kidd as a lost cause once The Hart Dynasty disbanded in 2010. He struggled to find success in the singles ranks despite having stellar performances every time he stepped in the squared circle.
He was out of action for nearly a year in 2013 and returned to little fanfare on Monday Night Raw that November. Although he was always an exceptional in-ring competitor, Kidd was bland as a babyface and needed to be on a show where he could work on his character.
Enter NXT.
Kidd's early NXT matches with Leo Kruger and Aiden English weren't anything special, but he quietly began building momentum. He eventually found himself in the NXT Championship picture, and at the first-ever live TakeOver special, he narrowly fell short of winning the title from Adrian Neville.
The crowd didn't care much for Kidd at that point, so it made perfect sense for him to turn. He soon started coming into his own as a narcissistic villain who had no regard for anyone but himself (including his own wife Natalya), which paid dividends in the long-run.
Kidd never wound up winning the brand's most coveted prize, but his tremendous run down in NXT did lead him to tag team title glory with Cesaro on the main roster. Who knows how much farther he would've gone had he not been forced to retire from the ring in 2015.