15 MORE Failed Experiments From WWE Developmental
Even during NXT's golden era, not every idea was money...
Post-2022 might be the best ever period to have a developmental deal with NXT if the measure of "best" is find even a modicum of a foothold on the main roster.
The 2.0-and-beyond era may not have the charm and beloved sentiment that remains attached to the 2014-16 golden era nor the ratcheted critical acclaim and plaudits received by the 2017-2019 work rate peak, but it's got components that outstrip both ideals; objective success, and the clearest through-line to Raw/SmackDown supremacy.
Thanks to a strong relationship with the USA and latterly CW Network, NXT is now an established television brand on Tuesday nights, as opposed to the online/Network favourite it once was, and the slaughtered victim of the Wednesday Night Wars it became. It also boasts Shawn Michaels as its chief, and the relationship with fellow DXer/former lackey Triple H has created the smoothest possible transition to the market leader main stage yet. It's not an exact science, and never will be, but in an industry still predicated on the cream rising to the top, so too will the very best talent without fear of having their gimmick or aura strip-mined by an ancient sociopath that doesn't get the appeal.
These are the good old days, unlike when pushes died on the vine for...
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15. Blue Pants
It was the best of times.
A white hot brand hidden within the walls of a market leader clinging on to hardcores based on little more than habit during a decade-and-a-half of a monopoly, NXT was at long last some WWE-coded product that exhausted WWE fans could actually enjoy. The booking was logical, simultaneously traditional and progressive, and the Full Sail locals gave every act the best possible chance to look and feel like a star.
Enter Leva "Blue Pants" Bates.
The usual "cult hero" tag doesn't really do justice to just how remarkably over she was, or she was the biggest cult hero in the history of the show. Take your pick but whatever you do, don't sleep on watching her scant moments of magic back.
She wrestled just 10 times on the show in 2015, introduced as somebody for Carmella to beat with her then-partner Big Cass improvising a Price Is Right song that became her theme, and lost all but one of her matches before the two sides fell out over speculated-upon attitude issues and backstage heat.
But the deepest of deep connections was best exemplified not by a match but a surprise appearance alongside The Vaudvillains at TakeOver: Brooklyn in August. The biggest crowd in the brand's history up to that point went utterly berserk for her as the counter to Alexa Bliss' interference and had her cameo not been followed by Sahsa Banks and Bayley changing the face of North American women's wrestling forever later on the card, she'd have been the most over female in New York that night.