16 Best WWE Debuts And Returns Of 2018

10. Buddy Murphy

Drew Galloway
WWE.com

Our only entry from 205 Live is the current WWE Cruiserweight Champion.

Buddy Murphy was seemingly in career freefall in 2017, having split from his NXT tag partner Wesley Blake the previous year. Murphy appeared on NXT TV once in 2017 – in January.

Then in early 2018, Buddy resurfaced as part of a revamped 205 Live, entering the tournament for a new Cruiserweight champ. Though he was unsuccessful then, Murphy would win the majority of his matches throughout the year, earning a title shot in Australia in October, where he won the championship.

Although he’s stuck on 205 Live, we’ve seen recently that cruiserweights can cross over onto Raw or SmackDown, so there’s a possibility that we could see Murphy on Monday or Tuesday nights.

For now though, we’ll have to settle for PPV kickoff shows.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.