4 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Oct 15)

3. No Sign Of Gable Or Jordan

Are NXT deliberately toying with us now? Gable and Jordan were absent from the show in its entirety; this only one week removed from TakeOver: Respect, where Chad Gable was one of the most chanted-for guys in the building. Now, it's a proven strategy that taking a beloved superstar and intentionally, or unintentionally as the case may be, 'keeping them down' is a great way to foster fan support (see Daniel Bryan for details), but there wasn't even a backstage segment starring Gable and Jordan. They were the only two men from the final eight of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic to not be included in the #1 Contender's Battle Royal, a match which featured jobbers like Danny Burch and Steve Cutler. To what end? Was NXT worried that Gable chants would take over the match, or were they being protected from looking weak somehow? Could it be that NXT really don't value them as much as the fans do right now? Answers on a postcard.