5 Wrestlers Who Will THRIVE In WWE NXT's New Era

The NXT we know will soon cease to exist.

Once a destination for hot off the press indie darlings to succeed in the big leagues, WWE's black and gold brand is now about to become Raw and SmackDown's equivalent. Not in the sense that it's a legitimate third brand, but rather it's going to be the exact same.

Vince McMahon's philosophy of his professional wrestlers being six foot six and 260+ pounds or whatever you want to list it as has, somehow, found its way into uncharted territory for Vince. NXT had been viewed as Triple H's pet project; a quote-unquote super indie, quintessentially. It never needed to be a third brand because NXT was its own entity. At times, it didn't feel like a WWE venture. It was that different.

Then 6 August 2021 happened.

A plethora of NXT talents were released. Amongst the cut were top stars Bobby Fish and Bronson Reed, recent Diamond Mine associate (in other words, just debuted a new character) Tyler Rust, and recent indie standouts Mercedes Martinez, Jake Atlas, Ari Sterling (Alex Zayne), and Asher Hale (Anthony Henry). The desire for NXT talents is no longer these flippy guys, but rather big beefy bruisers, harking back to the 1980s.

As depressing a moment as it was, it will, however, help these lads out in the long run...

As Brendan Vink, the former Elliot Sexton was hardly going to be a standout name under the WWE banner. He'd been pushed to the main roster too soon, joining Shane Thorne pre-RETRIBUTION for a few weeks during those early, eerie Performance Center episodes of Raw.

He desperately needed a rebranding, making the Duke Hudson guise a genuine potential Breakout Tournament winner. His opening-round collision with the uber-talented Ikemen Jiro achieved the exact purpose of the tourney; both guys broke out, looking like true stars in the immediate aftermath. Jiro won't make it in this NXT, though. Hudson, however? Maybe.

There was a moment in the match where the Aussie hoisted Ikemen above his shoulder, kicked his leg up above his own head to knock Jiro silly, and end the sequence with a clubbing Polish Hammer. Moments later, an overhead belly-to-belly saw Hudson execute the move to such excellence that it wouldn't have looked out of place in a peak Kurt Angle contest.

There are obvious improvements to be made, such as the basic black trunks gear. It's not a terrible look for a big bruising b*stard per se, but it's not a WWE look. That's a minor issue. In-ring-wise, the guy is surely what the company desires from their NXT talents moving forward. At six foot five and 253 pounds, he'll be fine.