Ranking 22 WWE Debuts And Returns In 2021
The hits, the misses, the missed opportunities... the here today, released tomorrow.
New and returning faces can be a huge boon to a professional wrestling show, injecting new blood to the product, setting up new and interesting rivalries and matchups, and keeping things fresh.
For WWE, newly debuting and returning superstars have been essential to keeping the doors open and the wheels churning, as the promotion has simultaneously released dozens of wrestlers this year alone, and even more the previous year. The gutting of the roster – with some veteran hands and bona fide stars jettisoned – left a vacuum that has been filled in part by wrestlers called up from NXT and others returning from long injuries or just being off TV for a long period.
This year, there are three distinct classes of debuting/returning wrestlers: those who made a real impact of varying degrees, those who have been fumbled and their future is questionable, and those who not only debuted, but were bounced from the company altogether.
Some of these grades will be incomplete due to how late in the year they showed up. Some are pretty easy to peg, while others are a coin flip about whether to rank within 2-3 numbers of where they eventually landed.
With that said, let’s get to it…
22. Hit Row
Almost universally, everyone probably agrees that no
debuting act had it worse in WWE than Hit Row.
The quartet got called up from NXT as part of the WWE draft in October and were assigned to SmackDown. Isaiah “Swerve” Scott lost his NXT North American Championship on his way out, and the group began showing up on the blue brand for a couple weeks.
Then B-Fab, the only woman in the group, was released on November 4 with a bunch of other wrestlers. Hit Row soldiered on as a trio until the remaining members were turfed from WWE later that month. The group had one televised match in October and that was it for them.
Worse, because Hit Row had been called up to the main roster, they became subject to a 90-day non-compete clause, instead of NXT’s 30 non-compete deal. Regardless, this group was doing fine in NXT and was fractured and bounced from WWE in record time.