Ranking The Success Of Every WWE Star To Debut In The Crowd At NXT TakeOver
5. Viking Raiders
War Machine were announced as the newest members of the NXT roster weeks before they actually appeared in the crowd at TakeOver: Philadelphia. So while it wasn't a surprise that they were shown on screen at the event, it was still cool to see the former ROH and IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team champions, nonetheless.
They were originally promoted as War Machine before changing their name to War Raiders upon their official NXT debut a few months later. The black-and-gold brand's tag team division was already stacked, but Hanson and Rowe being thrown into the mix strengthened it that much more.
Over the next year in NXT, they went undefeated and annihilated everyone from TM-61 to Heavy Machinery before beating Undisputed Era for the NXT Tag Team Championship at TakeOver: Phoenix. They were primed for a dominant run as the champs (especially coming off that classic with Aleister Black and Ricochet in New York) and were then called up to Raw seemingly out of nowhere in the 2019 Superstar Shake-up.
Despite the dumb name change (Viking Raiders? Seriously?), Ivar and Erik have been protected thus far on the main roster and are bound to be wearing tag team title gold over their shoulders again by the close of 2019. The jury is still out if they'll be as successful on Raw as they were in NXT, but the powers that be not yet giving up on them is an encouraging sign.