WWE Opinions: Why Promoting WWE NXT on Raw Needs to be Done More Often
During last night’s edition of WWE Raw, fans were met with the pleasant surprise of a promo match for WWE NXT Takeover 2 that featured the four participants in the fatal 4-way for the NXT championship – Adrian Neville, Sami Zayn, Tyler Breeze, and Tyson Kidd.
For Neville, Zayn, and Breeze, this was their debut on live programming on the main roster (Neville and Zayn had a dark match last month). Kidd used to be on the main roster prior to his knee injury, but has performed admirably as a heel down in Florida.
The four put on a very entertaining match. Some are even calling it the best match of the night. That may be somewhat of a stretch since the Bray Wyatt-Chris Jericho cage match was excellent, but it shows how well of a job these four Superstars did.
Neville was the showcased star of the match since he owns the NXT Championship. He showed off his athleticism and phenomenal high flying moves to the audience, which was dead at first, until they saw what the British Superstar could do.
Putting this match in the middle of Raw was a bold and excellent move on the part of WWE. Nobody expected this coming, so it drew a lot of interest. It gave fans who don’t own the WWE Network a chance to see the future of the company in a good teaser match that made everyone look good.
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The question that I’m posing to the FanSiders reading this (leave your comments below) is should WWE do something like this more often?
With all of the filler matches that WWE throws into their programming, they could easily make room for an NXT showcase match here and there. Raw is a three hour show – there has to be some amount of time to squeeze it in.
Doing this is better than the dozens of vignettes that have become over used through the years to tease a new wrestler. Putting these rookies in short matches against each other on live programming on the main roster would give fans a chance to get to know them better and hopefully get over with the audience.
Most of all, this was a fresh concept. The WWE Universe clamors for fresh content from the company known for replicating storylines and creating so many rematches.
The one thing to caution here is not overdue these type of NXT matches on Raw and SmackDown. Doing maybe one of these per month works fine and doing one before the NXT live specials, like they did last night, is ideal.
If this somehow morphs into a bi-weekly occurrence for instance, it would take some of the meaning out of the developmental brand. Putting them on WWE live TV often before they are ready could overexpose the rookies and cause them to flop in front of the audience. The odd of WWE doing this is unlikely, but it’s something to note.
What WWE did last night by putting Adrian Neville, Sami Zayn, Tyler Breeze, and Tyson Kidd in a match on Raw to showcase NXT Takeover 2 was a terrific move.
Hey, maybe they could scrape out a few subscribers for the network from that match, too.