Luke Harper is in an interesting position with his tag team partner, Erick Rowan, out with a torn biceps. Last night in Buffalo, Harper challenged Ricochet for the North American Championship at a WWE NXT Live Event, sending the crowd into a frenzy. More importantly, it signified NXT’s intention to showcase Ricochet as a future heavyweight star.
We’ve seen main roster Superstars show up at WWE NXT Live Events in the past, with former NXT standout and current main roster workhorse Tyler Breeze making several of these appearances. In fact, he made one such appearance last night in Buffalo to face the rising Marcel Barthel in singles competition.
However, Breeze’s appearance in Buffalo was upstaged by Luke Harper. One-half of the Bludgeon Brothers, Harper is in a similar position to Breeze, whose tag team partner is also out with a serious injury (Fandango tore his labrum).
Like Breeze, Harper is hoping to make the most of his time alone, and there’s no doubt that he partook in an exciting match at that NXT Live Event in Buffalo.
Harper vs. Ricochet for the NXT North American Championship? That sounds like it must have been an absolute barn-burner!
Ricochet won the North American Championship at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn IV, defeating Adam Cole after absorbing one of the greatest superkick counters I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Although Ricochet is feuding with United Kingdom Champion Pete Dunne, these “detour” matches at live events mean so much to boosting the prestige of this new title.
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As WWE NXT’s Twitter account said, “anything can happen” at an NXT Live Event, and this must have been absolutely shocking. For Ricochet to have successfully defended his title against Harper is huge, because Harper is a former Intercontinental Champion and is a BIG man.
Some WWE fans are concerned that Ricochet will be labeled as a “Cruiserweight” after he leaves NXT, so big props to Triple H and the backstage personnel on WWE’s “Third Brand” for doing whatever they can to position Ricochet as a big star among the heavyweights.
They have done a great job of this in the past, too, since Ricochet has hung in the ring with bigger wrestlers. He’s defeated The Velveteen Dream and Dominik Dijakovic in televised matches, in addition to getting some moves on Lars Sullivan.
Ricochet is a special talent, and NXT wants to keep building him up as someone who could eventually challenge for the biggest main roster titles. Even though this was at a live event and you’d expect nothing more than Ricochet to retain the North American Championship, the fact that he defeated Harper is an important wrinkle.
I’m sure the people backstage at NXT understand the significance of this, and it’s these subtle decisions that could convince Vince McMahon and others in charge of the main roster product to not place Ricochet on 205 Live and allow him to shine as a star on Raw or SmackDown. We’ve already seen The Rock put over Ricochet on social media, and it’s hard not to think that Ricochet could be a “superhero” character like Rey Mysterio in the future.
At the end of the day, I may be extrapolating too much here, because this was just a fun match between two wrestlers we never expected to fight over the title. They popped the live crowd, surely had a great match, and that’s that. But underneath the surface, the broader takeaway is that NXT is doing what it can to implicitly boost Ricochet’s future stock in WWE.
I wonder if Harper will show up at another NXT Live Event in the near future, because I’m sure any live crowd would love to see one of WWE’s most underrated wrestlers putting over the best and brightest that NXT has to offer.