Kassius Ohno was WWE NXT’s Most Underrated Star In 2018
By Brett Grega
WWE NXT is a brand of stars in the making, consistently featuring some of the best talent WWE has to offer. Find out why Kassius Ohno was quietly one of the stars who shone the brightest in NXT in 2018!
Without fail, NXT is always one of WWE’s most popular brands . The star power in WWE’s so-called “developmental” brand is immense, featuring many of the best performers in wrestling today.
Fans of NXT recognize this, and have made many of NXT’s finest talents into stars. Tommaso Ciampa, The Velveteen Dream, and Aleister Black are some of WWE’s most recognizable competitors today due to the spotlight fan’s put on NXT.
That’s what makes it surprising when a wrestler flies under-the-radar on a show that receives such a level of attention each week. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what Kassius Ohno has done in 2018, as he quietly put together one of the best bodies of work on the brand.
Ohno’s 2018 started with mini feuds with some of those stars that have emerged from NXT this year. At NXT Takeover: Philadelphia in January, Ohno took on The Velveteen Dream in one of the Dream’s star-building matches.
After Takeover: Philadelphia, Ohno and Adam Cole (baybay) collided in a bout on NXT television. Cole would take the victory in that hard fought and entertaining match, yet it seemed like the bout ultimately had a greater effect on the career trajectory of Ohno.
In the months after suffering that defeat, Ohno would subsequently lose in equally exciting matches against Tommaso Ciampa and EC3, further frustrating NXT’s resident ‘Knockout Artist’.
That’s when we started to see a change in Kassius Ohno.
The happy, smiling fan-favorite slowly was replaced by an obsessed and almost villainous character. As Ohno’s frustration grew, so did his ruthlessness. What followed was one of the most entertaining series of squash matches in NXT history, as Ohno ran through an increasingly lower level of opponents with gusto.
Ohno, who’s hard-hitting style had lead him to those great matches against some of NXT’s best competitors earlier in the year, now used that same style to decimate whoever dared step foot in the ring with him. During this time, while blazing a trail of violence with stiff boots and concussive elbows, Ohno began to target his aggression towards NXT General Manager William Regal.
This resulted in perhaps Ohno’s most underappreciated role on the show this year, even more so than his role as match-of-the-night machine earlier in 2018.
Ohno, with his increasing intensity, ended up becoming one of the prime suspects in the case of who attacked Aleister Black, throwing fans off from what turned out to be the most obvious twist for the otherwise exceptional angle when Johnny Gargano was revealed to be Black’s assailant.
If it weren’t for Ohno’s heel work at the time, I firmly believe the entire Aleister Black angle would have been too predictable. I doubt anyone suspected an established villain like Tomasso Ciampa as the attacker, and frankly many would have considered it a step backwards in the characterization of The Velveteen Dream to have him too entangled in the story beyond his memorable segment with Ciampa and Nikki Cross.
That means it was Ohno, and Ohno alone really, who could have thrown us off the scent of Johnny Gargano’s impending heel turn. Ohno’s characterization at the time led people down the path of considering a litany of other candidates besides Gargano as Black’s assailant, especially as the angle wore on throughout the weeks, which ultimately turned NXT’s whodunnit case into one of the most entertaining storylines on the brand this year.
Since his role as audiences’ prime suspect ended, Ohno has then continued to turn up the dial on his newfound villainous persona, turning into a full-fledged heel for his current feud with Matt Riddle.
That feud, might I add, has been the perfect way to introduce Riddle to WWE audiences. Instead of feeling like a gatekeeper feud holding off a major push for ‘The King of Bros’, this rivalry feels like a true storyline in of itself given how invested fans have become in Ohno’s character.
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At the end of the day, that rivalry is just another example of how Ohno has consistently been the glue that’s held together NXT throughout the year. Starting with his time putting on some of the most entertaining matches on weekly WWE TV earlier in the year leading up to his descendant into villainy, Kassius Ohno has quietly been one of NXT’s best, and most underrated, stars in 2018