WWE: Predicting the First Championships for NXT’s Newest Call-Ups

EC3

EC3 is going to be a huge star. While recent reports had already pegged the One Percenter for a surprise debut in the Royal Rumble match, it seems that desperate times have led to his call-up being rushed. This seems like a pretty strong indicator of management’s faith in him to help turn things around in what is already being viewed as one of the lowest creative points in WWE history.

An alumnus of Season 4 of NXT’s game show iteration, the former Derrick Bateman, while always good for a few laughs through his association with mentor Daniel Bryan, was unceremoniously cut from his developmental deal in 2013 before jumping to TNA, where he reinvented himself as Ethan Carter III, the privileged nephew of TNA’s president, Dixie Carter.

In TNA, EC3 proved himself far more talented and charismatic than he was ever given the opportunity to show in NXT, consistently providing the most entertaining parts of what seemed, at that point, to be a dying product. Now that he has made his return, the sky is the limit for EC3.

A decent worker with an incredible physique and loads of charisma, EC3 could conceivably be rocketed straight to the top of the card. Like Lacey Evans, Raw seems like the more logical place for him, as it will allow more promo time and room for character work. With the enormous vacuum in Raw‘s main event scene, it is not difficult at all to envision EC3 leap frogging over the Intercontinental Title Scene and capturing the Universal Championship by the end of the year.

Prediction: Universal Championship