WWE: Was moving Finn Balor to NXT the right call?

WWE shocked fans everywhere when Finn Balor made his return to NXT, but is this development a welcome change for the former Universal Champion?

WWE wasn’t messing around on the so-called first night of the “Wednesday Night Wars.” They opened NXT with a red-hot match between Matt Riddle and Adam Cole for the NXT Championship that ended with the leader of The Undisputed Era standing triumphant.

That’s when WWE dropped the twist of a lifetime.

Finn Balor returned from a brief absence to seemingly reestablish himself in NXT.

There’s no denying that it’s a shocking move on WWE’s part, especially considering Balor’s impressive list of achievements on Raw and SmackDown, yet that doesn’t answer whether or not it was the right call.

When you look through that list of Balor’s accolades, you see a superstar who’s been both an Intercontinental and Universal Champion that also so happens to hold pinfall victories over legends like John Cena.

It doesn’t exactly scream like the resume of an underutilized star, but anyone who’s watched WWE over the past few years has probably felt Finn Balor fit that bill at one point or another.

The fact of the matter is that WWE can’t seem to find a consistent main event role for Finn Balor on either of it’s flagship shows. He seems to be subject to start and stop pushes all the time, with an inconsistent usage of his ever-popular “Demon King” persona highlighting the way.

That wasn’t the case, however, when Balor was in NXT. The black-and-yellow brand always treated Balor like a massive star, from the time he debuted aiding Hideo Itami all the way through his reign as NXT Champion.

There’s no reason to believe that same treatment won’t exist for Balor this time around either, with the brand seemingly already tossing him into the world title picture on his first night back.

With that in mind, does that make it the right call for WWE to send a decorated superstar back down to what is typically referred to as the company’s developmental brand?

In my opinion, there’s two ways to go about answering that question.

For starters, this feels like a brilliant decision in the short term. NXT gains a star that makes them feel even more like a true third brand now, and less like a developmental league for SmackDown and Raw.

It also gives fans a boatload of potential dream matches to look forward to for Finn Balor. Matches that should hopefully help WWE regain some of Balor’s momentum that’s been lost over the years due to the company’s booking woes.

On the other hand, those dream matches can’t continue indefinitely. No matter how great it would be for Finn Balor to feud with everyone from Keith Lee to Velveteen Dream in NXT, he needs to eventually make his way back to the main roster.

Balor’s simply too talented to not get another extended feud for one of WWE’s premier titles at some point down the road. He has what it takes to be a star on the grandest stage in wrestling, and WWE can’t forget that no matter how exciting his run in NXT proves to be

In other words, WWE has created another much needed opportunity to push one of their brightest stars in the short term. They just need to make sure they don’t mess it up this time by seemingly forgetting about that star once again.