NXT’s Invasion Will Reportedly Continue on WWE Raw

WWE’s travel issues in Saudi Arabia may have put most of the roster and production crew in a bind late last week, but it also handed the company the perfect opening to introduce NXT as an invading force on the latest episode of Friday Night SmackDown. The Black and Gold brand first made its presence known when NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler attacked Bayley, Sasha Banks and Nikki Cross, then continued to feature stars like Keith Lee, Matt Riddle, Tommaso Ciampa and Team Kick throughout the rest of the night. The show culminated in Adam Cole successfully defending the NXT Championship against Daniel Bryan, followed by Triple H, Shawn Michales and various members of the NXT roster joining them in the ring to celebrate.

And based on the latest reports, its looks like NXT’s invasion isn’t over yet. Alex McCarthy of talkSPORT tweeted out on Monday morning that several NXT wrestlers had been spotted in New York ahead of tonight’s Raw episode on Long Island.

Triple H, the brains behind the NXT brand, has stated in numerous interviews that NXT is now being treated as WWE’s third brand rather than the developmental show after it made the jump from the WWE Network to the USA Network. That change is being reflected in this year’s Survivor Series, which will see NXT compete with Raw and SmackDown for its annual battle of brand supremacy.

During his appearance on the first episode of After The Bell, Hunter explained that the “call-up” system from NXT to the other two shows is now over.

“I think this is sort of the template of whatever is on the table,” he said. “If you look at the roster, there’s going to be times where they’re like, ‘Look until the next draft this talent is here but they’ve kind of worked with everybody. And we’re going to finish up this program with them,’ and then we almost inherently need to sit them down for three months, six months, whatever that is just to clear this up, so we can get to the other side. Then when we do the switch it’s all new again.

“I’ll take them,” Hunter added. “Here’s the window and here’s what I’m going to do with you in that window, barring all the other things that can happen. It’s a cool opportunity.”