While today’s NXT is far from the third brand it was once championed as, WWE’s developmental territory remains home to constant main roster crossovers. Top stars like Monday Night Raw‘s AJ Styles or WWE SmackDown‘s Raquel Rodriguez have made pit stops at the WWE Performance Center for a match, while others like Dolph Ziggler or The New Day have captured NXT gold during their expeditions to Florida. All of those aforementioned names checked into NXT for a brief stay, but others like Mandy Rose and Apollo Crews have made themselves full-time members of the white and gold roster.
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Speaking of the latter, Crews recently came up short in his NXT Title match against champion Bron Breakker at NXT Deadline. Even though he is currently directionless, WWE Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative Shawn Michaels emphasized that Crews is staying in NXT.
“I have no intention of letting him go anywhere,” Michaels said on the post-NXT Deadline media call. “Again, I don’t make the main roster decisions, I can say that much for now. We love him here in NXT. We have absolute plans for Apollo going forward. He fell short tonight from an NXT Championship situation but we have more to come for him from him in NXT.”
After impressing on the independent circuit as Uhaa Nation, Crews inked a WWE deal at the end of 2014. He would make his televised debut at NXT Takeover: Brooklyn the following summer, spending just nine months in developmental before being called up to the main roster. While he’s had start-stop momentum on Mondays and Fridays, Crews did accumulate multiple main roster championships during his six-year run on Raw and SmackDown.
“Apollo brings us a great deal of experience, and that’s something that we try to hold on to here for as long as we possibly can,” Michaels said regarding Crews’s value. “Obviously, being out there with Bron [Breakker] is beneficial to us in Bron’s development, but we feel like Apollo has a lot more knowledge and experience to help a number of other people here. We’d love to continue to keep him here for as long as we can and get his experience out there with as many of our young talent as we can.”
Crews’s next steps could be revealed on tonight’s NXT, which airs at 8 PM ET on the USA Network.
