WWE: Details on Bronson Reed's Signing

Bronson Reed made his surprise return to WWE on this week's Monday Night Raw, assisting The Miz in beating Dexter Lumis in a Ladder Match. Reed initially signed with WWE in January 2019 and looked poised for a jump to the main roster after winning the NXT North American Championship in mid-2021 from Johnny Gargano. However, he was suddenly released from WWE in August 2021, less than two months after a dark match on an episode of SmackDown. 

Reed, now going by JONAH, would appear in both New Japan and Impact Wrestling before the end of the year. He'd go on to have runs with both companies, ending with him losing to Kazuchika Okada at New Japan's Declaration of Power event in October. 

According to Fightful Select's Sean Ross Sapp, New Japan wanted to keep Reed but Paul Levesque viewed him as a "priority hire" once he took over WWE's booking. He's officially under contract with WWE, but had kept quiet over the past couple of months in order for his return to be a surprise. 

Reed spoke with Cultaholic in October 2021 and gave some insight into how NXT felt about the 2.0 reboot, which happened not long after his release. The 2.0 moniker has since been dropped, but NXT's product still feels quite different from the beloved "Black and Gold Era" of the late 2010s. 

"Before I had my dark match, maybe a week before that, about a month out from everything being rebranded, all the top TV talent got pulled into a room by Hunter and Shawn and they sort of let us know that things were changing, they're going in a different direction and it was all from Vince," Reed said. "This is what he wants, a complete overhaul. I think it shocked a lot of the people in that room, it also dampened some hearts. At the same time, some of us, myself included, thought we were going to Raw or SmackDown anyway so it was not really our concern."

"I want to say the room didn't seem happy. I think because, again, for these last few years we've been having meetings and them going on about the spirit of NXT and how it's this third brand and how we're making something special," he added. "And I think we all felt like that's what we were doing and then to have it be like well it's completely changing and we're no longer going down this road sort of is a bit heartbreaking, especially for guys like Adam Cole or Johnny Gargano or Tommaso Ciampa who'd been there and really put in a lot of hard work to make it that third brand."