WWE looks to be setting up another crossover between NXT 2.0 and the main roster hot off the heels of the AJ Styles vs. Grayson Waller feud. The past week of WWE TV has seen both LA Knight and Roderick Strong involved in the Raw and SmackDown tapings, taking part in a dark match before last week’s SmackDown and wrestling in separate matches on this week’s Main Event prior to Raw. WWE’s social media accounts then uploaded a backstage segment after Raw that saw Strong walk past The Dirty Dawgs during an interview. When Knight tried to do the same, Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode confronted him. Knight then challenged them to come meet him on Tuesday nights in NXT.
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Roode made the comment that he knows a thing or two about the show, reminding fans that he was NXT Champion for over half a year back in 2017. Whether or not the pair will accept the challenge remains to be seen.
Do you want to see more integration between the main roster and NXT now that the developmental brand has been rebooted? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments!
Former Performance Center trainee Scott Garland (aka Scotty 2 Hotty) recently gave an interview where he described what has changed about WWE’s developmental system over the past year. He officially requested his release from WWE in November, two months after the NXT 2.0 reboot.
“It wasn’t one day, it came over time,” Garland said regarding his decision to leave. “Over the last six months, things started to change. At one point, it was the greatest thing I’ve experienced in my entire 32 years in wrestling. Anybody who was there understands it, it was such a cool culture, it was a genuine culture. That, ‘We Are NXT’ thing wasn’t just a marketing slogan, that was a real thing. There was pride there, I rode with them. Everyone’s on the same bus traveling together just having a great time, out there killing it. You know, we’d go to a WrestleMania weekend, or a SummerSlam weekend and do a Takeover, steal the weekend, best show of the weekend hands down. Then over the last six months to a year, some changes, you know and maybe part of it was me starting to change, and seeing outside of WWE starting to change. With not only groups like AEW, but some of these independents were on fire and comic-cons were on fire, these signings were on fire. There was just so much going on outside of WWE, and I’m 48-years-old. So I go, ‘hey, if I’m going to do this, where I can actively get in the ring and go, now is the time to do it. I feel like I can still go and I feel like I proved that to everyone and to myself a couple of weeks ago with Joey Janela.”
“Management changing, culture-changing, just a lot of change,” he said while discussing the NXT changes. “Probably COVID had something to do with it, the releases had something to do with it. As everybody knows, whether it’s wrestling or working wherever. It sucks to go to work and be walking on eggshells every day.”
