Opinion: WWE has no choice but to push the new NXT call-ups to the moon
This week, WWE threw a curveball by bringing up new names from NXT. Unlike the last round of call ups, this time, four of NXT's biggest stars made the jump - Aleister Black, Tommaso Ciampa, Ricochet, and Johnny Gargano. These are four of the famed "NXT 6" who have delivered a collective body of work over the past year that rivalled the best of any promotion in wrestling history.
Triple H was brimming with pride when he hyped up the new arrivals, but if you looked closely, you'd see a sense of trepidation lurking beneath the surface. We've been down this road before. A major star from NXT gets distorted and ruined on the main roster through terrible booking.
So far, things have proceeded well for the NXT call ups. They squared up with and defeated some main roster stalwarts. It looks like their move sets have remained intact. They're being treated as big deals and getting a lot of attention. In a rare nuance for the main roster, you can still feel the tension between Ciampa and Gargano lurking beneath their partnership. Aleister Black's history was expounded on. Ricochet's unreal athleticism was hyped to the max.
Unfortunately, we've also been down this road before. There's no guarantee that this lasts even a month.
WWE needs to buck its trend and elevate these guys as core talents they can build the promotion around for years to come. Their skill level demands it, but more importantly, WWE needs to treat these guys as big stars because the company has no stars left.
Vince McMahon has made consistently awful booking decisions for the past decade. He managed to avoid the consequences of those mistakes for a long time, but in the past year, and especially in the past few months, he's been reaping what he's sown.
Worse, the consequences of his years of bad booking are cascading, hitting harder with each passing week, resulting in one of the most barren roads to WrestleManias\ I can ever remember. It's showing up in an accelerating ratings decline, too. While this time of the year normally sees a healthy ratings bump, it hasn't happened in 2019.
This is directly related to how the company treats its talent, and it's been almost uniformly terrible, resulting in bland, uninspiring, and downright terrible content on a weekly basis. Is it any wonder why so many people have stopped watching in just the past year?
For the past five years, Vince McMahon has concentrated on his goal of cementing Roman Reigns as the face of the company. His arrival would be told by his defeat of Brock Lesnar, who had conquered Undertaker's fabled WrestleMania streak.
Unfortunately, through a blunder of a push, fans turned against Reigns, and McMahon got cold feet every time he had the chance to pull the trigger. The result was that almost everyone of note was sacrificed to Lesnar to keep him unstoppable.
In turn, to keep Reigns strong for his eventual triumph (whenever that would be), he would get the lion's share of scalps and the heat of other wrestlers would be sacrificed to him. The rest of the roster would be put in meaningless angles that never went anywhere, kept in a loop of 50/50 or hot/cold booking, and lose whenever they needed to in order to keep the grand design going.
This process resulted in the company's refusal to run with hot acts that were organically popular. Whether it was Dean Ambrose in 2016, Braun Strowman in 2017, or Seth Rollins in 2018, all were cast aside and kept beneath a certain ceiling. No one got an important rub when they needed one.
The chaotic process was in place even on other brands, whether it was experimenting with Jinder Mahal, giving AJ Styles short shrift despite his lengthy title reign, or refusing to pull the trigger on people like Samoa Joe, the entire roster felt like it had a ceiling on it, preventing people from getting over.
Since no one feels like a star on the current roster, WWE has for the past decade gone to the well of older stars - Brock Lesnar, The Undertaker, Triple H, The Rock, Kane, Goldberg, Batista, and for the last few years, John Cena. Even Shawn Michaels was induced to return last year.
But that was never a strategy that could last. Father Time is undefeated. With John Cena now a near-permanent resident of Hollywood, and the other stars in their 50's or close to it, the well looks like it has finally dried up, barring perhaps one final dip or two.
With Roman Reigns and the part-timers gone, who does WWE have left? The void is sucking the main roster dry and you're seeing it happen in real time every week. This is why the women's division has been so prominently featured, and if it wasn't for the star signing of Ronda Rousey and the sheer phenomenon that is Becky Lynch, the company would be in an even darker state.
Even in that division, only a few people feel like legitimate stars, and the use of Asuka this week is a good microcosm of how destructive WWE's hot/cold booking has been.
The roster desperately needs a rebuild. Most of its workers have been too heavily damaged to be built back into stars - at least on their own. We've seen too much of them. It needs a new element, a catalyst to start a new reaction.
If the company knows what's good for it, these guys will be that catalyst. Every company needs a solid core of main event talent, and we've seen how good these guys are in NXT when acting as that solid core. They can do the same for the main roster if permitted, especially when Adam Cole and Velveteen Dream eventually join them. Each brings something unique to the table.
The company must recognize this and make them the foundation for a roster rebuild. There, they can revitalize the shows, and bring some excitement back to this company, where people feel like stars once again instead of anonymous, interchangeable cogs.
Or Vince McMahon can just do what he's been doing and wonder why his ratings are falling at an accelerating pace, locker room morale remains low, and the excitement for All Elite Wrestling grows.