Rookie Year: Grading the first year of several stars new to WWE's main roster in 2019
Every year, WWE refreshes itself with a new crop of stars. Some are big-name free agents that immediately join the main roster, like AJ Styles and The OC. The majority of the other stars "graduate" from NXT to one of the main roster shows.
In 2018, the likes of Andrade, Ali, and The IIconics all made their impact on the main roster. In 2019, things didn't slow down, as six stars debuted to kick the year off while others debuted at various points throughout the year.
The impact new stars make is usually different from what they may have accomplished while members of NXT. Some stars fade into the rest of the roster while others are prominently featured each week on either RAW or SmackDown. Every Superstar has had varying degrees of success this year, so here are the grades for those that joined the WWE main roster in 2019. Part of the grade is for how they've performed while another part is attributed to their booking.
The Street Profits and Humberto Carillo did join the main roster, but only did so over the last few months. They've each had a couple matches, but will not be included here. Cedric Alexander also won't be included because he was a part of the 205 Live roster when it was regularly featured on RAW in its early stages.
#10 Heavy Machinery
When it became apparent that Tucker and Otis were not destined to win the NXT Tag Team Titles, it only made sense to promote them to the main roster. Both tag team divisions are always in need of depth and Heavy Machinery is certainly a unique team.
The beefy duo landed on SmackDown and eventually challenged then SmackDown Tag Team title holders Daniel Bryan and Erick Rowan. While they came up short in their quest to win tag team gold, they were impressive and continued to be a reliable tag team on the Blue Brand. After the WWE Draft, Heavy Machinery remained on SmackDown and are currently the second face team behind The New Day.
They've delivered in most of their matches since debuting and Otis has a strange charisma that has clicked with the fans. I long thought that they would be an afterthought due to not having much to offer character-wise, but due to Otis' antics, they could become SmackDown Tag Team Champions next year.
Grade: B+