WWE New Blood

New Blood

One thing that I am of two minds about in wrestling today is whether or not the WWE needs new blood on it’s roster. In some ways I want to say, yes, we definitely need new people, but then I look at the official Roster according to the WWE website and see that there are actually around 60+ members of the WWE locker room. When I see that, I then think that perhaps we don’t need the NXT people to come in yet, we just need to use the people that the WWE already has in better ways. With the lead up to Wrestlemania we saw a few NXT’ers come up to the big shows in the WWE in the past several months. Now that the biggest show of the year has passed us, we have had three more NXT surprises coming to the WWE, one of which is here and two that we are now seeing Vignettes for which means they won’t be too far behind. So in this post, I will discuss these new main eventers and who I think deserves to be up here or not and why.

The first NXT’er to have moved up to the ranks of WWE recently has been Xavier Woods. This man is in a word impressive. I had been really enjoying each time I saw him on NXT so it makes me happy to see that he has been brought up to the main event of the WWE. I love his style since he is a self professed Geek which puts a lot of his likes right in line with a lot of mine it seems. He is a huge fan of Power Rangers, Dragonball and Sonic the Hedgehog. Don’t believe me? Listen to his yell of “It’s Morphin Time!” and look at his trunks where they say “Over 9000” all of this is showing his love of the 80’s and 90’s cartoon scene. Xavier Woods also had a great entrance in NXT and while my best friend is not much of an entrance person to me an Entrance is as important as your in ring presence. If you can catch the audience right off the bat before you even get in the ring against your opponent then you can get a good psychological advantage. Which brings me to another thing I love about Woods, this kid already has some degrees from college so he has options other than wrestling. He has a BA in both Psychology and Philosophy and a Masters in Psychology which is also what he is trying to get his PHD in now. Xavier Woods had a hard time of it when he came to the WWE but with the storyline he was given it would have been hard not to have it rough. When he came up he was allowed to borrow the music of Brodus Clay and the Funkadactyles also came to the ring with him. The problem was that while Brodus made such an entrance fun Xavier made it look good…no, not good, GREAT! Brodus Clay then got pissy and started to go after Xavier Woods and even turned on his long time partner Tensai during this Story Line. Xavier in my mind has been impressive both as a singles competitor and also with R-Truth who he used to Tag with back in TNA several years ago. All in all I think that Xavier woods was certainly a good choice for the WWE to bring up from NXT. I would also love to see Xavier Woods appear at Ancient City Con someday as it would be great to meet him in person.

Another NXT star to have moved to the ranks of the WWE is Alexander Rusev. The Bulgarian Brute is a monster of a man and definitely has the “look” that WWE tries to get in many of their wrestlers. However, I have always been one of those fans that say that looks certainly aren’t everything for wrestling. To me the WWE, which is Sports Entertainment, is supposed to be entertaining and while yes the big guys can be entertaining, an over saturation of big guys to me gets boring and that is what Rusev is to me so far. He has a lovely manager named Lana who, unfortunately, is almost as annoying as Viki Guerrero though considering how good looking Lana is it’s not quite as bad. Talent wise I haven’t been all that impressed. He has a few power moves and a good but simple submission move to end matches. He really doesn’t do much just survives on brute force and the ability for those huge muscles to absorb punishment. To me he should still be in the NXT until he can bring a bit more than just being a hulk to the mix. Yes big muscle guys are important to the mix but not if they can’t do much with them.

Ahhh now how to describe the next NXT’er that came up before Wrestlemania? She is cute as can be and has a bubbly personality and entrance. Her name is Emma and she is from Australia. She has very fun music to come to the ring to and a cute catchy little dance that lets her try and pop the bubbles around her as she comes down the ramp. Talent wise she isn’t too bad. She is fun to watch and is at least on par with the other girls in the Divas locker room, not that that is saying too much as I personally think that there is only a handful of these current girls that are worth anything in the ring. It honestly keeps amazing my wife that when Diva matches come on I start looking at facebook or reading or something instead of drooling over the scantily clad very fit women, but to be honest the Diva’s except for one or two bore me. Emma, however, does have an awesome looking finishing submission hold. A modified STF where the divas are back to back and Emma pulls off an amazing bridge to put the face lock part of the STF on her opponent. It truly is quite a sight to see. The other thing I love about Emma is that they are using her as a comedic foil for Santino and Emma is perfect for this role. All in all I am glad Emma has come up from NXT as I do enjoy the comedy but for the most part I would have been fine if she had stayed down there for a bit more too.

This brings me to the first NXT face that made the move to the WWE since Wrestlemania and let me start of by saying it’s not a shocker that she has come up to the main event but it was a shocker as to how they brought her up. You see, one of my favorite Diva’s now is actually a self-proclaimed Anti-Diva named Paige. Unlike the typical flashy and tanned diva, Paige has a dark almost goth look with skin as pale as Sheamus and that’s the way she wants it- she doesn’t want t be the typical Diva. As I said with Emma there are only a handful of Diva’s that I think are really good now a days and Paige is right up there on the top of my list. I can name about ten great diva’s from the past but right now I think there are only about 4 or 5 and Paige, for being only 21 years old, is right at the top of that list with only like two others that could even hold a candle to her. So while I said it’s not surprising that she came up the way she did it is wonderful. You see Paige until just this week was the NXT woman’s champion. She was the first to win this prestigious title in the NXT. So on the night after Wrestlemania, she comes out and congratulates AJ Lee on successfully defending the Divas Title. I thought this made great sense because AJ is kinda Anti-Diva too. She doesn’t dress all flashy but instead does the jean shorts and ripped t-shirt and certainly doesn’t have the typical Diva look or attitude. So in my mind these two could be friends and if you brought Paige up AJ and Paige could be a good tag team to go against the Funkadactyls and the Bella Twins. However, AJ dissed Paige and ended up slapping her and then tells her they are going to have a match. Paige says she’s not ready but AJ doesn’t let up, still smacking her and even says she is going to put the Diva’s title on the line. AJ almost put Paige in the Black Widow submission hold when Paige finally breaks free and hits her finisher called the Paige Turner and pins AJ to get the Divas Title. Paige held both the NXT and the Divas belts until this week when JBL stripped her of the NXT title so that Paige could do more work with the WWE and not be away too much from the NXT to be unfair to other divas in NXT. I am looking forward to seeing some great things from Paige in the coming weeks and I hope she can hold onto the belt for longer than AJ Lee.

One of the first Vignettes that has been airing lately that I want to talk about is the videos for a certain Adam Rose. When I first saw the video, I was amazed that the WWE would bring Adam Rose up to the main event only weeks after he had debuted on NXT. So as I was starting to write this article, I was looking for pictures for this guy and I found out that perhaps WWE isn’t so crazy after all. While Adam Rose the character is new to the wrestling world the person playing him isn’t as he used to play Leo Krugar in the NXT. The thing is while this is the same person, he has pulled a total 180 in attitude and behavior between these two characters. Couple that with pulling his hair back and shaving and you would swear he was a totally different guy. Once I found this out I was a lot more convinced that this man is indeed ready to come to the WWE. As Leo Krugar he played a very evil mercenary type character while as Adam Rose he plays…well a party boy that seems almost flaming gay. His mannerisms under each character as well as voice and movements and just everything about the character are night and day from each other. This guy is a great and entertaining wrestler as well as a great actor now that I know who else he has played as. One other entertaining things about Adam Rose is that whenever he makes his entrance, he has an entourage of interesting characters coming out with him dancing and just having fun in outlandish costumes. Just to show you his two faces I have added a Leo Krugar promo below followed by an Adam Rose Promo.

Leo Krugar Promo-

Adam Rose Promo-

The next individual that seems to be coming to the WWE is the former NXT Champion known as Bo Dallas. Bo has been seen in the WWE before as they gave him a chance in the Royal Rummble where he took out Wade Barrett after being in the Rumble for 20 minutes. Not too bad for a newbie. However, this “newbie” is also a third generation wrestler who is brothers with Bray Wyatt and the son of Irwin R Shyster from the WWE better known as I.R.S. I have to give him credit, Bo is a very talented wrestler and he can be fun to watch in a match. However, Bo is also Pro-Noid – a phrase I first heard in the movie Fierce Creatures which is quoted from Jamie Lee Curtis Saying to Kevin Kline “You know what your problem is, Vince? You’re pronoid. It means that despite all the available evidence, you actually think people like you.” This describes Bo Dallas to a tee. See, he has a disproportionate sunny disposition no matter what happens to him. He swears he has fans in the NXT which he calls Bo-lievers and yet for some reason these fans do not seem to thrilled with him either. They keep saying Booooo when he would come out with the mic and talk, which Bo says is simply them chanting BO! While I do think he is talented enough for the WWE, I honestly think that if they keep this happy go lucky character for him that he is going to be run out of every auditorium. I mean heck, just the other week most of the NXT audience turned their backs on the ring while Bo was in there trying to talk to them. Unless he does something different, I don’t think he will make it simply because of his character.Having a positive attitude is good but Bo takes it to the point of being annoying. Due to this I think he needs to stay down in NXT until they can find a better character for him but it seems that’s unlikely to happen…. no matter how much we all beg and plead.

Coming soon will be an article that showcases the couple of NXT members I think are ready and deserving of their chance to come up to the big game in the WWE.

 

Photo’s Courtesy of

Rusev- cdn3.whatculture.com

Paige- fanpop.com

Emma- ign.com

Xavier Woods- prowresblog.blogspot.com

Bo Dallas- wrestleenigma.com

Adam Rose- imgur.com