NXT changed a lot in 2023, mostly for the better, but there are still lots of growing pains and kinks to be worked out going forward. For this article I want to focus primarily on talent themselves and how they’re booked and have grown over the year. This will also include a look at just the overall layout of the year in a broad sense with tournaments, title reigns, different shows, etc. I’ll keep it straight forward and give a likes and dislikes section then add a look forward to 2024 with some talent shout-outs.
Likes:
Usage of Talent/Choices of Champions: Even though I am personally not into how they do promos and segments out of the ring for the most part. What impressed me this year was just how much stuff they are able to fill the shows with. They weave several stories together and can get tons of wrestlers television time every week. A bit of this makes the in-ring suffer because of non-finishes or whatever and just shorter match times, though they often get tons of people reps and can get these stories and angles over because of it. I would prefer a more in-ring product, but them being able to book the majority of their roster week to week is also very impressive to me and I think it’s a decent middle ground for me as a viewer. Perhaps this could be remedied with adding an extra match or two to LVL Up.
With all that being said, for better or for worse if you sign with NXT you’re going to get TV time, and they’re going to do something with you which is commendable. I appreciate that they at least give people a chance even if I don’t always enjoy who they are using. It’s nice seeing a company try to use the talent they have. Giving people sink or swim opportunities is the backbone of wrestling and shows me as a viewer that they are trying, so I respect that.
Perhaps the biggest shining light in NXT this year have been the main champions. Ilja Dragunov especially feels like the MVP of the year and someone they can rely on every week. He’s an incredible wrestler, and they have done a great job bringing him up to be the sort of final boss of NXT this year. Additionally, Carmelo Hayes is another person I want to highlight. He’s really grown in ring and has tons of charisma and is exactly what you want in a top name. On top of that the Women’s Championship booking has been a highlight for me since Tiffany Stratton won it after it was vacated by Indi Hartwell. Tiffany, Becky & Lyra all are great choices as champions and each had/are having fun reigns. I also want to give some love to Wes Lee who had a good North American Championship reign as well. Hope you get well soon.
Women’s Roster – A highlight of the show for me has been the breadth of women’s prospects they have on the roster. It feels like they put the women on par with the men’s roster booking and give them plenty of time on the show every week, including often multiple matches and segments and feuds. They legitimately have at least 10 great prospects on their roster, and it makes it super exciting to watch and invest in them. In my previous article, I wrote about some of my favorite Joshi/Puro rookies and NXT has some of my favorite US wrestling rookies. A major talking point of American Wrestling in 2023 has been the lack of proper women’s booking, and although I don’t always enjoy the matches or segments, their willingness to actually use their women is great.
LVL Up – LVL Up is what initially got me into watching NXT again after falling off from watching before. I mostly got into it because of the women’s talent, but it’s also been a fun place to see the developing men’s talent as well. Along with them using it from time to time for extra stuff that doesn’t quite make TV like filling out the Global Heritage Invitational. This show to me feels the most in line with the kind of wrestling show I prefer, which is a predominant in-ring product with actual finishes most of the time. I enjoy this show too because it feels like the rookie development show, and they just let people go out there and practice and get reps in and try new things.
Additionally, it runs only about 20 minutes or so without commercials so it’s a quick easy watch and something you can get through pretty fast if you don’t wanna watch any extra segments or entrances. It’s just a fun little wrestling show. I appreciate that they give the talent a place to do stuff with a crowd (albeit a robotic crowd) but a crowd nonetheless with less pressure than marquee television wrestling. Also, they have started and weaved stories into the show that exist on the main show so it is worth watching for the people that focus more on the storyline and segment side of wrestling as well. I often find myself wanting it to be longer and for the matches to go a bit longer which I think is a good tell for experience of the show.
Main Roster Talent Usage (Part I) – In 2023, NXT has done a pretty decent job of using main roster talent to bolster the show and to rehab some main roster talent to get them back to being main roster ready. Some exciting usages have been Los Lotharios, Becky Lynch, Alpha Academy, and even Baron Corbin. These cases are either main roster talent being used here to rehab their career and direction in the case of Los Lotharios/Baron Corbin. (Los Lotharios are now back on Smackdown and Baron Corbin just came out of a NXT title feud with Ilja Dragonunov and is now going to be in a tag team with Bron Breakker for the Dusty Cup)
On the other end, people like Becky Lynch and Alpha Academy have been used to build up other talent by showing that these newcomers can hang in matches with more established talent. They used Becky to help build up Tiffany Stratton and Lyra Valkyria which I think helped the broader audience recognize them as higher-tier talent. Alpha Academy was used similarly to build up the Meta Four and give them legitimacy. Both of these are the kinds of ways I want to see main roster talent used if they are going to use them.
Dislikes:
Main Roster/Legend Usage (Part II) – While I did enjoy most of the Main Roster usage as explained above, I did have some problems with some other uses of them. I could have done without The Judgement Day taking over the show for a few weeks. I get the point was to get Dom a title, so everyone in the group could have a title, but it just felt lazy. Luckily they ended up shifting the title to Dragon Lee which in a way helped give him a boost, so I appreciate that. But he was already a main roster member for the most part so it just felt like they were not trying that hard with the North American championship for a bit. The main reason why main roster talent showed up for a while was mostly just to pop ratings and to get NXT a better TV deal during contract negotiations. Which is fine, business is business, I understand, however, it did worsen the show for me the majority of the time.
The most annoying part of this was using main roster people to just have promo segments that took up whole quarters of the show that could’ve been used for more fruitful things. Additionally, the use of legends in this way was frustrating as well. It’s not some new thing that they do, they often have legends appear in backstage segments and whatever, which are hit-and-miss, but one I cannot let slide was The Undertaker segment. He just showed up and lil bro’d Bron Breakker, who is supposed to be one of the top guys, and for what? The Undertaker getting a weak nostalgia pop? That entire thing felt so tone-deaf and counterproductive, I don’t get what the point was at all.
Women’s Division Hierarchy – A challenge that NXT faced this year was having someone who is the hegemon or established top dog of the division. Someone who feels like a benchmark, who people want to beat, and for it to feel important when they are beaten. Needless to say, this is always a point of contention when it comes to a development show where the top people are constantly moved up to the main roster. But for a good section of this year it did not feel like they were able to establish people to fill that role, which to their credit I think they were able to do often in previous years.
This point is more of a growing pain than anything else. In a way I feel like they have remedied it a bit with Becky Lynch having feuds with Lyra and Tiffany which felt like them being elevated, however, it is something worth critiquing. When you have so many new people, the roster tends to feel like everyone is at the same sort of level, which is the main problem with the women’s division. This got hurt by having no real veterans like Meiko Satomura or someone holding the title with an iron grip. They had it for a while with Roxanne in a way, but they fumbled her for a lot of the year (which I’ll elaborate on in the next section).
It doesn’t help as well that they ripped the tag team championships out of NXT this year and just were not booking that title well anyway. When you have no more division or thing to work toward; like a tag title, then it makes the main title scene even more bloated which adds to the issue of people needing to work towards something and establishing a hierarchy. They have been teaming up many of the women again, which is cool, and I hope they keep doing that cause it seems like an effective way to get people on TV and developing. But I am still apprehensive about them bringing those titles back (if ever) because of the way they’ve booked them previously. A remedy I could see if they do not go down the tag title route is a secondary Women’s Championship which gives people more things to fight for.
Convoluted Storylines/People Staying Too Long – For this point, I mainly want to highlight the Roxanne Perez stuff from early in the year. They essentially ran an angle where Roxanne had collapsed after a match because she had a kayfabe head/neck injury which then put her and her title at risk for a while. It loomed over the show, and it seemed like they’d vacate the title so they were going to have a ladder match for the title which people would qualify for. But then she was just in the match anyway, and it seemed like she’d triumph and get past whatever the storyline was trying to tell us, but she lost anyway. This whole story was pretty confusing and convoluted and did nothing for Roxanne and those involved.
Since then Roxanne’s story has been up and down in NXT, and it feels like she’s now been there too long and has largely been directionless. They have remedied her a bit by having a pretty decent feud with Kiana James. I think this helped establish Kiana more, but Roxanne feels like she either needs to win the title and be the established main person in the division, or she needs to move up. Perhaps it’s just the main roster not knowing what to do or not being ready for more talent with an already bloated roster. But when you have people doing nothing for months at a time it’s harder to heat them back up and for people to care when they do move up. Along with Roxanne another example of this would be Bron Breakker. It doesn’t feel like he has anything left to do or prove in NXT, and he’s just sort of waiting around for the main roster to have something for him. In the meantime at least they’ve used him to heat up Von Wagner a bit but even then it feels like he’s just wasting time, which shouldn’t be the case for such a hot prospect. I hope they can find a better synergy between the booking teams of NXT and the Main Roster, so this happens less next year. Perhaps this is due to HBK being a newer booker, and he’s still working out how to keep stuff working. In any case, I hope there is less of that going forward.
Looking Forward/Talent to Watch:
2024 feels like a year when NXT will put its foot on the gas. They spent Late 2022/2023 getting their new group of wrestlers ready and established, and now they can reap the benefits of that work. It’s hard not to be excited by the majority of the talent they have coming up, and I look forward to seeing how they further develop. Some NXT talent has already been brought up to the main roster in late 2023 and 2024 so it’ll be nice to see who fills the spots they left behind and if those talents will succeed on the main roster. Cheering for the success of The Creeds & Ivy Nile.
A point of excitement for NXT viewers is the newest signings they have made that have yet to debut or have a match. It’s still up in the air if Jade Cargill will work in NXT once she fully debuts in-ring or not, but they have teased a feud with Lyra already for her, so I imagine that happens in NXT this year. She feels exactly like the kind of person to fit that head of the division who is everyone’s goal of beating so if they are able to capitalize on her the division will be on the right track. Additionally, they signed Madi Wrenkowski who is a standout indie worker who will fit into NXT like a glove in my opinion. She’s already appeared on television this year in an NXT Anonymous thing but hasn’t had a proper introduction or match yet. Also, there is Giulia who seems to be heading to NXT at some point in the year. (Most likely in the fall from reports) I have no idea how she’ll fit and putting my personal feelings on her leaving Stardom aside. If they present her how she should be presented, she should fill a top spot almost immediately on arrival.
As I wrap up I want to just outline some talent I think will excel in 2024 and that you should keep an eye out for while also shouting out some of my personal favorites.
- Trick Williams — Will almost certainly be NXT Champion this year and be the main act of the shows.
- Oba Femi — Recently won the NXT Men’s Breakout Tournament and has already cashed in his championship match to become North American Champion.
- Lola Vice — Winner of the Women’s Breakout Tournament. She will almost certainly win the Women’s Championship this year.
- Meta Four — Although this group does have a bit of development to go, I think they’re almost ready as a main roster act and will be a marquee part of NXT and WWE main roster television this year. Keep an eye on Lash Legend specifically.
- Nathan Frazer & Axiom — I put these guys together because they have been a tag team lately. I imagine both are called up to the main roster this year and/or will win main NXT championships. Could see Frazer winning the NXT Championship and Axiom winning the NA Championship.
- Robert Stone — Should be a top manager on the main roster, move my guy up, he’s great.
- Riley Osbourne & Kelani Jordan — Both were finalists of their respective breakout tournaments. Both seem primed for title success and being hallmark talent by the end of the year.
- Dani Palmer, Thea Hail & Valentina Feroz — Three of my favorite wrestlers on the roster, I think they’re all excellent prospects and hope they continue to evolve and get pushed higher up the card in 2024. Certified hoopers.
- Keanu Carver — Tons of raw talent, someone who could be the breakout star of 2024 if used correctly.
- Bron Breakker, Carmelo Hayes, Ilja Dragunov, Roxanne Perez & Tiffany Stratton – Main roster call-ups in 2024. All should make big impacts when debuting and some will likely hold main roster gold by the end of the year.
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