Triple H and his international acquisition tour for NXT is still going strong: WWE’s minor league (on paper, at least) has officially welcomed Australia’s The Mighty Don’t Kneel, or TMDK for short.
According to WWE.com, the tandem will report to the Performance Center in Orlando in April, and the arrival of the former NOAH (GHC) Tag Team Champions means big things for WWE’s tag-team division which needs a boost in quality. If you need proof that WWE’s tag division is floundering, take a look at the tag match-ups for WrestleMania: The Dudleys (still an entertaining duo, but past their prime) vs. The Usos (one of the only bright spots in the division), and The New Day (carrying the entire division on their back) vs. The League of Nations (a slapped together team that’s not going to last). NXT, though, is not lacking for quality in their tag team division, with American Alpha, Enzo & Cass, The Vaudevillians, and The Revival all doing fantastic work for the brand.
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TMDK — Mikey Nicholls and Shane Haste — will be a welcome addition to NXT, with their high-flying, power offense that’s both innovative and exciting to watch. Haste and Nicholls began in the Japanese promotion NOAH back in 2011, first chasing after the company’s junior heavyweight titles, then vying for — and winning — NOAH’s crème de la crème: the GHC Tag Team Championship. In 2013, the Australian team was announced as the Tokyo Sports Tag Team of the Year, an honor that was only previously awarded to a non-Japanese team back in 1998, when Vader and Stan Hansen won it. This past December, NOAH announced that Haste and Nicholls would be leaving the promotion once their contracts expired, and after an NXT tryout last year, it has been rumored for quite a while that they’d be showing up in WWE sometime soon. That “sometime” is now.
There’s no question that Haste and Nicholls are stud athletes — world-class workhorses in the ring with a great look that comes across as a legitimate threat to anyone in the tag-team division. It’s a little disappointing, at least in this writer’s opinion, that they’ll be sent to NXT, because WWE needs more help than their homemade indy division. Still, no matter where TMDK go, you can be sure their entertaining style of wrestling will bolster WWE’s card despite their position.
