Last week, NXT held its first television taping sessions of the year at Center Stage in Atlanta. You might want to avoid the rest of this post if you don’t want NXT SPOILERS, because make no mistake — we will be dealing with some things here that spoil some NXT television happenings, and we would never want to be responsible for ruining your good time.
Everyone still with us that likes having their good time ruined? Great. Let’s proceed.
NXT had television tapings on both Thursday and Friday last week, and you can click on both of those weeks for complete spoilers. There will be (it looks like) one more taping, likely in March, for the final batch of television episodes prior to NXT TakeOver: New Orleans on WrestleMania 34 weekend.
One NXT Superstar who was not at either of those tapings — and has not been on television since prior to NXT TakeOver: Philadelphia, and hadn’t tweeted at all or posted on social media from Jan. 8 to Feb. 4 — is Lars Sullivan, who had previously been a big focal point of NXT television.
On a recent episode of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer didn’t have any solid information about why Sullivan is missing in action, but confirmed he hasn’t been at the Performance Center during that time of absence, either. Considering Sullivan was originally penciled in to have an NXT Championship shot in New Orleans, this is raising some serious eyebrows.
“There’s something going on. And I don’t know the answer to this question, but the original main event for New Orleans was – I mean, I don’t know this 100 percent, but 90 percent – was going to be Andrade against Lars Sullivan. And Lars Sullivan has, in fact, disappeared off the face of the Earth. He vanished. He was not at [either of last week’s] tapings.
“At the last set of tapings [before this], they had announced a No. 1 contender’s match between Sullivan and Killian Dain, and it ended up being Aleister Black and Killian Dain, I believe. Aleister Black’s going to get the shot. So I don’t know what happened. Lars Sullivan wasn’t at the tapings, he wasn’t at the house shows this weekend. I’m not sure when he last wrestled. So something’s going on there. [ … ]
“They set up this championship match, and then Black took his place, and they never said anything [about Sullivan’s championship opportunity]. Remember he had destroyed Roderick Strong? You don’t do that and [then just stop], you know what I’m saying? They were pushing him very hard on TV, and then I don’t know what happened.
“I’ve asked around, and he hasn’t been at the Performance Center either, as far as I know. That’s what I’ve asked, and [the response has been] ‘No, he hasn’t been there.’ So yeah, I don’t know what the story is.”
There is sure to be rampant speculation about why Sullivan is no longer around, but we certainly hope the Freak will be back in action soon.
