If you were surprised and confused about Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Ricochet, and Aleister Black suddenly debuting on Raw last night, it seems you’re not alone. According to Ringside News, nobody backstage knew that was going to happen. It was apparently not planned in advance, to the degree of not even being discussed with the roster the night before at Elimination Chamber. All of the planning for how to incorporate the NXT guys into the show and who they would work with seems to have been done on the day.
Ringside also reports that not everybody was thrilled by this turn of events. While they’re careful to say that nobody was blaming the debuting performers themselves, it seems that some members of the roster were concerned that WWE bringing in four top stars from the developmental brand all at once might represent a threat to their own positions on the show.
Understandably, among those most concerned were the performers whose debuts were announced back in December, who are still only making occasional appearances on Raw and Smackdown, and haven’t established clear spots on the roster. Lacey Evans probably has nothing to worry about, but it’s understandable if EC3, who wasn’t on last night’s show, or Heavy Machinery, who didn’t have a match, are a little worried. Since no new women debuted, Nikki Cross’s spot ought to be safe, but since she also didn’t appear last night, who can say exactly what that spot is anyway?
Lars Sullivan, whose main roster debut has been indefinitely delayed by his own personal issues, took to Twitter last night to tweet “Great show tonight! NXT vs WWE lol,” but by this morning he had deleted it.
Only time will tell exactly what last night leads to, and some are still speculating that the four might go back to NXT for a bit (especially Ciampa and Gargano, who currently hold both NXT men’s singles titles). I wish I could end this post by saying “it will all become clear soon,” but I think most of us have been watching WWE long enough to know that it might stay confusing for a while yet.
