There’s been a lot of talk about the recent NXT call-ups and what this means going forward.
Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Ricochet and Aleister Black were brought up this week and they were booked to look strong. The decision to bring them up from NXT was made because of the declining ratings. This was discussed on Wednesday’s Wrestling Observer Radio.
Dave Meltzer said, “Vince felt that the reason the ratings are down is because the product is stale, the stars are stale and ‘we don’t have any superstars and these guys that we have aren’t gonna be superstars so we need to make new superstars so we gotta get guys that we haven’t ruined.'”
So, they brought up the top guys from NXT and had them win on Raw and SmackDown Live.
The idea, for now, is for all four of the recent NXT call-ups to work on all three brands – Raw, SmackDown Live and NXT at least for the short term.
It will be interesting to see if these call-ups force changes to creative in NXT because it looks like they have been building towards Ciampa vs. Gargano for NXT TakeOver: New York during WrestleMania weekend. On Raw and SmackDown Live this week, Gargano and Ciampa teamed up as if there were no issues between them.
