Not all messages are displayed:
show all messages (667 of them)
I hadn't considered that they might be trying to push the WWE Network in Japan. But I disagree that the main roster is depleted. Just last night they put together a new stable of Heath Slater, Curtis Axel, Bo Dallas, and Adam Rose--four main roster wrestlers who had been doing nothing for months on end. Damien Sandow, Fandango, Jack Swagger, Mark Henry, Los Matadores (and El Torito), The Miz, Goldust, and R-Truth have little or nothing to do on the main shows. They have tons of wrestlers, they just don't make good use of them on TV, despite having vast quantities of time to fill.
Maybe they're depleted at the top of the card, with Orton, Bryan, and Rollins gone (the former two possibly permanently). But there are guys already on the main roster they could elevate to those roles, not to mention an NXT wrestler or two. They don't need the likes of Nakamura and AJ Styles at all.
The interesting is question is why they would want them. Nakamura and Styles are great wrestlers, but they're 35 and 38, unknown to most of the audience, and have nagging injury problems. Wanting network subscribers in Japan is an interesting conjecture, but could that alone make them worth the investment? I continue to suspect that part of this is just that WWE likes the idea of taking top stars from another promotion (even if that promotion is not really a competitor).
― JRN, Wednesday, 6 January 2016 05:44 (eight years ago) link
nak and styles SHOULD skip NXT.
debut nak in front of smarky crowds where he's already over and just let do his thing, get the rest of the world used to loving him (they could honestly just do this with most of NXT callups but they seem to love throwing new wrestlers into the deep end without a paddle)
of course still no idea how he'd play out in the WWE style of Jericho calls The New Day trap queens
― qualx, Wednesday, 6 January 2016 06:16 (eight years ago) link
you listed a bunch of warm bodies
That's exactly what Styles and Nakamura will be to most of the audience when they debut. If they're going to be draws, they're going to have to be pushed and booked well. The exact same could be said of, and done with, wrestlers who are already on Raw or NXT.
Which is not to say I'd prefer that scenario--I'm very interested to see what they might do with the NJPW guys. I'm just saying that if they're worried about a lack of main-event wrestlers, springing for obscure broken-down thirtysomethings AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura is a weird response.
― JRN, Wednesday, 6 January 2016 08:10 (eight years ago) link