WWE Has High Hopes For Two Featured NXT 2.0 Superstars

The NXT rebranding has unleashed a new facet of the developmental platform of WWE. NXT 2.0 is fresh, it’s dark and it’s filled with a roster of WWE’s most promising talent for the future. Shawn Michaels himself became part of the NXT 2.0 as a guiding beacon to the new talent, so there’s a lot of positivity surrounding it.

Michaels’ stated that the NXT 2.0 reminds him of the Attitude Era. That is high praise coming from one of the legends of WWE, but other sentiments regarding NXT were rather shaky. While the NXT viewership fell after Halloween Havoc, former WCW CEO Erich Bischoff said that NXT 2.0 is suffering from an identity crisis.

NXT 2.0 still continues to find new ground with its excellent match-ups, which is driving WWE’s high hopes for it. With the duo of Carmelo Hayes and Trick Williams taking on The Viking Raiders in a main roster dark match, a lot of good things are expected from them.

Jon Alba talked about the pairing of Hayes & Williams, stating that their SmackDown appearance has started the association of the word ‘stars‘ with them. He said:

In talking to some people in WWE last night, there are high hopes for the combo of Carmelo Hayes and Trick Williams. The two worked a dark match last night on Smackdown. Very favorable opinions from those I spoke with, several saying they looked like “stars.”

Alba then added another tweet, noting that Carmelo Hayes has held a lot of support in the upstairs. He also said that there’s good possibility of a push up for Hayes, especially after he demonstrated his chops in a match with Adam Cole.

As I’ve said in the past here, Carmelo Hayes has had a lot of support from higher-ups in NXT, especially coming out of the Adam Cole match. I talked about it a couple of weeks ago and stand by it, I think a spring season call-up and push is very possible.

Carmelo Hayes is very much the golden rooster for NXT. Being Shawn Michaels’ own project after Adam Cole, Hayes said that he gets a fair amount of creative control from Shawn Michaels. Hayes also holds the NXT North American Title, which means he’s only destined to go higher.

What’s your take on this story? Sound off in the comments!