When fans saw Oba Femi, Trick Williams, Lash Legend and Je’Von Evans arrive on the main roster earlier this year, it looked like WWE had finally decided the timing was right. Behind the scenes, that wasn’t the thinking at all.
WWE Unreal Season 3 showed the discussion that led to those call-ups, revealing Bruce Prichard was actually pushing WWE to stop waiting for prospects to become “ready” and simply throw them into the deep end.
“NXT—we’ve gotta look at our resources there, pull some people up that may not be ready, get them up here, get them started, break some fucking eggs, and let’s figure it out.”
That immediately turned the conversation toward one name: Oba Femi. Triple H admitted he didn’t know exactly how Oba would translate on the main roster, but he also believed there was only one way to find out. Rather than letting him dominate NXT forever, Hunter wanted to get him onto Raw or SmackDown, put him in a huge Royal Rumble debut and start building him into a genuine attraction.
“There’s a part of me that thinks you do something with Oba here, then he debuts big in the Rumble, and we just get him cooking. He’s a sponge. Great attitude. To make him a main-event, box-office attraction, he needs to be a bad motherf****r.”
Triple H was so high on Femi that he compared him to the can’t-miss quarterback every team wants in the NFL Draft: “You never know until he gets here. Yeah, that one I feel is the can’t-miss quarterback coming out of the system.” With Oba discussed, Hunter’s attention quickly shifted to Trick Williams.
His argument wasn’t that Trick had nothing left to learn. It was that NXT could no longer teach him what he needed. Triple H felt Williams had already accomplished everything there was to accomplish on the brand, and the only way he was going to improve was by sharing a locker room and a ring with established main roster talent.
“He’s done everything he can possibly do in NXT. He’s not gonna get any better down there. If anything, he might regress. He needs to come up here and work with people who have more experience. I think we’ve gotta pull the trigger on somebody, and why not try it with him?”
Even as Prichard pushed to accelerate the call-ups, he also reminded everyone that fans would need realistic expectations once those wrestlers arrived.
“We have to be patient, too. When they come up, they won’t be ready.”
Looking back now, it’s hard not to notice how closely that conversation mirrors what eventually happened. Oba Femi, Trick Williams, Lash Legend and Je’Von Evans all made the jump to the main roster, and WWE Unreal shows the company wasn’t waiting for perfection. The goal was to get them there, let them learn on the job and trust that they’d grow into the stars WWE believes they can become.
Do you agree with WWE’s philosophy of calling up talent before they’re fully polished, or should prospects stay in NXT until they’re completely ready? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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