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YMMV / WWE NXT

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    Competition NXT 
  • Arc Fatigue: Season 5 really stalled halfway through, after not having a single elimination in months. They then dropped all pretense of it still being a competition.
  • Fountain of Memes: Any wrestler who has a really noticeable and repeated yell when performing moves; the crowd will pick up on this and begin chanting it when the wrestler is out. One example is Michael McGillicutty/Curtis Axel ("SHAH!").
  • Growing the Beard: The latter half of Season 5 and the subsequent shift to being a show for their developmental talent.
  • More Popular Spin-Off: The Nexus is much more remembered today that the first season of NXT is. Or any season, for that matter.
  • Narm: Michael McGillicutty's "Genesis of McGillicutty" promo. Hell, just the name McGillicutty counts. The fact that some will recognize it as the name of ECW valet Beulah McGillicutty or as Lucy Ricardo's maiden name doesn't help.
  • Never Live It Down: Heartwarming story of weight loss aside, people still remember that Sage Beckett was Rosie Lottalove, the fat TNA Knockout that ended Daffney's career by dropping all her weight on her sternum.
  • Older Than They Think: The Scottish Wrestling Alliance had a show called NXT back in 2007, which lasted for three years.
  • Questionable Casting: Angela Fong questioned one particular decision in an interview with Diva Dirt. She had trained in developmental to become a wrestler, had caught onto it very fast, and was the inaugural Queen of FCW. She was called up to the main roster...to be a ring announcer and backstage interviewer. Rather than being used as a contestant on the Divas season, she was released, and they had Jamie Keyes as the last rookie. Jamie Keyes preferred ring announcing and interviewing, and didn't like being forced into a wrestling role - so she asked for her release before the season was even over. So they put a wrestler into a ring announcer role that she didn't want, and then did the opposite with the result that a good potential asset to the women's division was released before she'd even had a match.
  • The Scrappy:
    • David Otunga in Season One. Despite being the worst wrestler in the group, Otunga was kept around until the finale where he came second, with the repeated assertion that Otunga had the "It" factor & deserved his spot because he was married to Jennifer Hudson. The finale saw Otunga receive several Take That, Scrappy! moments, with Wade Barrett delivering a scathing promo on Otunga & the rest of the Rookies asserting that Barrett was the obvious choice to win of the two.
    • The number of fans who like Alex Riley is growing smaller with each turn at the commentary desk. It doesn't help that his fellow commentators are Corey Graves and Renee Young. This being said, Riley has a stated desire to be a wrestler again & not an announcer, and he moved back into that role in February 2015.
    • Devin Taylor got a fair bit of hate for seemingly having no other reactions than nodding, smiling and staring vacantly.
  • Seasonal Rot: Whilst the first season had a clear end goal in mind, the second was just a complete failure with several of the Rookies clearly not being ready for TV. Season 3 seemingly featured the Divas as a direct response to this, and by the fourth season it was clear that NXT was only continuing to fulfill international contracts for X amount of WWE shows each week. By season 5, it was clear WWE management no longer had any interest in the show.
  • Small Reference Pools: Calling Bryan Danielson and Low Ki "rookies" was almost insulting to the intelligence of anyone who even knew a little about their history. Both had been around as long as John Cena, Randy Orton or Primo Colon (who they saw fit to make a "pro") and had objectively more rounded resumes as pro wrestlers (making them just like say, London and Kendrick or CM Punk), not to mention longer than either MVP or Miz (who were also "pros", the latter in fact being Danielson's "pro" for good measure). The fact Michael Cole claimed their popularity was "only" due the internet actually did push it to intelligence insulting levels even if you knew absolutely nothing about either before NXT, given everyone on Monday Night Raw had a hard on for what was trending on Twitter.
  • Smurfette Breakout: The women on NXT Season 3 fared a little better on the main roster than many of the other contestants (save Daniel Bryan, Wade Barrett, Ryback and Bray Wyatt). A.J. Lee became the biggest star the women's division had seen in years - she and Kaitlyn both became Divas' Champions, but AJ held the title for much longer and had a number of high-profile angles with male talent throughout 2012 and 2013. Naomi likewise became an Ensemble Dark Horse and made it onto the Total Divas cast. Maxine became an Ensemble Dark Horse on NXT Redemption and was considered one of the best things about the show. Aksana is a marginal case of this: while she did get a regular spot in segments with Teddy Long and a managerial spot with Cesaro, she never really became a star in the women's division. Jamie Keyes in contrast requested her release before NXT Season 3 had even ended (though she did come Back for the Finale).
  • So Bad, It's Good: While the whole show was this prior to becoming the Developmental brand, NXT Season 3 in particular. The show was so ridiculously bad on purpose, that it seemed like its target audience were those who read WrestleCrap every week. It was almost as if WWE took everything that was narmy about the WWE Divas, highlighted it, and placed a few other comedy acts on the show to act as foils, such as heel Michael Cole, Goldust, and Vickie Guerrero. By Week 3, the show was so bad that you had Michael Cole banging a gong at ringside following the rookie challenges. The show's entire appeal is the ensuing Narm Charm, as well as Cole's and Josh Mathews' sarcastic remarks on everyone else involved.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Not that rookies in need of more experience competing against a wrestler who wrestled since WCW was still around in drills having little to nothing to do with wrestling while Michael Cole constantly derides the best wrestler for things that also apply to many of his less talented peers are building blocks of "good" plots, but at least season one and two presented some different matches and few good ones by WWE's five-ten minute TV standards. Season three cut back on the number of "rookies" to six, neglected to find a "really good one", showcased a couple wrestlers hardly trained at all and had Michael Cole put down everyone and everything. It didn't even have as many different matches, let alone as many good ones, since more guys already on the roster had to be brought on. Keeping the already advertised Isis the Amazon, holding onto developmental champion Savanna and bringing an Angel Orsini/LuFisto/Ayako Hamada type to keep Cole's bile limited to "the internet" while ensuring some of those different matches would be trending on Twitter for positive reasons was really seen as the worse way to go? No one even thought it was a good idea to pretend these women mattered as much as their male predecessors? Mercedes Martinez and Cheerleader Melissa had already been on Heat the way previous "rookies" Daniel Bryan and Kaval had been on Jakked/Metal, it wasn't as if WWE was oblivious to such women existing (especially since a younger peer of theirs in Paige ended up being one of the most talked about wrestlers on NXT later). Also, they kept Cole on commentary but not CM Punk, after telling listeners Punk would be back.
  • Tough Act to Follow: Season 1 was by far the most successful set of Rookies, with the immediate end result (The Nexus & Daniel Bryan), meaning that whoever were the next Rookies had their work cut out for them. As evidenced by the end results of Season 2 being a failed attempt to replicate the formation of the Nexus, it did not pan out well. In fact, season 2 actually has the lowest percentage of rookies still on WWE's active roster. Out of the seven, only Titus O'Neil (as half of the Prime Time Players before becoming a singles wrestler) are still with WWE as Husky Harris (Later Bray Wyatt of The Wyatt Family) tragically died while under contract in August 2023 and Axel was released on 2 separate occasions. You know the season could've gone better when out of all the contestants, the season's winner, Kaval, ends up being released first.

    Developmental NXT 
  • And You Thought It Would Fail:
    • Fan response to The Velveteen Dream's debut ranged from mixed responses to outright mockery of the mere idea of the gimmick. Mere months later and Velveteen Dream would be receiving genuine cheers and fan support against Ensemble Dark Horse supreme Aleister Black, despite being a heel. When Black subsequently acknowledged Dream the fans almost cheered the building down.
    • Dexter Lumis; between the retooling done once Killer Kross got signed to make the two characters different, combined with the polarization Sam Shaw had with his 2014 run in TNA, many had zero expectations for Sam/Dexter when he signed with NXT. However, Dexter quickly became the breakout star of 2020 and has managed to lure in a lot of casual/lapsed fans to NXT with his character.
  • Awesome Ego: Enzo Amore's ego was so awesome that it turned both him and Big Cass face.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Dash and Dawson. There are quite a few fans who appreciate their old-school brawler tag team tactics, comparing them favorably to the Brainbusters. In contrast, another group of fans think their matches are dragging and boring and wish they would just get released already. TakeOver: London illustrated this perfectly. While they get a decent mixed reaction at Full Sail, the British booed them out of the building, although in all fairness it could have been because they were facing Ensemble Darkhorses Enzo and Cass. Didn't help that they won the match. Later on, however, they shook off this status by establishing themselves as an incredibly good and incredibly over heel team.
    • Apollo Crews. Either he can get by on just his incredible athleticism alone, or he's just a bland and milquetoast babyface who needs to go away and not come back until he's given an actual character. It got worse after he was promoted to the main roster after less than a year in NXT, where he fell into the exact same status (and it didn't help that Finn Bálor, Bayley, and several other fan-favorites were still stuck in NXT at that time).
    • Liv Morgan attracts a lot of hate from smarks for a look and gimmick that's very similar to Carmella (though she too started off hated before getting Rescued from the Scrappy Heap) and a rather pointless 'push' where she challenged Asuka - only to tap out within a minute. On the other hand, she has a large amount of fans who feel she has a lot of potential and plays the character well (her tomboyish Girl Next Door vibes and interactions with fans on social media also help). The fact that she's a homegrown talent and very green also plays a hand - splitting fans into camps who think she's good for her level and those who feel she should be performing better. This has also prompted a small Fandom Rivalry with Carmella fans over which of them plays the character better (as Liv is actually from New Jersey, while Carmella is a Bostonian who plays a New Yorker).
    • Asuka slipped into this towards the end of her Women's Championship reign; she was considered either a great example of a dominant champion or a Spotlight-Stealing Squad that caused the entire women's division to stagnate. Mind you, some fans took a third option, enjoying her title reign but wishing more of the female competitors would get development so they could feel like legitimate threats to Asuka.
      • One could make the argument that the same thing has happened to Shayna Baszler. She and her Girl Posse run roughshod over the rest of the Women's roster, which made some sense when Shayna was winning due to interference (which also got old once it happened a couple of times too many) - but when she ran across opponents who were Genre Savvy enough to either bring their own backup or take out hers in the lead-up to a title match and she won anyway, it started sliding into Invincible Villain territory. It's not hurting her so much as she's still over with fans who recognize how good she is. Unfortunately, it also has the side effect of hurting the faces that line up to challenge her as it becomes hard to buy into the idea of any of them winning clean.
    • Dexter Lumis, as new fans to NXT that started watching when the show started airing on USA Network can't get enough of him and his more traditional wrestling style and magic realism stalker/vigilante character, while older NXT fans are critical of him being a character-driven wrestler rather than a top-notch in-ring competitor like much of the roster.
    • Zoey Stark. Either she's a very impressive athlete with a ton of potential, or, following the storyline where she and Io Shirai suddenly won the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship, only to be portrayed as not getting along and Startk to start clumsy attempts to bond with Shirai, she's the reason why Shirai hasn't been called up the main roster.
  • Catharsis Factor: After Shayna Baszler ran roughshod over the NXT Women's Division for two years or so, it was so, so satisfying to see her eat a Riptide and a pin from Rhea Ripley. Even more satisfying was seeing Rhea finally beat Shayna in a championship match and take the title off her.
  • Designated Hero: Charlotte Flair frequently inspired this reaction as a face when she was on the brand, as she tended to come across as arrogant and full of herself. It doesn't help that in one promo, she yelled at the crowd for chanting (she was meant to be the face). At the Fatal 4 Way for the Women's title in February 2015, she was technically a face but was the only woman in the match to get audibly booed during her entrance. Despite this, she still was mostly well-liked by the fans, especially in comparison to her incredibly divisive run on the main roster.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • The Ascension are straight up heels in the vein of the Ministry of Darkness, but the NXT crowds love watching Viktor and Konnor destroy anyone placed in front of them.
    • With their exodus to the main roster comes Kevin Owens to take their place. The man capped off day one with a violent Face–Heel Turn against his best friend, ultra-popular Sami Zayn, and despite his talk about doing this for his family has shown that he is a manipulative sociopathic Blood Knight at heart, perhaps the most sadistic wrestler in the history of NXT. Yet people continue to chant "Fight, Owens, Fight!" unless he's committing legalized assault—and when that happens, they chant "Kill, Owens, Kill!".
  • Fan Nickname:
    • The "realest guys" part of Enzo Amore's weekly description of himself and Big Cass caught on to the point of becoming their unofficial team name.
    • After Carmella became a part of the team, some fans use 'Port Authority' as a name for the three of them (short for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which includes Staten Island).
    • The team of Buddy Murphy and Wesley Blake is called the 'Dubstep Cowboys' by some due to their theme.
    • Devin Taylor's lack of emotion (beyond nodding and smiling) has led to her being called 'Devinbot' by some fans.
    • Simon Miller or Johnny Sins for Dan Matha.
    • Alexa Bliss got a Parts Unknown assigned to her, courtesy of a few people mishearing a joke on commentary during her debut. The joke was that she came from the University of Glitz - but fans now joke that she comes from the University of Bliss.
    • Karrion Kross has gotten the nickname "Karen" Kross, partly due to the silliness of his WWE mandate name change, but also towards how Kross lets his valet/girlfriend do the bulk of his talking, with Scarlett doing so in the same style of the "Karen" meme.
    • Among women's wrestling fans, who like to remind people that the 'Four Horsewomen' (Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, Bayley and Becky Lynch) had predecessors in Paige, Emma and Summer Rae - they've been nicknamed the 'OG-3'. Summer Rae and Paige was the first women's feud on NXT, and Paige and Emma wrestled for the first NXT Women's Championship match.
    • Danny Burch and Oney Lorcan are sometimes called the "Brit-Am Brawlers" after how Mauro Ranallo refers to them often but it doesn't seem to be their actual team name, assuming they even have one.
    • The team consisting of former NFL player Pat McAfee, Pete Dunne, Ridge Holland, Danny Burch, and Oney Lorcan, despite being together for almost a year and having a marquee feud with The Undisputed Era, never appeared to get an official name, but fans tended to call them "The Kings of NXT" after McAfee refered to themselves as such in a throwaway line during one of his promos. It went to the point that when a page about the group was created in Wikipedia, it ended up using that very same name.
    • This era of the promotion has been retroactively dubbed the "Black and Gold" era as a way of contrasting it with NXT 2.0.
  • Fountain of Memes:
    • Every Enzo Amore/Colin Cassady promo seems to have at least one line that gets quoted all over the internet after the episode airs. It's at the point where the crowds at NXT have started doing the schtick along with the two of them, and they've only been around for a few months.
    • Any wrestler who has a really noticeable and repeated yell when performing moves; the crowd will pick up on this and begin chanting it when the wrestler is out. One example is Konnor/The Ascension ("YAH!").
  • Friendly Fandoms: Despite WWE's NXT vs AEW's Dynamite being dubbed the "Wednesday Night Wars" (after the Monday Night Wars), both have a smark-heavy audience who appreciate good wrestling no matter which promotion it's from, and many fans watch one show live and time-shift the other.
  • Girl-Show Ghetto: Utterly averted. While the main roster women were doing everything in their power to try and shake their reputation as being the show's "bathroom break," they found themselves constantly hampered by limited airtime, inconsistent characterizations, and weak or nonexistent storylines (hence the birth of the "#GiveDivasAChance" movement by fans who desperately wanted them to break out). That was night and day compared to the women in NXT, who, thanks to an incredibly talented roster and time dedicated to building their feuds and storylines, became appointment viewing for fans, if not so far as being the highlight of the show. By the end of 2015, NXT's women were not only more popular than the main roster women, they were also more popular than some of the male members of NXT and the main roster. It's not surprising if you know that, even back in the Attitude Era, Triple H was willing to go out of his way to help female wrestlers who didn't even have agents and were treated as an afterthought to help plan their matches.
  • Growing the Beard: NXT TakeOver: R-Evolution is considered by many fans to be the point where the current incarnation of NXT went from "really fucking good" to "goddamn AMAZING."
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The use of Fozzy's "Judas" for NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn 3 ended being a twofer:
    • NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn 3 was the night that Tommaso Ciampa betrayed Johnny Gargano, ending #DIY.
    • Also, several years later, the lead singer of said band would throw his lot in with All Elite Wrestling and become its inaugural world champion, even using "Judas" as his new entrance music - which, besides some sarcastic comments about whether WWE considered him a "Judas", was another event that precipitated significant changes to the NXT landscape.note 
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: During his run in Impact Wrestling, it was commented how Sam Shaw's character was similar to that of Dexter Morgan. Upon coming to NXT, he was eventually given the name of Dexter Lumis.
  • Ho Yay: #DIY had a lot of this, to the point that Chuck Taylor lamented their breakup as it made his list of fifty ways they had sexual chemistry together pointless.
  • Hype Backlash:
    • While it's true that NXT is considered to be generally better booked than Raw and SmackDown, the amount of praise that it gets from the IWC is bound to leave some viewers wanting more (this became especially noticeable after the brand started airing on the USA Network). Outside of its TakeOver specials, famed for having virtually every match deliver, many fans consider the actual NXT television episodes to have its strengths and weaknesses like the rest of the product.
    • During the early days, Raquel Diaz was being given a lot of hype in vignettes and in fact was the only female talent getting them while the rest had random matches. People who had seen her work in FCW and been unimpressed felt she was being given an absurd amount of hype purely because of who her father was. Ultimately, she left the company in 2014 due to an eating disorder (though she has started working in the business as an announcer and valet under her real name, Shaul Guerrero).
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Since Solomon Crowe debuted as a hacker, blaming any incident in real life where someone (particularly wrestlers) get hacked on him has become a running gag among fans.
    • Baron Corbin yelled "You should have stayed in Ring of Honor" once at Apollo Crews, despite Crews never having competed for that promotion. Since then, it's become a meme to portray him as yelling "Go back to X!" where X is any random promotion (or country in the case of foreign wrestlers) that his opponent isn't from.
    • The tag team The Mighty Don't Kneel have debuted in NXT as TM61. In the Pokémon games, TM61 is Will-O-Wisp, so jokes about Will-O-Wisp and Jeff Hardy have become quite popular.
    • "I think Ricochet is still spinning." Said by HHH in the post-WarGames II conference call, in reference to Ricochet's double moonsault off the top of the cage.
    • Among longtime watchers of the show, the NXT parking lot has been jokingly called "The Most Dangerous Place In Wrestling" and the like due to the absurd number of beatdowns, brawls, and mystery attack angles that seem to happen in that area, even in broad daylight. (This hasn't let up after the rebrand, either.) WWE even made and sold a Fun T-Shirt about it at one point, and current and former NXT stars have pointed it out in character.
  • More Popular Spin-Off: The developmental brand version of NXT has pretty quickly become very popular with fans, who feel that despite technically being a C-show at most, there are quite a few ways in which it's actually the best show WWE has at the moment in many different ways.
  • My Real Daddy: When Vince McMahon was still involved with dictating the direction of NXT, it was filled with silly competition segments, and was largely ignored by wrestling fans. When Triple H took over, it basically became his own personal project and he essentially turned it into basically an indy show with the financial backing of WWE. Its meat-and-potatoes wrestling style has made it very popular among fans, since it has less "sports entertainment" aspects than the main roster shows.
  • Narm:
    • Since Becky Lynch's Face–Heel Turn, she attempted to preserve her rocker chick character. While it works as part of her face gimmick, it looked awkward and unnatural as a heel.
    • Finn Bálor's entrance when he's wearing body paint? Awesome. Finn Bálor's entrance when he's just in his gear? Still pretty cool. Finn Bálor's entrance when he's wearing a hoodie? Ridiculous. Finn Bálor's entrance when he's wearing a leather jacket as part of the "Bálor Club" brand? Wait, he's flashing his abs and belt instead of crawling around and it looks awesome. Carry on.
    • Mei Ying.note  Chinese NXT wrestlers Xia Li and Boa received mysterious letters which led to a number of vignettes showing them undergoing Training from Hell, causing both to become more aggressive. While their repackagings were well received, people were less enthusiastic about the debut of their aforementioned mysterious new manager/benefactor, whose backstory makes it impossible to take her seriously.note  Given that it sounds straight out of Daredevil or Iron Fist, that seems like the kind of character you'd see on Raw or SmackDown, or even the now-defunct Lucha Underground, not NXT. It doesn't help that, despite being played by a developmental talent note  all she does is sit on her throne at the entrance stage, look evil, and choke anyone that gets too close to her.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • One spot during the Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch match at NXT Unstoppable that also counts as Nausea Fuel and a Moment of Awesome for Sasha: During the match, Sasha locks in a modified Armbar and then, to add more pressure, stands on Becky Lynch's arm as it's being wrenched past her shoulder blade. It legitimately looked like Becky's arm was about to be snapped in half or ripped out of its socket.
    • Marcus Louis' Villainous Breakdown after his partner lost a Hair vs Hair match and left him to suffer the consequences. Normally when a vain heel loses this type of match, it's Played for Laughs, but in this case, it's not funny at all—there's something truly horrifying about Marcus' change afterwards. The man seems completely destroyed and after his return he seems more like a rabid animal than the man he used to be. It's honestly disturbing to think about something like that happening to you. It doesn't help that his last televised appearance before his release had him losing a match and simply wandering out of Full Sail's arena, never to be seen again.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • James Storm appeared in two matches for NXT in late 2015 but was not signed to a developmental contract and eventually returned to TNA. Despite this, his two appearances received some of the biggest pops of the night on the episodes they featured on.
    • The tag team The American Wolves received only a tryout match against The Ascension before being turned down and picked up by TNA and given their tag team championships almost immediately.
    • Britt Baker appears as an audience member during WarGames 2019 and her shocked reaction of concern for her boyfriend Adam Cole instantly became a popular meme in the wrestling community.
    • Alex Shelley appeared in the 2020 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, teaming with his old NJPW tag team partner KUSHIDA.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Bo Dallas was turned heel after a colossal failure of a face run, with Dallas becoming conceited and self-absorbed to the point he was oblivious to the fans' hatred of him and seemed to genuinely think he was beloved by the NXT fans.
    • Before the FCW/NXT merge, telling smarks that you wanted Triple H to succeed Vince McMahon as owner of the company, you would have been laughed out of any forum you voiced your opinion in, on top of calling you a shill. Thanks to the success of NXT, smarks have unanimously been calling for Triple H to become chairman (or at least head of Creative), citing Vince's recent running of the company as out of touch. And then the latter did end up actually happening, when Vince announced his retirement in 2022,note  with Stephanie McMahon becoming chairwoman and Triple H becoming head of Creative of the entire company.
    • When Carmella was added to Enzo and Cass' act, fans immediately rejected the idea of someone joining the duo due to fears of the third wheel messing up the dynamic of the team. This hatedom increased, and started to turn fans on Enzo, due to the Running Gags of Enzo being sexist & being hit for it, and Enzo's frequent hitting on Carmella despite her stated lack of interest in him. The hate subsided after the unpopular gags were dropped, and Carmella began actively supporting the guys in their chase for the NXT tag team titles. Almost immediately afterwards Enzo was back to being the Ensemble Dark Horse of NXT. Carmella started out being largely booed by the crowd, both because of the above and because she was the sole heel member of the group. However, her gimmick slowly shifted to something more in line with Enzo and Cass's babyface personas and now she gets cheered right alongside them as well as when she's on her own. The fact she has since had more singles matches also helped, given the popularity of NXT's women's division.
    • Becky Lynch debuted with a gimmick representing almost every unamusing Irish stereotype imaginable and failed to get any heat for it, to the point that it became the only induction the Black and Gold era of NXT got on WrestleCrap. Her change in gimmick to a mosh pit rocker chick began her redemption with the fans, and a well done Face–Heel Turn along with more chances to show off her incredible in-ring abilities completed the rescue.
    • Bull Dempsey was hated for being a generic heel with low wrestling prowess who was fat and slow with terrible cardio. After taking some time off to get back into shape and expand his moveset, his "Bull-Fit" face gimmick was much better received.
    • Fittingly, Bull's rival Baron Corbin has also been rescued after building up fan dislike due to his repetitive, boring pattern of squash matches. A focus more on Corbin's apathetic, egotistical destroyer character and improvements in the ring have turned his X-Pac Heat into more of a Love to Hate reaction.
    • Dana Brooke had very few fans for a while after her debut due to being seen as simply far too green to deserve a regular spot on the roster. The fact she was almost instantly added to the opening title sequence following her debut (while some big names such as Enzo Amore still were not present and others like Finn Balor took weeks or months to be added to it) put her dangerously close to being a Creator's Pet. Thankfully, between her finding a spot as The Dragon to Emma, her vast improvement both in and out of the ring, and a well-received match with Asuka at Takeover: Respect, she seems to have won over many of the viewers. She fell back, however, into divisive territory after she was called up to the main roster.
    • Mandy Rose wasn't very well-liked during her appearances on Tough Enough due to being yet another blonde model with no experience, calling Sara Lee a "ring rat" (though it was later revealed to be Kayfabe) and being an Elimination Houdini that was favored by The Miz solely for her looks despite often placing last in fan votes, resulting in her being negatively compared to Eva Marie. Once she started appearing on NXT TV, she gained some supporters because A) she actually seems serious about wrestling since she spent over a year working NXT house shows to improve her ability and B) while she's by no means amazing, she can already wrestle circles around the woman she's often compared to.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
    • Leva Bates wrestled in several matches during the early days of NXT as a developmental branch billed as "Blue Pants" (as that was the outfit she wore for her matches). Afterwards she gained recognition as All Elite Wrestling's "The Librarian" Leva Bates.
    • CJ Parker was mostly a low-card wrestler on early NXT, perhaps best known for how his hippie "eco-warrior" gimmick received so much X-Pac Heat that he pulled a Face–Heel Turn, but it did nothing to improve his reception before being released. Once he left the company, he went to New Japan Pro-Wrestling under the name Juice Robinson, where he became a multiple-time IWGP United States Heavyweight Champion.
    • Camacho, the bodyguard of Hunico on the main roster who wrestled in early NXT, is now Tanga Loa of the Guerrillas of Destiny in NJPW.
    • Judas Devlin later became known for his stint on Big Brother under his real name of Austin Matelson and is now All Elite Wrestling's Luchasaurus.
    • Dak Draper of Ring of Honor fame had briefly been employed under the name Travis Tyler, but he was rarely used on NXT TV.
    • Deonna Purazzo was mainly used as a jobber on NXT before her massive success as "The Virtuosa" in Impact Wrestling and her nearly-year-long reign with the Impact Knockouts Championship.
    • Solomon Crowe is Sami Callihan, who was at the time best known for his work in CZW, but is nowadays much more widely known for Impact Wrestling.
  • Rooting for the Empire:
    • Sasha Banks was cheered almost unanimously against Charlotte at the last live special of 2014 - despite Sasha unambiguously being the heel.
    • The all-heel The Undisputed Era is pretty much universally loved, due to their staggering levels of talent and charisma. It helps that Adam Cole is probably one of the most over wrestlers in the industry.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Bo Dallas. The reason the IWC hated him so much was because he was pushed to WWE despite being very green in the ring, and eliminated Wade Barrett in the Royal Rumble of 2013. The hatred was so bad that WWE eventually turned his character into a Heel who believes he's a popular Face and pretends to be a nice person, which spared him further X-Pac Heat.
    • Wound up happening again with CJ Parker. A peace-loving hippie gimmick in the 2010s did not go over at all with the crowd and much like the the Bo Dallas example, this eventually led to him turning heel, becoming more of a smug, whiny environmentalist.
    • And after that, Mojo Rawley began to get flack for what the fans saw as a generic face character gimmick. Then when he was given a Warrior-like gimmick combined with ass-based offense, he became by far the most unpopular male on the roster.
    • Carmella became this for those who feel that her "Princess of Staten Island" character and the associated Running Gag involving Enzo Amore being sexist towards her and constantly getting hit for it is nowhere near as funny as intended to be and actually threw a wrench into Enzo and Big Cass's dynamic. (That being said, some fans have turned on Enzo instead for his sexist comments and his constant refusal to acknowledge that Carmella is not interested in him.) Even the NXT crowd at Full Sail was initially cold to her, showing more appreciation towards her jobber opponent, "Blue Pants" Leva Bates. Thankfully averted later on.
    • When main roster talents visit the stomping grounds of NXT, you can expect them to get every bit of pop or heat they intend to get. But when said main roster talent is perceived to be undeservedly overpushed or fast-tracked for the sake of being The Chosen One that Vince McMahon desires, such as John Cena or Roman Reigns, their babyface status will be soundly rejected with boos.
    • While Baron Corbin tends to inspire mixed reactions, almost nobody liked his rival Bull Dempsey. This is why Dempsey's push was abandoned immediately after the feud with Corbin. However, Dempsey became a lot more well liked as time went on with Corbin now the universally hated one.
    • Blake & Murphy. They're considered by a large chunk of the IWC to be boring on the mic and even more boring in the ring, and they barely get a reaction from the Full Sail crowd besides a few boos and some "SWEET BOYS" chants. This is also partly due to the fact that their main rivals, Enzo and Cass, are quite possibly the most popular guys on the entire roster. Their valet, Alexa Bliss, gets more of a reaction than they do and is much more well-received, but some fans are calling BAMF a poor man's version of The Kingdom.
    • Eva Marie. Despite having at this point being signed for two years and having received personal training from Brian Kendrick she has shown very little improvement since her disastrous matches in 2013 and legitimately forgot to kick out of a pinfall while Full Sail went nuclear once they realized what had happened. She has rapidly reached X-Pac Heat, and it only got worse after fans heard rumors that officials wanted to portray her as "an underdog overcoming adversity" against Bayley at Takeover: London. It got worse when she then injured Carmella (see Rescued from the Scrappy Heap) at a live event with a kick to the head. Fans had already expressed disgust at Eva's presence in NXT to begin with (even allowing that it is a developmental system) and now have evolved into wanting her blacklisted from the company (and her defenders becoming rapid victims of members of the IWC as a consequence, justified or not).
    • Elias Samson has been unpopular since the debut of his Drifter gimmick. Chants of "Drift Away" and other forms of X-Pac Heat are common and he is generally seen by fans as, while not bad in the ring, rather unremarkable. However, he won over a lot of people following his unexpected callup to the main roster in 2017.
    • The Full Sail audience was briefly this to the rest of the fandom in the mid-2010s. Whilst the Full Sail audience was largely seen as passionate, as NXT became more popular over the course of 2014, a portion of the NXT fanbase began to see them as more concerned with getting themselves over than the product. However, come 2015, a portion of the Full Sail audience have begun booing any shows announced to take place outside of Florida and are being viewed as arrogant because they feel that they "deserve" to have every NXT taping & live special whilst everyone else has to make do with watching them on the WWE Network. It got to the point where Kevin Owens had to cut a Worked Shoot on them and tell them off for how selfish and entitled they were being before they began to actively support the brand's expansion again. While they have improved since the fact, they are still Twitter and Reddit's Arch-Enemy and tend to get nitpicked on every single questionable moment by the r/SquaredCircle community.
    • Upon his debut in 2018, "The Finest" Kona Reeves stuck out in the worst way possible; he was hated by the majority of the fanbase due to his boring character and basic in-ring abilities. He was sparsely used until being released on August 2021.
  • Seasonal Rot: In the second half of 2016, while NXT was still considered to be miles better than the main roster (specifically the Raw brand), many were questioning the stability of the roster (particularly the women's). The revival of the brand extension had taken in loads of NXT stars including Finn Balor, Bayley, American Alpha, Carmella, Nia Jax and Alexa Bliss, leaving a somewhat barren roster. Fortunately, NXT were able to get back on their feet by the spring of the following year, with many fans being won back over with the fantastic NXT TakeOver: Chicago and NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn III events.
  • Shocking Moments:
  • Smurfette Breakout: The NXT women's division on the developmental show quickly became incredibly popular. NXT has given each of its women much more time to wrestle, as well as some kind of Character Development. Each women's match on the live specials has been incredibly well-received - as the women are treated like main event material.
  • Spiritual Successor:
    • To WWE's version of FCW, the former developmental system.
    • To OVW when it was still a WWE developmental territory back in the early 2000s where a lot of their stars such as Randy Orton, Batista, Brock Lesnar, CM Punk and John Cena came from.
    • NXT, to an extent, to ECW after the brand extension came back. It helps that, for roughly the last two years of its existence, while viewed as barely a shadow of the actual promotion it was in The '90s, the WWE version of ECW was generally perceived as pretty decent if viewed as a developmental show.
  • Take That, Scrappy!:
    • Dana Brooke got loads of heat for her near-Creator's Pet status, and her obnoxious personality didn't help either. However, she got her just deserts at Takeover: Respect, where she decided to pick a fight with the debuting Asuka, who proceeded to lay into her with so many kicks that Dana didn't even know where she was by the end of the match. And then Asuka did it again at NXT TakeOver: London by laying out Dana's cohort Emma with a nasty spin kick after not one, not two, but three dirty finish attempts. Seeing Dana and Emma's plans blow up in their faces was so supremely satisfying that even heel-leaning commentator Corey Graves had No Sympathy for them afterwards. Catharsis Factor? Yes, indeed.
    • Eva Marie began the battle royale to become number one contender for the NXT Women's Title (on the first NXT of 2016) by being kicked in the face by Asuka and taken out for almost the entirety of the match, to fall back on the tired cliche of a wrestler not actually eliminated coming back to steal the winner's victory at the end... except after dumping Asuka out Eva promptly had the tables turned on her by Carmella and was herself thrown out, to the roaring approval of the crowd who had been prepared to riot seconds before.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Three of the developmental Divas who carried over from FCW when the show was first re-branded. All with lots of potential who got released before they could do much on TV. Sadly it seems all three of them were let go because of sexual harassment from Bill DeMott.
      • Sofia Cortez was the most egregious example, with six years of indie experience and the ability to play both face and heel effortlessly (she in fact received great reactions when she appeared as a face against Natalya). She was preparing for a main roster debut when she was abruptly released for "attitude problems" (which it later turned out were speaking up against DeMott's abuse of trainees). Her incredible work for promotions like Shine, FWE and Lucha Underground just shows what a dumb move it was letting her go.
      • Audrey Marie, who'd had a successful run as the top face in FCW as the Divas Champion and was catching onto wrestling very quickly - holding her own in matches with Paige, Naomi and Sofia Cortez. She was only ever used as a Jobber for her first year, with her sole storyline of note during this time involving tricking Sasha Banks into thinking she had a secret admirer (yes, before A.J. Lee did the same to Kaitlyn) before being released in 2013 and retiring afterwards after a one-off appearance in the independent circuit in 2014. As a look at her work on live events shows, she was a great Heel and quite adept at working the crowd.
      • Caylee Turner, a contestant from WWE Tough Enough and the sister of Alicia Fox. Another Diva who caught onto wrestling very quickly and was able to play both the heel and the face. She wrestled one match on TV and then was quietly released, more egregiously after she had won the FCW Divas' Championship!
    • After years of actually avoiding this with their female wrestlers, this appeared to happen again with Taynara Conti. The first female Brazilian wrestler in WWE, and a black belt in judo who participated in trials for the Brazilian Olympic team at the 2016 Summer Olympics, her most high-profile appearances in WWE consisted of her being among the participants of the Women's Battle Royal in WrestleMania 34 and a storyline that consisted of The Undisputed Era convincing her to attack Nikki Cross. Despite interest about the idea of UE adding a female member, it went nowhere; as it turned out, UE only approached her to attack Cross because they were feuding with Cross's stable SAnitY. After three years of doing nothing of note besides the examples mentioned, she was released April 2020 due to "budget cuts" supposedly due to the COVID-19 Pandemic,note  only for her standout work when she later re-emerged in All Elite Wrestling to show just what a dumb move it was letting her go.
    • EJ Nduka. He had a great physique and stood at 6'9, so he pretty much ticked all the boxes in a star Vince was looking for, and it helped he was given a lot of praise by Wrestling/Edge and John Cena, so it seemed he was destined for success. However, he was let go during the mass releases of 2020 without even making it to TV, apparently stemming from getting into a fight with Drake Younger over Younger using racist terms (and it wouldn't be the first of Younger's controversies).
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Zig-Zagged with the Breakout Tournament, which NXT held in the summer of 2019 to show off some of their new talent, with the winner earning an NXT title match of their choice; ultimately it was won by Jordan Myles (formerly Ring of Honor's ACH). Myles vanished from TV shortly after his title match, which was unfortunate but unavoidable due to a dispute with WWE; less forgivable is that almost no one else from the tournament (save Angel Garza, who won the Cruiserweight title and later made it to the main roster) has done anything of significance either. However, this was gradually subverted by the following year as participants Cameron Grimes, Dexter Lumis, Boa, Isaiah "Swerve" Scott, Bronson Reed and even Joaquin Wilde all began to establish themselves as legitimate competitors.
  • Tough Act to Follow:
    • The first people to be called from NXT after it became WWE's developmental? The Shield.note  Even years after their debut, no NXT star has come even close to achieving the amount of success the Shield have.
    • The developmental version often inspires this reaction with regards to the main roster. For example the final live special of 2014 was regarded as one of the best shows of the year. The TLC PPV followed a few days later and was considered a dud by most fans. It has been rumoured that main roster talent are resentful of the time and attention NXT gets.
    • The "Four Horsewomen of NXT" as they have been called (Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, Bayley and Charlotte Flair), were the top women's stars (and some of the top stars overall on the show), and it's fair to say expectations are very high for the next wave of women's talent now that all four of them (along with other NXT mainstays like Alexa Bliss and Carmella) are on the main roster. All that's left are Asuka and a bunch of women who are too green and/or new to pose any credible threat to her, which is presumably why they brought Mickie James back to be Asuka's opponent at NXT TakeOver Toronto.
    • The Kevin Owens vs. Finn Balor main event at Takeover Brooklyn was seen as underwhelming following up Bayley vs. Sasha Banks, said to be the best women's match in WWE history. It certainly wasn't a bad match by any means, especially considering the talent involved and the fact that it was a Ladder Match — it was just completely outshined by the match before it.
    • Sami Zayn vs. Shinsuke Nakamura at TakeOver: Dallas was the definitive version of this. It was extremely emotional from the start, with it being Nakamura's debut and Zayn's farewell as he was moving up to the Main Roster along with just being a general Dream Match. Just the entrances of both men were exceptional. The match then went on to be a legitimate MOTY contender and completely spent the audience (they even chanted "Fight Forever"). You'd think such a hot match would go on late. It went on 3rd to Last, mostly to protect the importance of the singles titles which was understandable. However the following matchups, Bayley/Asuka and Balor/Joe II, definitely suffered. The crowd was somewhat muted for the Women's Match, which says something due to Bayley's immense overness and Asuka's own following and the Balor/Joe match got hurt by Joe getting busted open above the eye within the first 30 seconds causing constant interruptions by medical staff. If nothing else, TakeOver: Dallas demonstrated why most shows actively need cooldown matches, and not just an entire card of greatness—crowds just can't go that long without a breather.
    • Andrade "Cien" Almas vs. Johnny Gargano, which says a lot about the quality of wrestling in NXT. The build-up which involves Johnny's wife, Candice LeRae, set up the stage for a grandiose encounter between the two at TakeOver: Philadelphia. Almas and Gargano made their match a wrestling clinic, leaving many fans in awe, and Dave Meltzer gave his first 5-star rating for an NXT match.
      • Amazingly, NXT managed to subvert this by actually managing to successfully follow up on it- the next TakeOver at New Orleans managed to score two 5-star ratings from Meltzer, one for the opening 6-man ladder match for the new NXT North American Championship, the second for Johnny Gargano vs Tommaso Ciampa in the main event. Of course, now that is the Tough Act to Follow for whatever comes next...
    • Johnny Gargano vs. Adam Cole at TakeOver: New York exceeded every expectation, which says a lot, given that quality matches have become NXT's trademark. Although the match was intended to be the climactic blow-off to the Gargano vs. Ciampa feud, an unfortunate injury put that on hold, so Ciampa vacated the title, and Cole won the right to fight for it with Gargano. The match featured a lot of brutal spots and a finisher galore, but even The Undisputed Era's interference couldn't keep Johnny down, and he finally fulfilled his promise and became the NXT Champion and the first NXT Triple Crown Champion. Big Dave has also given the match an astonishing score of 5.5 stars, the first for WWE.
    • Overall, with the original "black and gold" era of NXT done to make way for its reboot, some say that NXT's original run from 2012-2021 has left this impression on NXT 2.0. See Contested Sequel for NXT 2.0 below.
  • Unexpected Character:
    • Babatunde debuted in the Greatest Royal Rumble 2018 PPV event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, despite not even having made a proper debut on NXT TV yet.
    • The "Namer of Dummies" himself, Eli Drake (under the new ring name LA Knight) appearing on the NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day pre-show, especially as he already had an unproductive stint in WWE developmental in the past.
  • Values Dissonance: Back in the early years of NXT being a developmental, it wasn't unusual for an episode of NXT to not have any women's matches or segments much like its predecessor, FCW (Florida Championship Wrestling). These days, an episode of NXT generally has at least two or more women's matches in an effort to promote gender equality, not to mention that Triple H and Shawn Michaels are huge fans of women's wrestling.

    NXT 2.0/White and Gold 
  • Badass Decay: Admittedly, there were a lot of external factors note  but it's hard to buy Tony D'Angelo as some type of intimidating mob boss when his "family" now consists of exactly two people, counting himself. Nicely subverted on the duo's 2023's face turn and tag title win in July though.
  • Contested Sequel: Considering that this show is directly replacing arguably the most beloved of WWE's shows for the majority of the The New '10s, this definitely applies to 2.0, which is directly harkening back to NXT's original purpose as developmental for the main roster instead of the indie supershow it became during its later years. Supporters praise its character work while still displaying very well-done in-ring work with the likes of Bron Breakker and Carmelo Hayes as standout examples. However, detractors argue that the majority of 2.0's storylines and booking nearly seem to rehash disliked booking tropes seen on the main roster or from the lesser years of the Ruthless Aggression Era, breaking away from the more grounded and grittier feel that the "Black and Gold" NXT encapsulated. They Changed It, Now It Sucks! was the reaction of a lot of fans.
  • Designated Hero: Diamond Mine, despite being a heel stable, anytime they feud with another heel (such as Roderick Strong vs. Carmelo Hayes, the D'Angelo Family or Imperium) are usually treated as the good guy for whatever reason. This was later averted, as, after Malcolm Bivens was let go, the group became faces save for Roddy's Bad Boss tendencies.
  • Growing the Beard: During the shift from the 2.0 branded era to its current "white and gold" incarnation, where many fans came back around to enjoying the product that harnessed the strengths of both the 2.0 and "black and gold" era.
  • Love to Hate: Grayson Waller is basically the NXT version of The Miz - a self-absorbed, loudmouthed tool that people want to see get his ass kicked.
  • The Scrappy:
    • After the NXT 2.0 reboot, Von Wagner would fall into this category, mainly due to his less than impressive wrestling skills and poor physique, being seen as incredibly generic.note  Being shoehorned into an NXT Title match replacing Ensemble Dark Horse Kyle O'Reilly, and subsequently being placed in a tag team with him when it was clear that O'Reilly was waiting for his contract to expire, only to pull a Face–Heel Turn and being made the one to write O'Reilly off NXT didn't help matters.
    • Joe Gacy, as of this writing, has had two gimmicks on NXT 2.0 that were absolutely despised by fans. First was his "SJW" gimmick, a Shallow Parody of left-wing social politics who doesn't say anything meaningful, just repeating pointless out-of-context buzzwords while not actually seeming to have any character direction other than to hang around annoying people. However, as time went on, he started to shed some of the more controversial aspects of his gimmick, namely the buzzwords... and started acting more like Bray Wyatt but with far less intrigue, which if anything made fan reaction worse.
  • WTH, Costuming Department?: When SCRYPTS (formerly the main roster's Reggie) made his debut, many people were appalled by the mask he was wearing, with many deeming it ugly and tacky, and even among the worst masks in wrestling history.

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