NXT Advent Calendar Day 6: A six-man ROH match featuring 6 future NXT wrestlers

It is often quite interesting to look at all the major stars from Ring of Honor's past that eventually found themselves in a WWE ring. Back in the promotion's earliest days, it seemed only a handful of stars could ever attract the attention of the world's largest promotion, but that time has changed. Now as we look back at a main event from ROH on HDNet in 2009, we see six men that have found their way into NXT at one time or another.

The American Wolves are top stars in TNA now, but they
had one brief grand NXT moment. Image credit: Wikipedia.

The heel team has a far less storied history with WWE. Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards seemed like they would be the next huge signing for WWE when they made a single appearance on NXT against The Ascension. But The American Pitbulls of Derek Billington and John Cahill would never sign a full contract with WWE and moved on to TNA.

Will a new TNA take shape at Bound For Glory?

I don't watch much TNA anymore. When it was on Spike, replays would appear on the site and be easily viewable by yours truly. Destination America does not do the same, nor do they offer the show on content partner Hulu, so I am left to follow most of TNA's storylines through recaps. Sometimes that leaves folks with a more negative view of a program if a reviewer personally doesn't like a segment (or vice versa.) But I have to say that while it doesn't have the depth of name talent previous TNA pay-per-views had, the upcoming Bound For Glory sounds incredibly solid.

The BFG poster is not helped by the large
image of the currently suspended Bram.

The show is headlined by a triple threat match for the TNA World Heavyweight title as champion Ethan Carter III defends against Matt Hardy and Drew Galloway with Jeff Hardy as special guest referee. I personally think this sounds like one of the weakest matches on the card not because the talent involved isn't great, but because the booking clearly implies typical TNA shenanigan booking to end the show. The big pay-per-view should have a decisive finish and it just seems doubtful that with his enemy EC3 and his brother Matt in the ring that Jeff will call it down the middle.

The day you put on great title matches and no one shows up

This last week has not been a pretty one for televised wrestling. Raw took a massive drop in ratings to get one of its lowest ranked shows ever. Ring of Honor also took a massive plummet. But even Impact Wrestling fell while still advertising two solid title matches in one night: a thirty man Iron man battle for the vacant tag titles and the long awaited showdown between Ethan Carter III and Kurt Angle for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship.

By all accounts, both matches delivered. The battle between Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards, The Wolves, and Austin Aries and Bobby Roode, the Dirty Heels, was a thirty minute modern classic by four stars at the top of their game. With a full thirty minutes to work the crowd and each other, this seemed to be the perfect match to answer all the complaints that Impact Wrestling matches rarely spread out over a maximum of ten minutes. But the four men appear to have made fans flee the program instead of stay with it. This of course brings into question what television wrestling fans are really hoping to get out of Impact every week. Are the fans that want longer matches the true movers of the program? Or is it the more casual fans drawn up in the often overly complicated storylines.


But no match on Impact in recent months had as much build as Ethan Carter III versus Kurt Angle. The build for the two men's title match has been huge. Over the past two years, the former Derrick Bateman proved he was a capable main eventer in TNA. Nowhere could he prove that more aptly than in a main event title match against a multiple Hall of Famer like Kurt Angle.


EC3 would walk away with his first TNA World Heavyweight title, but he would not lead the show to good ratings.

Impact Wrestling is already on fragile ground. I am not a doomsayer for the company, nor am I a person that ever believes everything Dave Meltzer writes about its future. But it is a company in need of viewers and a path. With the current set of spoilers for the next month, it seems to be finally on the path. But it is anyone's guess whether the viewers will ever return.