Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: damian priest, NXT, Rhea Ripley, wrestling, wwe

Report: Rhea Ripley, Damian Priest Set to Leave NXT for Main Roster

Published Fri, 08 Jan 2021 09:35:03 -0600

A new dirt sheet rumor claims that two NXT stars are set for debuts on WWE Raw or Smackdown this week. One of the debuts was supposed to happen already, according to the report, but will instead be pushed to later this month.

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In the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reports that Damian Priest was originally set to debut on last week's episode of Smackdown to partner with Kevin Owens against Roman Reigns and Jey Uso. However, Owens, who is one of the few wrestlers in WWE that seems to have the pull to convince Vince McMahon to change his mind about things, didn't like the idea because WWE planned to book Priest as Owens' best friend, which doesn't really make any sense. After another attempt at the story that would see WWE booking Priest to team with Owens for Owens' own good since he keeps getting his ass kicked, he and Roman Reigns simply got the whole thing dropped. But Priest, who has been losing all his big matches on NXT for a while now, is still set for a main roster call up, according to Meltzer. Meltzer says that now Priest will debut on Raw by the end of the month.

Another star who has been losing in NXT for most of 2020, Rhea Ripley, is also headed to the main roster soon, according to Meltzer. "Rhea Ripley losing to Raquel Gonzalez on NXT is because Ripley is moving to either Raw or Smackdown imminently," Meltzer said. "That match was to write her off the show." Of course, that seemed obvious (we even said so in our recap of the show yesterday morning), but look, wrestling dirt sheet rumormongering is like 95% speculation based on common sense analysis of what's on television and 5% Paul Heyman feeding you information for his own personal gain.

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