WWE Reportedly Considering Promoting Bron Breakker From NXT To Main Roster

WWE is dropping plenty of hints that Bron Breakker’s days in NXT are numbered, and the charismatic young star may indeed be main roster bound.

According to the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer (h/t WrestlingNews.co), Breakker, the son of legendary tag team perform Rick Steiner, is under consideration for a call-up to Raw or SmackDown: “There is talk of him going to the main roster pretty quickly. He’s wrestling on this weekend’s house shows. Maybe he’ll lose [at NXT Stand & Deliver] and just go to the main roster.”

Over the past decade-plus, WWE has been heavily criticized for its inability to create new stars. Yet, Breakker looks like a shoo-in to help break that trend.

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Though—as proven by names like Braun Strowman, Bray Wyatt and Alexa Bliss—WWE’s inability to pump out new stars is over-exaggerated to an extent, there is something to be said about the company’s genuine struggles with creating larger-than-life superstars who can carry the sports entertainment juggernaut for the next 15-20 years.

By most accounts, Breakker has all the tools to get to the same level that Roman Reigns—who is widely praised today but was once endlessly bashed—is currently at, and if recent happenings are any indication, he may do it sooner rather than later.

Just this week, Breakker made his main roster debut in a tag team match on Monday Night Raw that was undoubtedly meant to put some more eyes on NXT. The black-and-yellow brand has recently been attracting an audience that is roughly half as big as it was when the show first debuted in 2019. That, of course, is because the current NXT—now dubbed NXT 2.0—is drastically different from what it was even less than a year ago.

It wasn’t long ago that NXT spent at least a couple of years as a legitimate—albeit lesser—third brand for WWE, but it’s now essentially a developmental territory through and through. The purpose of developmental? Well, it is quite obviously to help younger stars hone their skills in hopes that they eventually became massive stars on Raw or SmackDown.

At a time when AEW has at least a handful of promising current or future main event caliber stars age 30 or younger (MJF, Adam Page, Darby Allin, Dante Martin, Jungle Boy, etc.) under contract, WWE has failed to established many—if any—stars in that same mold. The 24-year-old Breakker, however, is giving fans hope that this could change.

With next to zero experience in the pro wrestling business, Breakker—a former college football player and incredible athlete—has demonstrated that he has what it takes to be a main eventer on WWE’s main event stage. His debut on Raw shows that WWE is serious about potentially promoting him to Raw or SmackDown soon, as does the fact that he lost the NXT Championship on this week’s episode of NXT—not to mention his upcoming main roster live event appearances.

In early April, Breakker will likely get a chance to win back the NXT title from new champion Dolph Ziggler at NXT Stand & Deliver, but if he doesn’t, that can be taken as another strong sign that his main roster promotion is on the horizon. And maybe it should be.

WWE’s main roster was stripped bare in 2021 with a series of cost-cutting releases—more than 80 in total—that continued a trend that began in 2020. The seemingly endless stretch of mass releases has left WWE’s main roster remarkably thin, with marquee stars like Jeff Hardy, Cesaro, Keith Lee and numerous others leaving the company with a barren roster, one that has made it almost impossible to fill out five hours of Raw and SmackDown with compelling programming each week.

Enter Bron Breakker.

At just 24 and with less than two years of pro wrestling experience, is Breakker ready to be a main eventer on WWE’s main roster? Probably not. But WWE’s recent strategy of relying on the same veteran talents over and over—all while releasing promising stars from the midcard on downward—hasn’t exactly worked out, as evidenced by a WrestleMania 38 card that features so many part-timers and celebrities in a slate of underwhelming and short-sighted matches.

The bottom line is this: WWE wouldn’t need to depend so heavily on the likes of Ronda Rousey or Brock Lesnar if it was able to create more Bron Breakkers. And while it would be an uphill battle for Breakker to immediately succeed on Raw or SmackDown, throwing him into the fire with the big dogs is a better strategy than letting him marinate in a difficult-to-watch NXT for too long.

High risk, high reward? Sure. But, in this situation, the reward is definitely greater than the risk.