Stables have been a stalwart in professional wrestling for decades, going back to groups like the Four Horsemen and the Fabulous Freebirds. NXT has two big name stables in Sanity and the Undisputed Era, but there appears to be one more in the works.
During an NXT live event in Cocoa, Florida, NXT wrestlers Lacey Evans, The Forgotten Sons, Wesley Blake and Steve Cutler, and Chad Lail attacked Sanity in the ring. Lail was previously known as Gunner from Impact Wrestling and it appears he will be competing in NXT under his real name. If this is the new forming of a faction, the wrestlers did not divulge their new stable’s name.
The images below are from Twitter users Wayne Mason and Graven.
You have my attention! @TheWWEBlake @ChadLailWWE @SteveCutlerWWE @LaceyEvansWWE #NXTCocoa pic.twitter.com/jbex4gu9s2
— Wayne (@BrokenZen333) February 18, 2018
@LaceyEvansWWE @TheWWEWolfe @SteveCutlerWWE @TheWWEBlake pic.twitter.com/9FZVz4kwfY
— Graven🇵🇸 (@gravenbabies) February 18, 2018
It is interesting to see NXT bring these four particular wrestlers together.
Evans has been wrestling in NXT’s women’s division and was recently in a program with Sanity’s Nikki Cross.
Cutler and Blake have been a tag team at NXT live events and recently appeared on broadcasts together. The duo recently their participation in this year’s Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic tournament.
All three wrestlers have been competing in the midcard of their respective divisions and could have chips on their shoulders because they felt they were forgotten by the fans and locker room.
As for Lail, he made his NXT debut at a live event in June 2017 in a loss against No Way Jose.
During his time with Impact, Lail had success, including reigns with the TNA Television and Tag Team Championships What is interesting about pairing Lail with Blake, Cutler and Evans is it’s kind of similar to how Sanity came together with Eric Young teaming with Alexander Wolfe, Nikki Cross and Sawyer Fulton – before he was injured and Killian Dain joined the faction.
Factions generally serve a couple of different purposes, one being to help talent get over with the audience. In this case, this stable could be a platform to help all four competitors get over with the audience. This benefits Blake, Evans and Cutler in the fact that they are doing something on NXT and not spinning their wheels.
In this case, fans could see this new group form on an episode of NXT and work a program with Sanity as a way to get the latter out of NXT when they are called up to the main roster. This new stable probably won’t have the same theme of anarchy as Sanity because NXT likes to debut their stars and tag teams in different ways.
Of course, there is a chance this stable does not make it to TV and are scrapped. Having these four come together at live events is a way to test them out and see how they work at live events, as well as how to gauge the crowd’s reception to them.
If this power group does make it to an NXT broadcast, then the brand has new some power players.
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Speaking of newcomers to NXT, earlier this week WWE announced German MMA fighter Nicolai Salchow as the newest recruit to the Performance Center. In addition to his MMA background, he holds brown belts in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Luta Livre. He has won championships in grappling and Thai competitions.
Salchow attended a tryout at the Performance Center in last June.
