Ranking WWE NXT Class Of 2012 From Worst To Best
Who did WWE Talent Relations boss John Laurinaitis give to Triple H the LAST time he had the job?
Full disclosure before we get started - this class doesn't include the women of the 2012 FCW/NXT roster.
That's not to say there weren't some future megastars in the system by then, but that the inspiration for this look back at the first NXT crew came from a shot of the male class doing the rounds on Wrestling Twitter following the news that the former Talent Development doyen that left all this behind was back in business!
John Laurinaitis' Florida Championship Wrestling didn't put a lot of stock in the future of women's wrestling. Some would argue it didn't put that much in the future of the men either, but at least some of the performers below weren't reduced to bikini contests and dance-offs on the barely-attended house shows. They got their own roster page as "Superstars", in contrast to the marginalised "Divas" that just happened to include the likes of Paige, Bayley and Sasha Banks.
What a f*cking sh*tshow of a time. And it's a time Vince McMahon has welcomed back, potentially due to a failing in his developmental system that he's orchestrated. In the early days of Bruce Prichard's podcast, he used to rib Laurinaitis as a spineless yes-man...before he got back in his old hot-seat as the original master in the role.
This list might not be a retrospective, but a realisation of what to expect in the near future. It's also why it's healthiest to do these things from worst to best...
42. Chad Baxter
Chad Baxter's great body didn't equate to a great body of work. The developmental talent worked twice for FCW before amassing a handful of mostly non-televised NXT matches before eating a release at the end of 2012.