WWE OFFICIALS ARE REPORTEDLY KEEN ON MAKING RECENT NXT CALL-UP BOBBY ROODE, THE MAIN SUPERSTAR OF THE SMACKDOWN LIVE BRAND.
Roode made his main roster debut last Tuesday after dropping the NXT Championship to Drew McIntyre at the last NXT Take-Over PPV, which was held in Brooklyn.
Multiple reports say that during Roode’s time in NXT, they’ve seen him as a potential superstar to market their brand around and are high on what the former TNA World Heavyweight Champion has to offer.
Now arguably during his time as WWE Champion, AJ Styles was Smackdown’s go-to-guy, even as a heel he was getting positive reactions from the crowd, which made his transition from heel to face a relatively smooth one.
But with Roode looking like a face following his introduction to Smackdown, beating a heel superstar in Aiden English, then it looks like that the WWE are hearing the positive reaction to Roode with his theme song chanted throughout all age group demographics, that he could be the guy that they market to their audience at house shows and on television.
As he finished his match with English, he cut a post-match promo with Renee Young in which he was almost in a tweener position, in selling himself as how he did in NXT but also playing off the crowd.
“First of all, Renee I want to congratulate Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon for breaking the bank and cashing in the hottest free agent in sports entertainment today, Bobby Roode. If you don’t know by now you’re about to find out, that everything I do and everything I touch is big box office and in a New York minute, Smackdown Live went from being great to being absolutely GLORIOUS.”
Whether this was a promo that creative gave Roode full control over remains to be seen but from that short minute of a promo, it is an indication that Roode won’t be far off a high-profile feud in the near time future.
Fortunately for Roode, he has the support of former Raw general manager Eric Bischoff who says Roode has the talent to be successful in whatever role, when speaking on his latest edition of his podcast, Bischoff on Wrestling.
Bischoff said on Roode;
“I think Bobby Roode has all of the talent in the world to be successful anywhere on the card, including the main event. I can’t say enough good things about Bobby Roode. As a human being, as a performer. I am just surprised it has taken this long quite frankly. I expected Bobby to kind of explode out of the scene much the same way AJ Styles did. I can’t say enough good things about him.”
With the backing of such an influential character in the wrestling industry, this is just the start of Roode’s rise through professional wrestling there is no reason why Eric Bischoff won’t be right in this case in that the former TNA superstar will mirror the success of fellow ex TNA alumni AJ Styles.
Jordan’s Thoughts
Despite being an eighteen-year veteran of professional wrestling, Roode re-invented himself during his time on WWE’s developmental brand NXT, he adopted the same wrestling style but went from the ‘IT Factor’ to ‘Glorious’ and that itself shows that the WWE Creative can help mould such a successful character, when the two are on the same wave length.
The influence of Shawn Michaels at the WWE Performance Centre and the final touches from Triple H has moulded Roode into a believable superstar and to move him to the Smackdown brand will prove to be a masterstroke.
If he were to have debuted on RAW he may have been lost amongst the pile but now he can add a new lease of life to the Blue brand and I can only see Roode being the reason that SD Live viewership returning to its highs again.