Tracing Adrian Neville's Journey to the Top of WWE NXT

Adrian Neville is perched atop WWE NXT, a champion, a fireball, poised to make another leap forward.

The Man Who Gravity Forgot has spent the last 10 years perfecting a craft he first learned in his hometown of Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. That was just the first place he has launched himself from. 

Neville is a suitcase pasted with stickers from various countries. The dynamic athlete thrilling fans at Full Sail University in Florida took his early flights in the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and the American independent circuit.

Formerly known as PAC, Neville first made his name by whirling around the ring like a cartoon. In time, he has refined his overflowing stock of athletic skill. 

That learning process began a decade ago just a short drive away from his hometown.

England, Europe and Beyond

The West Denton Social Club hosted an Independent Wrestling Federation (IWF) event on March 27, 2004. In one of the eight matches on the card that night, a teenager stepped into the ring with the long-haired man known as Assassin. 

He lost.

Neville's early career saw him make his way across England—Gateshead, Portsmouth, Shildon. Promoters from around the country welcomed him, quickly moving to put championships around his waist. In 2006 alone he won the 3CW Young Lions Championship the wZw Cruiserweight Championship and FWA Flyweight Championship. 

Neville was still a skinny kid back then, but unlike the rest of the skinny kids stepping between the ropes around him, his physical abilities were the kind that made one wonder if he was a real-life X-man.

Even if he was years away from learning how to effectively tell a story in the ring, word spread about his talent.

Promotions outside of England soon called. Westside Xtreme Wrestling signed up for a match in Essen, Germany, on Sept. 16, 2006, a five-man elimination bout that featured Mike Quackenbush and Ricky Marvin.

He then trekked farther and farther away from home—Scotland, California, Austria.

It was during this stretch that he first went up against men he would later face at NXT. He battled Claudio Castagnoli (now Cesaro) in Pennsylvania and El Generico (now Sami Zayn) in Germany.

In 2008, he adopted a jungle-native persona while working in Spain.  

Why a promoter would try to sell an Englishman as a loin cloth-wearing "primitive" is hard to understand, but here he was, one of wrestling's great young athletes asked to be caricature. He was known as Jungle PAC, a cross between Kamala and the Tasmanian Devil.

It didn't matter what he was wearing, though. Neville wowed the crowd as he leaped from the ropes and flipped up onto his feet.

After country-hopping for years, he would settle in a nation known for its wrestling—Japan.

The Geordie in Japan 

From 2007 to 2012, Neville would make Japan his home and the wrestling rings there his proving ground.

Of his time there, he told Byron Saxton in an interview on WWE.com, "That's really where I developed into both the athlete and person I am today. I learned great lessons of respect and honor while traveling all across the Land of the Rising Sun."

Working for the Dragon Gate promotion, he would replace Matt Sydal (Evan Bourne in WWE) in the Typhoon faction, one high-flyer switched out for another.

He battled in six- and eight-man tag matches alongside men like CIMA, BxB Hulk and Dragon Kid. On a bigger stage than the promotions in England, he didn't have to carry matches. He was only in for short bursts, a key cog in a larger machine.

Neville roamed around the island nation—Nagoya, Tokyo, Hyogo. With each match he was gaining experience, stellar competition elevating him.

Fellow dynamo Ricochet met him there as both an ally and an opponent. When they went to war, it felt like you were watching it on fast-forward.

It's easy to see why Neville was attracting attention from fans and promoters alike. As many great athletes as wrestling boasts, he was clearly in a rare class. 

That was evident in some of the standout performances he amassed in Japan.

When he switched allegiances to the group known as World-1, he competed in a variety of fun, fast-paced tag bouts. He headlined events like the Summer Adventure Tag League III and Aggressive Gate 2009.

By the time New Japan Pro Wrestling beckoned, Neville had added bulk to his frame. He was stronger, more toned and a better all-around wrestler. 

Being invited to the Best of the Super Juniors tourney is an honor. It is recognition of being one of the world's top cruiserweights.

When competing in the Best of the Super Junior XIX (in 2012), he put on two of his best matches to date. One of them came against Fergal "Prince" Devitt, who would later become Finn Balor at NXT.

Make the kind of buzz Neville was making in Japan, put on the jaw-dropping performance that he was and WWE will eventually take notice. 

Gold in Florida

NXT was in its early stages of transition to what it is today when Neville began wrestling there in 2013.

Florida Championship Wrestling, WWE's feeder system at the time, was gone. So was the sillier, stunt-based version of NXT. It was morphing into a more refined minor league system, and Neville soon became one of its faces.

His name now changed to Adrian Neville, he took on his first NXT opponent on Dec. 6, 2012, defeating Sakamoto in just over three minutes.

In the process of building NXT, the company had to have its cornerstones and its champions. It chose Neville to be the latter early on.

Just weeks after debuting, he and fellow Englishman Oliver Grey were thrown into the tournament to crown the first NXT tag champs. He and Grey, known as British Ambition, defeated The Wyatt Family to earn that prize.

During his run as tag champ, he showed off that familiar dazzling style. It was pulled back some, partly a product of fitting into the WWE style and partly because Neville was beginning to know how to better place the most explosive parts of matches.

You can't just a have a movie with 90 minutes of explosions, and you can't have a great match that is just a succession of high-flying moves.

It was after he had won and lost the NXT tag titles the second time (Corey Graves his partner then) that he began to show off how far he had come as an in-ring storyteller.

WWE began pushing him as a singles star and as a contender for the NXT title. His matches featured the same amazing moments that his work in Europe did. But his technical skills had jumped up, and his ability to control a match improved.

When he battled in and won the first-ever NXT Ladder match at NXT Arrival, that improvement was abundantly clear. His win against Bo Dallas was the first of a stretch of great matches.

WWE's confidence in him increased over time. Each time it gave him a bigger opportunity, he made the company's decision look like a wise one.

It sent in wrestlers from the main roster to face him—Justin Gabriel, Brodus Clay, Titus O'Neil and Tyson Kidd. Each time, Neville looked like he belonged. Each time, he helped compose one of each wrestler's best matches.

He has headlined all three of NXT's live specials and is now closing in on Dallas for the right to be called the longest-reigning NXT champ ever.

There's little left for Neville to accomplish at WWE developmental. The next leg of his journey has to be to the main roster to make a whole new set of fans marvel.

He'll be ready for it. English social clubs and Japanese arenas have plenty prepared.