Tye Dillinger and WWE NXT's Top 5 Most Underrated Performers
Arguably the hottest commodity in all of wrestling at the moment, WWE NXT has served as a platform for many rookies on the rise over the years.
From the main event players already on Raw and SmackDown to the hungry up-and-comers who are still honing their craft down in WWE Developmental, stars such as Seth Rollins and Bray Wyatt are primary examples of how successful NXT has been in building the foundation for the future.
Finn Balor, Samoa Joe and Bayley are among the current crop of talent down in NXT leading the revolution and have been utilized to their full potential. Even those who aren't as high up on the card such as Enzo Amore, Colin Cassady and Baron Corbin all have characters that the crowd cares about.
Not everyone on the roster, however, is as fortunate. A handful of names have either been underutilized and misused or have had their abilities go to waste.
Granted, NXT can't focus on everyone at one time, but these five individuals deserve better than what they've been dealt as of late. It remains to be seen whether their deserved push will ever come their way, but in the meantime, it's appropriate we shine some light on NXT's most underrated competitors.
Tye Dillinger
1 of 5
Tye Dillinger is the only member of the NXT roster to have been previously under contract to the company. He wrestled a handful of matches under the name Gavin Spears for the ECW brand in late 2008 and early 2009 but always came up short.
In September 2013, WWE re-signed Dillinger to a developmental deal, and although fans waited with bated breath for him to get his big break, it has yet to come. Although he teamed with Jason Jordan for a little more than a year, nothing ever came out of it, and the two were eventually split up to set in motion Jordan's new alliance with Chad Gable.
Since embarking on his own path, Dillinger has reinvented himself with the "Perfect 10" gimmick, which sees him hold up 10 fingers and rate everything he does in the ring as being perfect. It's about as basic as it gets, but it hasn't stopped the NXT faithful from getting behind it at Full Sail University and at live events.
Despite his change in character, Dillinger hasn't been involved in anything of note in recent months. He's been on the winning end of a few matches here and there, but other than that, he's mostly been directionless.
Dillinger has showed signs of crazy charisma in the past in addition to being a natural in the ring, there's no reason why he shouldn't be higher on the card right now.
The Mechanics
2 of 5
It's difficult to refer to The Mechanics as being underrated when they're rarely featured on NXT TV, but from the little that fans have seen of them, it's evident they have the potential to be a cornerstone of the tag team division not only in NXT but in WWE.
Similar to Tye Dillinger, Scott Dawson has been with WWE for some time now and has bounced around from team to team before finally settling on the newly signed Dash Wilder. They formed a partnership in the summer of 2014 but have worked has a "jobber" tandem ever since.
Having had experience running the High Velocity Wrestling group out of Hendersonville, North Carolina, Wilder is no rookie, but the casual viewer would never know that based on the small amount of exposure he and Dawson get on NXT. As generic as they might seem, their rough-and-tough personas are a throwback to the old-school wrestlers, with Dawson bearing a striking resemblance to one Arn Anderson.
Edge and Christian went so far as to give them props during their candid interview with Stone Cold Steve Austin in September. There's certainly something special about them if they're receiving praise from two of the greatest tag team stars of all time.
At the very least, they were able to advance to the semifinals in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, where they proved their worth against Samoa Joe and Finn Balor before taking the loss. Plus, they beat The Vaudevillains in a non-title match earlier in the tournament, so perhaps an NXT Tag Team Championship match is in their immediate future.
Solomon Crowe
3 of 5
For well over a year, fans of NXT and of the former Sami Callihan anxiously awaited his debut for the brand, but for one reason or another, it was constantly pushed back. In fact, he was scheduled to make his premier appearance on NXT in March 2014, but his match against Sylvester Lefort never made it to TV.
It wasn't until the February 18, 2015, edition of NXT that Solomon Crowe officially arrived after weeks and weeks of mysterious vignettes. Despite it being reported in August 2014 in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (h/t SEScoops) that Triple H had dropped the gimmick, Crowe resumed his "hacker" character and teased a hostile takeover of NXT.
Sadly, that was where the buck started and stopped with Crowe. His in-ring debut was disappointing, his character was never fully fleshed out, and he never found any sort of direction from that point forward.
Being a babyface from the get-go didn't help matters, either, as it's apparent Crowe is a natural heel. Granted, the hacker shtick was cool in theory, but without any explanation, it fell flat and has only worked against him all year long.
Crowe showed on the independent circuit that his in-ring skills are solid and he's a strong mic worker, but he has yet to find his groove in NXT. Officials clearly don't see him as a top priority at the moment, which is a shame given what he is capable of.
Bull Dempsey
4 of 5
Bull Dempsey isn't just another "big guy" who was hired by WWE because of his immense size. There's no doubt that played a factor in his signing, but there's much more to the Brooklyn native than that.
For the first year of his stint in NXT, he was largely marginalized as the promotion's resident jobber, but once the brand finally focused on him, he was repackaged as "the last of a dying breed" in pro wrestling. It took time for the character to get over with the audience, but once he began to build momentum, he showed signs of one day becoming one of the brand's top heels.
However, once he ran into the roadblock that was the also undefeated Baron Corbin, all hope was lost for Dempsey. He lost all three of his matches against the former NFL lineman and proceeded to make sporadic appearances over the next several months.
Interestingly enough, the "Bull-fit" gimmick he developed during the summer was what got him back in the good graces of the fans. NXT planted seeds for a possible program with Tyler Breeze, but so far nothing of note has happened between them.
Dempsey may not be the world's greatest wrestler, but he worked hard to legitimately lose weight and is now the best he's ever been. As one of NXT's more popular fixtures, it's only a matter of time before he starts working his way back up the ladder.
Tyler Breeze
5 of 5
It's well-established among anyone who has been watching NXT for a stretch of time that Tyler Breeze is quite fabulous, both as a character and as a wrestler. Not only that, but he's a one-of-a-kind competitor and much more special than officials have given him credit for.
Breeze has been doing the same shtick for over two years now, and the hardcore fanbase at Full Sail University have yet to grow tired of him. That's actually an impressive accomplishment when you consider how fickle those fans can be at times.
In all seriousness, he's proved time and time again he's among the elite in NXT, yet he has yet to reap the benefits. He can always be counted on for a great matchup, and audience members never cease to get a kick out of his hilarious antics both inside and outside the ring.
The biggest issue he faces at the moment is that he's often used as a steppingstone for Triple H's pet projects: Finn Balor, Hideo Itami, Apollo Crews, etc. Whether the gimmick would get over on a larger scale on the main roster is arguable, but WWE needs to find a more suitable role for him first in NXT before he can get the call-up.
"Underutilized" might be a better word to describe him than "underrated," but he can be considered the latter as well, given that his tremendous talents have gone under the radar of fans and officials for too long.
Graham Mirmina, aka Graham "GSM" Matthews, is a journalism major at Endicott College. Visit his website, Next Era Wrestling, and "like" his official Facebook page to continue the conversation on all things wrestling.
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