Just randomly thinking about all the new championships introduced since the brand split in 2016. I stumbled upon a theme. In WWE, all new championships were won by babyfaces.
- Universal by Finn Balor
- SD Women’s by Becky Lynch
- SD Tag by Heath Slater & Rhyno
- Crusierweight by TJP
- WWE UK by Tyler Bate
Yet, all new NXT championships were won by heels.
- NXT North American by Adam Cole
- NXT UK Women’s by Rhea Ripley
- NXT UK Tag by James Drake and Zack Gibson
I find that very interesting. It could be a massive coincidence, but I feel that it speaks to two different philosophies between main roster (or Vince) and NXT (or HHH).
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Interesting. I think, if anything can be drawn from this, it’s that the main roster booking tends to favor the “big moment” with the victorious babyface more than the indy-esque booking of NXT. But also of note is that of all of the titles listed above, only Tyler Bate had more than three successful (televised) title defenses (with Drake/Gibson still pending). So no matter the philosophy, it seems that the inaugural champ doesn’t mean a whole lot anyway.
Of course, the big asterisk is the Universal Title, because we don’t know how Finn Balor’s reign would have panned out. (I’m of the mind that it was always going to end up on Lesnar by the net Wrestlemania, but who knows?).