Matt Riddle might be my favorite wrestler. Picking a favorite wrestler is more difficult than picking a favorite child, because I can flow from various guys depending on what is most current on my mind, whereas picking a favorite child is easy, because I only have one. Riddle is not only a phenomenal talent in the ring, but he was incredibly nice to everyone when I met him at a show before he got signed by WWE. Maybe the most awesome thing about him is that he really doesn’t give a shit. He proved it by continually smoking weed while in the UFC, he did his own thing on the independents and bounced around as opposed to signing exclusively with one company, and now he’s in the WWE where he very freely speaks his mind.
And WWE does not seem to be a fan of that.
Riddle is outspoken, and I can totally understand how that can rub people the wrong way. As a coworker, I might find him annoying, but even though he is ungodly talented, he also must be an incredibly hard worker to be this damn good at professional wrestling. He started calling out Brock Lesnar three years before he even stepped foot inside a WWE ring. Why? More like why not. If he would have put on a t-shirt that one of his goals was to retire Jinder Mahal, he would have just been seen as a dick, because he could probably very easily do that. Go for the biggest star in the business, and worst case is that it never happens but you get people talking.
So he did that and became a very sought after free agent. New Japan came very close to bringing him out for a tour which may have sped up the WWE’s decision making on bringing him into NXT. All he has done since joining NXT is put on awesome matches and became one of the most popular guys on the roster.
Oh, and he also continued to challenge Brock Lesnar...and Goldberg, and Chris Jericho, and Lance Storm, and kind of Booker T. I think that’s everyone.
So they finally put him in the Royal Rumble match which would have made total sense if he had finally squared off against Brock Lesnar. Instead, they waited for Lesnar to be eliminated and then brought him out, only to have him eliminated in a minute by Baron Corbin. Apparently, there was an “altercation” between Lesnar and Riddle before the show, but I feel like WWE could have convinced Lesnar to take a little offense and then eliminate him in a minute. Same end for Riddle but a way more exciting moment for wrestling fans. But instead they chose to punish him by bringing him out only to have him quickly eliminated to slam on the brakes for any main roster momentum that he might have.
And this is the problem with the WWE. They want guys to take chances and risks and become stars on their own and not depend on the machine, but when a guy like Riddle actually goes out and does it, they get mad at him because he didn’t do it through the right channels. Riddle was challenging Lesnar on the indies; it was a fun thing, but it’s not like anybody expected Lesnar to invade Washington Hall at some random Defy show in front of 500 people to actually take on Matt Riddle.
So now the WWE is telling NXT stars to not call out anyone on the main rosters, just creating a Matt Riddle rule to deal with things, because the WWE knows they have a special talent in Riddle so they can’t ever release him, no matter what he does. AEW would back up a Brinks truck in order to get Riddle on their roster, and they’d have Impact, ROH, and New Japan fighting to do the same thing.
So, you have Triple H who understands he has a generational talent on his hands, and Vince McMahon who only understands that some shitstain in NXT made Brock Lesnar unhappy, so he must be buried, even though he did that by grabbing for that brass ring and getting himself over where people would talk about him in a main event light, exactly what Vince McMahon preaches for young talent to do.
Hopefully, this is just a temporary blip in his career and not a grudge that the powers-that-be hold against him for no observable reason. Living down in Florida, I would selfishly like to see him stay in NXT for much longer as getting to drive five minutes to The Minnreg Hall in Largo, Florida and seeing the King of Bros put on a show is a pretty stellar Friday night. But I’m also a believer that people who are great at things deserve to be compensated for it, and this guy is a can’t miss star so I hope the WWE gives him tons of money to dominate in front of millions of people every week. This guy is BROver, and you’d have to be a BROfoon to not realize that.
