FanPost

Why I'm Not Worried About Neville

WWE.com

Wrestling fans often have a love/hate relationship with the creative and booking process inside a particular promotion. Those concerns tend to be amplified when said promotion is WWE, and reach a fever pitch when said booking surrounds stars from their developmental league NXT. While Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns have turned out pretty good, the booking has been very inconsistent for everyone else. For this reason, everyone dreaded the day Adrian Neville would be called up to the main roster, especially when we heard all those Mighty Mouse rumors.

The day after Wrestlemania, Neville debuted as the man whose first name creative forgot. He was now simply "Neville." We all collectively groaned, and saw this as a sign of bad things to come. Yet after this truly dumb decision, something interesting happened: Neville has not only performed about as reasonably well as could be expected (the only demerit is he hit 75% of the Red Arrow on Luke Harper instead of the full 100%), he's also been booked near perfectly. At this point, some will point out his 6-3 singles record on TV, and say that's hardly inspired booking. While it is often a cliche, sometimes wins and losses don't matter, and here's why:

1.) The Dude is CRAZY OVER

In a span of five weeks, Neville has transformed himself from only a thing a few NXT fans knew about to must see TV for the entire WWE Universe. As impressive as Rusev's wins streak was, he was never booked as must see TV. While sometimes undefeated streaks are done to create a monster heel, they are just as often done to mask limitations and misgivings creative has in someone, but they don't want to sabotage him out of the gate. For all the things Rusev does right, it often felt like his undefeated streak was a case of the latter, not the former.

As of right now, the crowd is completely invested in Neville. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of Vincent Kennedy McMahon, it isn't just smarks who love the pint-sized Brit, but casual audiences as well. This bodes well for his long-term prospects. It is pretty easy to dismiss a few angry internet fans when the majority of your audience are behind the guy. (Look at the reaction Roman Reigns gets at house shows to see this dynamic at work.) It's a lot harder to dismiss a sizable portion of your audience. The audience has proven itself surprisingly "smart." They aren't demanding Neville win every match, but they do want him treated respectfully. Getting over with casual fans this early bodes well for his long-term prospects.

2.) He can wrestle a variety of opponents

Remember that semi-boring NXT run where Adrian Neville had to fight Brodus Clay, Titus O'Neil and other WWE rejects? From a wrestling standpoint, they weren't really good. They were often slow affairs focused mainly on bear hugs. What a lot of people missed is that this was a case of NXT really being a developmental promotion. Fighting guys who are bigger (and slower!) is going to involve a completely different psychology and match style than he was used to on the indy and NXT circut. These matches helped prepare him. Now that he's on the main roster, he's facing guys who are bigger and slower, but still pretty athletic in their own right. Luke Harper, Sheamus and Bad News Barrett are big enough to overpower Neville, but are athletic enough to at least keep up with Neville when he's firing on 75%, and that makes Neville going full throttle near the end all the more tougher for them to keep up with. For being a smaller guy, he's also surprisingly strong, and that provides some eye-popping visuals such as his deadlift German suplex. A believable story is crafted about the underdog overcoming the bigger and stronger opponent, and the crowd responds accordingly. Who knew?

In addition to fighting the big hosses, Neville has also shown he can more than keep up his end of the bargain with the quicker moving stars like Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler. Even better, Rollins and Ziggler seemed to genuinely enjoy wrestling Neville. He was a guy who they could kick it into 5th gear with speedwise. If you watch these matches again, you'll notice how much faster they were than any other wrestling match. Everyone had excellent conditioning, and they demonstrated it in those matches. The veteran stars deserve the win in these, but they really show what Neville is like when he's in his element, and the crowd eats it up.

3.) He is already an elite seller

Selling is a really difficult part of wrestling. Wrestlers struggle to find a happy medium. You either bump crazy like Ziggler selling the smallest offense as a nuclear bomb, or you never sell anything a la John Cena and Roman Reigns outside of PPV matches. (Suddenly in a PPV match Reigns becomes an elite seller.) Neville seems to understand that selling offense is about more than ragdolling across the ring, but it's about said offense legitimately changing the nature of a fight.

For a quick example, consider his performance in the King of the Ring special on the WWE network. Both Sheamus and Bad News Barrett focused extensively on his ribs, reasoning that even a man gravity has forgotten is bound by the laws of biology: you can't flip around the ring if you can't breathe. As the fight goes on, Neville realizes he can't wrestle his normal style. When he evades Barrett in the corner and does his set of handsprings to the other corner, he's in too much pain, and can't complete them. So instead after two handsprings he bounces off the ropes and does a headscissor takedown instead. He showed pain, but also adapted on the fly. If you weren't looking at it with a critical eye, chances are you miss it and don't think twice. After that audible, he sticks to mostly ground based strikes until he gains energy/adrenaline to perform a high impact maneuver. He's selling by showing his limitations, but also doing his best to prevent you from exploiting them. With the right performers, this can add a lot of variety to matches. An experienced ring general like an Orton or Bryan or (shudder) Cena can do a lot with that and make the guy look really good in the process. With Neville, there's likely to be enough nuance to help fight the feeling he is getting stale.

4.) He Contributes in a Unique Way to the Product

This is also something that is really tough to overestimate. Roman Reigns fills the role he does because while there are a lot of big guys, no regular competitor has the mix of speed, power, and just plain swag that Roman has. While anyone can do a German Suplex, people will always tune in to seeing Brock Lesnar take bitches to Suplex City. While the WWE will always have high fliers, few would dare to do a 450 off the barricade, and even fewer are going to even bother trying the Red Arrow. When JBL is telling Maggle to set the DVR, it's partially commentary putting him over, but also a statement of truth: what you are seeing now you won't see anywhere else. That uniqueness really builds a brand and makes a lot of money over time. While some might disagree, ask yourself if Bo Dallas, Adam Rose or the Ascension have that sort of unique value to the company. Once you've answered that, one can see why Neville has more or less delivered every time, and the others have floundered for one reason or another, despite their talents.

Now none of this means I believe Neville should be given the Roman Reigns treatment and main event Wrestlemania 32 on the grounds of potential alone. Nor does it mean I want him to always win every match and feud he's in. Yet if we're being serious, Neville has a lot of those qualities that made a more seasoned Daniel Bryan an integral part of the roster. We could complain about his position on the card, but there's no disputing that the time from the night after Wrestlemania 28 to his triumph at Wrestlemania 30, Daniel Bryan was an integral part, if not the centerpiece of WWE programming. Even if he didn't hold the belt, he was given greater and greater exposure every Monday night. While Neville shouldn't be a replica of Daniel Bryan, I also think nobody should be surprised if (and when) Neville has an occasional WWE Championship run over the next decade, and is the kind of guy who could really take the secondary titles to newfound importance. I personally think that will be his role for the next few years.

So while some smarks here are worried about Neville, I look at all the tools he has, and how those tools have played out so far, and I'm very optimistic about his future.

The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Cageside Seats readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cageside Seats editors or staff.