The Rumble lacked surprise appearances, but the one we got was pretty darn perfect.
At least for NXT fans like myself, who’ve grown to love Tye Dillinger over the past year. After his partnership with current SmackDown tag champ Jason Jordan dissolved, Dillinger reinvented himself as a heel who called himself the Perfect Ten. In the weird way these things sometimes happen, audiences loved the gimmick and grew to love the 35 year old Canadian behind it.
This isn’t the first go-round for Tye, who had a main roster run on WWE’s version of ECW ten years ago as “Gavin Spears”. NXT’s brought that history into Dillinger’s current NXT underdog storyline to great effect.
His appeal is pretty evident in the above post-Rumble interview:
This is fifteen years in the making for me. This business is full of ups and downs, and I’ve had my fair show. A perfect example of that is last night at TakeOver, I come up a little short. And as I’m still kind of beating myself over the head about the loss to Eric Young, all of a sudden I find myself at number ten in the Royal Rumble in front of 50,000-plus people.
When they write the history books, my name’s in there - and that means the most to me.
If everything ended tomorrow for me, whether that be wrestling - hell, everything - tonight was one of the greatest nights of my life. I don’t know how I’m gonna top this - I’m gonna keep working hard to top it, but at this moment, I can’t even fathom it getting any better than it is now.
The other interesting thing here is it’s another example from this weekend of WWE bringing NXT into the main roster continuity fold. And if what interviewer Mike Rome claims here - that San Antonio was the most watched TakeOver in history - is true, that might be the norm going forward.
What does it mean for Dillinger? Time will tell, but even if it goes nowhere, and Tye doesn’t leave NXT or win the big one, we got this.
I give it a “TEN”.