One Makes Sense And The Other Is Sad: There Are Two Reasons Why Finn Balor Turned Heel On NXT

That isn’t the nicest reason in the world. NXT has changed a lot this year, with various moved taking place that have shifted the way the promotion is seen in the WWE hierarchy. The show is now seen as nearly on equal footing with Monday Night Raw and SmackDown, and as a result it needs some top stars. That is already the case with one big name, and they did something in NXT that they had never done before in WWE.

On October 2, NXT moved to the USA Network, airing for two hours live every Wednesday night. It was quite the jump from a one hour taped show airing on the WWE Network and something had to change as a result. This included some major names being added to the show, with former NXT Champion Finn Balor showing up. In a surprise, he soon turned heel for the first time in his career, and it happened for a good reason.

According to Wade Keller via his podcast, Balor was never turned heel on Monday Night Raw as Vince McMahon did not see him as a priority. Balor’s status was lowered after he was defeated by the Fiend at Summerslam and he never recovered on the main roster. At the same time, Balor was considered too small to turn heel on the main roster, but it was a better fit to turn on NXT, where wrestlers are smaller in stature.

I’d call it shocking. Check out Balor showing up and then turning:

Opinion: This is something that probably wouldn’t have worked on the main roster. Not because of Balor’s stature, but because the main roster has not worked out so well for Balor so far. It’s like they don’t know how to use him, though I would call that more of a problem in general than anything else. Balor can be great as either a face or a heel and he is getting to show that off down in NXT, where he has always worked better.

Has Balor impressed you in NXT? Would he work as a heel on the main roster? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. His latest book is KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews.

Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. We are proud to offer our popular Wrestling Rumors app and encourage you to download it for an optimized user experience. It is available for Android and also on iOS. Thank you for reading!