Report: Why Bron Breakker Wasn’t Called Up From NXT in the 2023 WWE Draft

The 2023 WWE Draft saw a whopping 18 NXT wrestlers get called up the main roster. While some had previously spent time on either Monday Night Raw or Friday Night SmackDown (Jinder Mahal and Apollo Crews), the majority of the group will be getting their first big break in the company. One name that many expected to see get called up was Bron Breakker given he was quickly pushed as the face of the NXT 2.0 reboot upon his arrival, has held the NXT Championship twice and has main evented the last eight consecutive NXT premium live events. 

However, shortly after dropping the NXT Championship to Carmelo Hayes at NXT Stand and Deliver, Breakker turned heel and unveiled a more malicious side to his character. Per insider @WRKDWrestling, his immediate success as a heel is actually what halted the call-up process. 

A big question surrounding Breakker is whether or not he’ll fully embrace his Steiner heritage once he jumps to the main roster. While he physically resembles his Hall of Fame father, Rick Steiner, his promos often show glimpses of his more bombastic uncle, Scott Steiner. 

“I think Bron is going to be incredibly successful no matter what you want to call him,” Shawn Michaels told ComicBook last year. “He’s a very bright, talented, unbelievably wonderful young man. I’ll say this, I think now he’s established Bron Breakker pretty darn well. Let’s put it this way — what we wanted to make sure that we did in NXT is not run from it or pretend like it wasn’t there. And I think that’s what has helped him, I think, made that transition into a new name and character a bit easier. We didn’t pretend like it wasn’t there and he wasn’t a Steiner by bringing his father out and making reference to who he was and where he came from. I think that’s made it a little bit easier.

“We’re always going to do that. We’re never going to pretend like someone wasn’t who they were,” he added. “But those are challenges that we often run into. I, don’t know how many of those will have to take in the future, but certainly the WWE has their way of wanting to do things. It’s been pretty darn successful for the last 40 years, 40 or 50 years. I don’t know that if something isn’t broke that you need to fix it.”