When Logan Paul announced an eight-man tournament to find the next challenger to the United States Championship, he revealed a list of competitors including a mystery man from NXT. We later learned that the mystery man will face Grayson Waller in the first round on this week’s next episode of SmackDown.
Now we know who the NXT wrestler is, according to the following announcement from Shawn Michaels:
“When it was announced that an NXT superstar would compete for the United States Championship on SmackDown, there was a line outside my office door. The man at the head of that line, the man who will be representing NXT, is Carmelo Hayes.
Hayes picked up another win over Lexis King at last night’s Deadline Premium live event in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He finished the evening behind his old friend Trick Williams, who had earned a shot at Ilya Dragunov for the NXT Championship. The story seems to be about Hayes turning on Trick Willy but we can worry about that again.
For now, he will make his way to the main roster for a big match on SmackDown this week. We’ll have to wait and see if it turns into something more, but he’s definitely ready for it.
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