Damian Priest Was Supposed to Be Called Up to SmackDown on Friday

Damian Priest was booked to be called up to the main roster on this past Friday’s SmackDown, but the idea was nixed, according to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio.

The idea would have been for Priest to debut as “Kevin Owens’ best friend” and help him in his feud against Roman Reigns and Jey Uso, but Owens questioned the logic of Priest being his best friend since they don’t appear to have much in common, though he was still willing to do the angle. Roman Reigns then agreed with Owens and the idea was scrapped, despite Priest being backstage and ready on Friday.

Meltzer said that as of now, the idea is now to have Priest debut on Raw later this month, but that can easily change. The idea for Priest to debut on SmackDown on Friday was only decided the day before, so it appears that not much planning went into it.

Priest lost to Karrion Kross on NXT yesterday and as of now, that’s scheduled to be his final match in NXT.

Here’s how Meltzer explained things:

Someone had decided with this idea of, ‘We need to make stars on SmackDown. We need new babyface stars.’ Somebody was asked, ‘Who can be the next babyface who can come on the main roster?’ And the guy was Damian Priest.

So they had a story where it was supposed to be Damian Priest was Kevin Owens’ best friend and he’s helping him against Roman Reigns and Jey Uso. In fact, they were actually going to do a tag match on the show Friday night. And Damian Priest is there and ready and all that, and Kevin Owens essentially said like, it makes no sense for him to be my best friend. What do we have in common? Why would he be my best friend? I mean, we could do it, but why is he my best friend?

So Roman Reigns agreed and since it’s Roman Reigns, it was nixed. I don’t know where Heyman stood on it. But Roman’s the one who – it was nixed. So we got what we got.

And Damian Priest is lost because he is going to the main roster – a main roster. As of this morning, it was later this month on Raw, but when I heard that, it’s like yeah right, whatever. He’s gonna be on Raw or SmackDown some day soon, or not soon, or tomorrow, or who the fuck knows? Or maybe they’ll do the angle next week that they didn’t do this week.

Anyway, he was supposed to start Friday, but this was not some long, planned out thing. Before it was supposed to be nobody moves from NXT to the main roster unless it’s planned for months in advance so you can finish the story, blah blah blah. This was actually something that was decided like Thursday before Friday, and then they decided not to do it.