Apollo Crews Addresses How NXT Return Happened
Apollo Crews has opened up about his return to the WWE NXT brand in 2022 and how his presence there can help some younger wrestlers on the brand.
Ever since he returned to the WWE NXT brand in June 2022, Apollo Crews has made it known that he’s looking for championship gold. Crews has worked for WWE for the past eight years after being a talented independent wrestler for several years. Crews has had plenty of success on the main roster including runs as the United States and Intercontinental Champion.
While in NXT, Crews has already wrestled some of the top stars in NXT including Grayson Waller, who had a lengthy feud with Crews. Waller is currently the top contender for the NXT Title.
At NXT Deadline, Apollo Crews challenged Bron Breakker for the NXT Title in a competitive match that saw Breakker keep his title.
This past week on the December 20th edition of NXT TV, Crews was in the ring doing a promo when another of NXT’s brightest young stars interrupted him. It was the former NXT North American Carmelo Hayes, who exchanged words with Crews to likely set up a match between them.
Recently, Apollo Crews appeared on the Out of Character podcast to talk about his journey back to NXT.
“I had made an approach and asked if there was a spot down here essentially for me at NXT. And the opportunity came about and here happened to be a spot available. And I was like, ‘Man, I’m 100% for it.’ It was one of those things where it was like, ‘Is it long term or is it gonna be short term?’ And I was like, ‘For me honestly, it doesn’t matter. I’m not gonna be — I’m gonna control what I can control. You give me this opportunity, I’m gonna come out here and kill it. If they bring me back to Raw or SmackDown two weeks later, so be it. If they bring me back in two months, so be it.’”
“But in my head, I wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity that I was being presented with. Because essentially, I was presented the opportunity to kind of change the trajectory of my career and kind of really start over. Which not a lot of people get to do, where it’s just like, ‘Okay.’ Not that this stuff didn’t happen, but we’re almost like, ‘Let’s just wipe that slate clean, and we’re gonna start right here.’ And it’s like okay, we’re gonna work on what should have been done the first time.”
As Crews continued, he spoke about how he can use this NXT run to help his career while also helping younger talent as well.
“Just being blessed with this opportunity to come over. Come down and help myself while helping other young talent as well, it’s just a blessing and it’s an honor. And I’m gonna take full advantage of this, which I feel like I’ve done these last six months already.”
While Apollo Crews is happy to be in NXT, he also wants to be back on the WWE main roster again some day.
“And then whenever the time is right, whenever that decision’s made, we can get back — hopefully get back to Raw, Smackdown, get onto PLEs, get on the WrestleManias, the Royal Rumbles, Survivor Series, the SummerSlams. Those are the kind of events that I — that’s what I feel like everybody comes here for. They’d be lying if they told you they didn’t.”