Josh Alexander could’ve possibly been the NXT Champion.
The former Impact World Champion made his debut in AEW and is currently working with one of the top factions within the promotion. He may not be challenging for world titles anytime soon, but Alexander has a good spot on the roster at the moment. However, it’s possible that the 37-year-old could’ve been on the top of the mountain in NXT.
It was never clear whether WWE was interested in Josh Alexander. Surprisingly, he never made an appearance on the developmental brand during the whole NXT/TNA Impact partnership. Though according to the man himself, it does sound as if he was in talks with the company during his free agency. And it sounded as if WWE wanted to thrust him into the main event scene pretty quickly.
Josh claims during an interview with Shakiel Mahjouri that the company had several offers on the table including a title match on their recent pay-per-view, Stand & Deliver:
"There were rumblings of two that I'd heard about after the fact that were denied by management for whatever political reason there was, them not wanting me to lose, or something like that. Then there was one offer on the table for me to do a big run, and then wrestle for the title on a pay-per-view or a Stand & Deliver, I think it was. I had actually turned that down because it just didn't fit with what my goals were coming into contract time and stuff like that. With negotiations coming up," he said.
Now Josh doesn’t further explain what exactly his goals were. However, he continued on discussing WWE/NXT, naming their partnership with TNA. He does notes how beneficial the deals are for both parties, but he highlights an interesting fact about wins and losses in regards to both companies.
"I think, from my perspective, I can't speak for everybody in the locker room, at times, mutually beneficial, for sure. I mean, when you put somebody like Joe Hendry or anybody else on a Tuesday night NXT, and they come back to TNA, you obviously saw more interest come to the company because of that platform that they were on. But in terms of wins and losses and trading back and forth, it felt like it was pretty heavy towards the WWE end from time to time. But that's just the business portion of it. They have a bigger platform."
While it does seem that TNA gets the shorter end of the stick when it comes to these brand vs. brand matches, there’s no denying how beneficial this partnership has been for the company. So at the end of the day, TNA officials likely don’t care about losing too much since there’s so much more upside to their partnership.