Eric Young is currently riding high as the IMPACT Wrestling Heavyweight Champion, but to say he didn't have an easy time of things in WWE would be quite the understatement.
Young's faction SAnitY was the top heel team in NXT at one point, but they quickly became lost in the shuffle after "moving up" to WWE's main roster and soon disbanded when Young was released as part of the company's talent purge. Now, Alexander Wolfe is on the NXT UK brand as part of Imperium, Killian Dain is back on NXT, and the once edgy Nikki Cross is a hyperactive buffoon on SmackDown.
During an interview with Sitting Ringside, EY spoke about SAnitY's debut, explaining why he believes the group's main roster run was all-but doomed from the start when they were beaten in their very first match.
"So the next day, it’s SmackDown, we’re in California and they’re like, ‘Well someone has to wrestle Jeff Hardy for the U.S. Title.’ I’m pretty sure it was B.G. James [Road Dogg] [who] said, ‘Eric Young is excellent, he’s a heel, he’s new, it’s a good spot for him so have him come out and challenge Jeff’. So that’s what we do, but they’re like, ‘Woah, Eric can’t beat Jeff. We don’t even know who Eric is yet. We know that SAnitY’s brand new’ and then it’s like, well maybe The Usos can come out and roll it into a six-man. Well then it’s like, ‘Well, they can’t go over because The Usos are going for the tag titles and Jeff Hardy’s the U.S. [Champion].’
So the first time seeing us work on TV, we get beat, and like literally at that point, I knew we were done, like dead in the water. [I’m] not a person that’s been concerned about winning or losing but there’s times when you gotta win and when you’re a debuting group, half the audience doesn’t even know who we are and we get beat the first time seeing us wrestle on TV, we’re dead. We’re dead in the water. Before we can even learn to walk, they’re breaking our legs.”
It's hard to argue, because pretty much every fan thought the exact same thing when SAnitY lost that match, and they never recovered.
Do you think ERic Young and SAnitY should have been given more of a push in WWE? Let us know in the comments.