Von Wagner Appears On WWE SmackDown – Tonight’s SmackDown episode featured NXT Superstar Von Wagner appearing in a backstage segment with Adam Pearce.
Wagner stood with his arms crossed as Pearce talked with Sonya Deville about strengthening the men’s and women’s line-ups for Team SmackDown at Survivor Series, and then as Sami Zayn begged Pearce to pull Jeff Hardy from the men’s team. That led to Pearce booking Zayn vs. Hardy with the loser being pulled from the team, which ended up being Zayn.
Wagner never spoke and was not identified by Pearce or the announcers. Pat McAfee acknowledged Wagner’s size and presence, but wondered who he is and what he was doing in the room with Pearce. This indicated that they are not going to use Wagner’s NXT gimmick or ring name, but nothing is official as of this writing.
Wagner has been working a tag team storyline with Kyle O’Reilly in NXT as of late.
Wagner re-debuted back on the NXT 2.0 reboot back in mid-September, losing the Fatal 4 Way for the vacant NXT Title, which also featured Pete Dunne, LA Knight and the winner, Tommaso Ciampa. Wagner then teamed with O’Reilly for a win over Dunne and Ridge Holland on October 12, but then took a loss with O’Reilly on November 2 as they faced Legado del Fantasma. This was actually Wagner’s second SmackDown appearance as he lost to Sheamus on the April 10, 2020 SmackDown episode. Wagner also worked a SmackDown dark match this past summer, defeating Austin Theory before the August 27 episode.
There’s now speculation on Wagner’s tag team with O’Reilly being nixed. O’Reilly’s WWE future has also been up in the air as of late after it was revealed that his contract will expire some time in December. O’Reilly was brought to SmackDown last week for a dark match loss to Johnny Gargano, who will see his WWE contract expire on Friday, December 3.
