Unexpected Gimmick Change For WWE Star?

WWE

It seems a promising young WWE star could be undergoing something of an unexpected change to his character.

On the April 11 episode of NXT, Von Wagner lost a match to Ilja Dragunov, and the stipulation of that match was that if Wagner lost, Mr Stone would walk away from being his manager.

However, on last night’s April 18 episode, a follow-up seemed to suggest that stipulation might not be happening, but something else will change instead.

In a clip labelled ‘last week’ to suggest it was right after the Dragunov match, Wagner was shown basically grovelling to Stone and begging him not to leave.

In a complete contrast to how we’ve seen Wagner behave in the past, he said:

“Stone, I’m ready. Come on man, don’t leave, I’m ready, please, come on. I’m ready to open up.

“My name is Von Wagner and I always wanted to be in the WWE.

“Because this is in my blood, and my dad was a Beverly Brother.”

If you use this transcription, please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page.

Wagner, real name Cal Bloom, is the son of Wayne Bloom, who wrestled as Beau Beverly of the Beverly Brothers tag team alongside Mike Enos, known as Blake Beverly.

Ever since the start of NXT 2.0 in late 2021, Wagner had been presented as a monster heel, so to see this side of him in that clip was definitely a contrast to what we’re used to.

It seems Stone was accepting of Wagner’s proposition and the two will remain together for now, just with a different side of Wagner’s character.

What exactly that will be isn’t clear yet, but it’s the first time it’s actually been mentioned that he’s the son of Beau Beverly, so perhaps that’ll be played into a lot more.

Of course Wagner isn’t the only name in NXT with a wrestling bloodline, the most notable being Bron Breakker who’s the son of Rick Steiner and nephew of Scott Steiner, but also others like Brooks Jensen who’s the son of Bull Buchanan, William Regal’s son Charlie Dempsey, and The Rock’s daughter Ava.

Wagner was being touted as a potential future WWE main event star at one point, but he hasn’t really hit the heights of the main event scene in NXT yet.

That could easily be put down to the fact he was just presented as a ‘generic big guy’, so it looks like he might have a chance to try something else that’ll connect with fans a bit more.

Mr Stone has also picked up something of a new role recently as he’s been on commentary for the last two episodes of Level Up alongside Blake Howard and Byron Saxton.

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• Mr Stone
• Von Wagner
• nxt
• wwe

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