Shawn Michaels Believes Rising WWE Star Could Headline WrestleMania

WWE

Shawn Michaels has heaped praise on a rising WWE star, saying that he could one day see him competing at WrestleMania.

WWE introduced their Next In Line program back in 2021, designed as a way for college athletes to transition towards a career in WWE and NXT.

One of the names who joined WWE through the NIL program is Oba Femi, who won the NXT Men’s Breakout Tournament at New Year’s Evil, and captured the NXT North American Championship from Dragon Lee the following week.

Speaking on the Battleground Podcast, Shawn Michaels spoke about the NIL program, and specifically Femi, who he said he could see competing at WrestleMania ‘not too far down the line’.

He said:

“I’ll tell you what, one of the things that I think that people can see now that’s been a proven success is the N.I.L. program and obviously, reaching out to these young men and women on a college level and Oba (Femi) is a guy that has, one, not just his background but he’s had a great deal of success in his youth and in his college years, which strangely enough has kind of prepared him for this. It’s amazing how incredibly well-spoken and well-mannered and just, I don’t know. He’s so much more experienced than his age you would think lends itself to. As we all say, he’s a very complete young man and I think everybody sees the promise in him as not just an NXT superstar but a future WWE superstar. You can just see it by the way he carries himself.

Again, he would obviously know better than me but, I have to attribute that, a lot of times, to, again, some of the success that they had in college and at the collegiate level that has kind of prepared them and look, a lot of these young men and women, they have been successes at a very young age and people have been sort of courting them and coming after them since they were young in high school and so I think that better prepares them for a world, you know, like NXT and the WWE but I think the future’s incredibly bright for him. But obviously, he’s got the former North American Champion Dragon Lee from SmackDown wanting his title back so, I think that’ll be something, again, that’ll be very exciting to watch this Sunday at Vengeance Day but, I can’t lie when I say Oba Femi has got all those tools that I think everybody could easily look at him and go, oh yeah, I see him being on the main roster someday and easily being a part of a WrestleMania not too far down the line.”

transcription via POST Wrestling

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• Oba Femi
• shawn michaels
• nxt
• wwe

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