In shocking news, WWE has released several superstars from their contracts. Among those are main roster stars Keith Lee and Nia Jax—both members of the RAW brand.
Keith Lee on the Main Roster
After a two-year career on the promotion’s NXT brand which saw him pick up the NXT Championship and the NXT North American title, Keith Lee made his main roster debut with the RAW brand following SummerSlam in 2020.
After losing in his main roster debut to Randy Orton as a result of interference, he would win his first PPV win with the company at the Payback PPV days later in a rematch.
Following this, he would be kept in the WWE Championship contender picture for the remainder of the year and got a shot at Drew McIntyre’s championship in January 2021.
February 2021 is when his main roster path was thrown out of whack due to COVID. He would return in mid-July to answer Bobby Lashley’s open challenge for the WWE Championship and from there, things just snowballed downhill.
The cap on his run in WWE came with a repackaging as Bearcat Lee in September.
Nia Jax on RAW
In contrast to Keith Lee, Nia Jax has had a long, storied run with WWE. After a little over a year in NXT, she was promoted to the RAW brand in July 2016. During her first year, she was pushed heavily with a winning streak and had an entertaining feud with Alicia Fox, and a regular contender to the Raw Women’s Championship.
She was in monster heel mode for the division. Jax would eventually win the Raw Women’s Championship in 2018, defeating Alexa Bliss at WrestleMania 34.
After losing to Ronda Rousey at Money in the Bank that year, she returned to the women’s division shuffle on the roster. She wouldn’t see championship gold again until Payback 2020 in a tandem with Shayna Baszler.
Together, the two would win the titles twice with their second win occurring at this year’s Royal Rumble where they defeated the team of Charlotte Flair and Asuka.
After losing the titles to Natalya and Tamina in late September, Baszler turned on her following a match against each other. Prior to this, the last thing of note with Jax involved a hairy match between her and Charlotte Flair from August 2021.
The Future for Nia Jax and Keith Lee
In Keith Lee’s case, we could see him in another promotion with national exposure easily. He got a lot of kudos and accolades for his performances in NXT and on the main roster.
As a matter of fact, there was a lot of fan support for him to not only make it to the main roster but to be pushed and handled properly creative-wise. Of course, we saw how the second half of that request turned out.
He could be fine on the indies but he should be a hot commodity for IMPACT or AEW.
As for Nia Jax, that is another story. If she decides to stay in the business, IMPACT could do with a monster heel for the Knockouts division but I wouldn’t totally count her out in AEW either.
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