Austin Theory has been in NXT for less than a year and has already made an impact, competing against the likes of Roderick Strong and Tommaso Ciampa. Before he joined NXT, Theory carried the EVOLVE Championship and was looked at as one of the next "can't miss" stars for WWE.
Speaking to Matthew Aguilar of Comic Book, Theory discussed how EVOLVE prepared him for NXT.
"I would say that Evolve was very good at preparing me for this change," Theory said. "A lot of what's looked at down at Evolve is basically development to get guys ready to come to NXT, so it wasn't really a huge change. Obviously there's a lot more with just the technical stuff and cameras and stuff like that. That's a bigger thing here, but I think they just did a very good job at preparing me for NXT and being ready for what's next."
He continued, "Everybody is very motivating here. And if you want advice, if you have a question, if you don't know the answer to something, there's always somebody that'll give you that resource. Nobody ever holds back, and honestly, everybody here just wants to be better and improve. Even from the coaching standpoint and somebody like Triple H, they just want to make everybody better and have the best brand possible."
Even before he joined NXT, Theory was stepping in the ring with competitors from the gold brand. At EVOLVE 112, Theory took on NXT's Velveteen Dream, losing in a dark match. Now that they're both on the same brand, Theory would like a rematch.
"I mean, I'm sure I'm going to wrestle everyone here. But I would definitely love to have another match with Velveteen Dream," Theory said. "I had a match with him at Evolve back in, I want to say it was 2000 maybe 17 or 18, I'm not sure. Maybe it was 2018. But it was a lot of fun. And that would be somebody now, even I feel like both of us have stepped our game up. And I think that would be like a really cool mix to have on NXT."
Theory's most recent television match came against Isaiah Scott on the Mar. 4 episode of NXT. Theory was victorious in the bout.