{"id":38724,"date":"2017-02-12T18:19:36","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T00:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=38724"},"modified":"2017-02-12T18:19:36","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T00:19:36","slug":"nxt-tracker-authors-pain-weekly-assessment-predictions-prospects-nxt-wrestlers-main-roster-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2017\/02\/12\/nxt-tracker-authors-pain-weekly-assessment-predictions-prospects-nxt-wrestlers-main-roster-future\/","title":{"rendered":"NXT TRACKER \u2013 AUTHORS OF PAIN: A weekly assessment and predictions on the prospects of an NXT wrestler\u2019s main roster future"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-168094479\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><p>Welcome once again to the NXT TRACKER, where I pick an NXT talent, assess their progression to this point and make bold, sure-to-look-hilarious-in-retrospect predictions about their future prospects. Let\u2019s have a look at the still-undefeated NXT Tag Team champions, <strong>The Authors of Pain.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h3>The Talent<\/h3>\n<p>Unlike many of the talents I\u2019ve featured so far, the Authors are young kids. Akam, an accomplished amateur wrestler, debuted on house shows in 2015 and Rezar followed in early 2016; his background is in mixed martial arts. As a team, as of this writing, they\u2019ve been together for just a year.<\/p>\n<h3>Signature Wins in NXT<\/h3>\n<p>The Authors have done nothing but win on NXT TV to this point. They were already receiving a fairly serious push, though primarily beating enhancement talent, when they won the 2016 Dusty Classic by defeating \u2122-61 at Takeover: Toronto in a decent, though somewhat brief, tournament final. They won the NXT Tag Team Championship against #DIY, themselves having just won the titles in Toronto, at Takeover: San Antonio. In my preview of the show I posited that it wouldn\u2019t be able to steal the show like most every recent tag title match in Takeover memory, but it ended up being a very strong match, aided by the fact that it could have gone either way for storyline purposes.<\/p>\n<h3>Live Reactions<\/h3>\n<p>Upon their arrival to NXT TV, the Authors were a tough sell for a crowd that is typically treated to tremendous international workers known for high spots and workrate. They\u2019re a team that\u2019s most definitely not built to have five-star classics, but exists in what\u2019s potentially a slow turn back to the day of honest-to-goodness heels, who cheat to win or, in the case of the Authors of Pain, simply overwhelm every opponent and pose a very legitimate threat to the babyfaces we love. It seems that the crowd is getting on board with the act of late.<\/p>\n<h3>The Booking<\/h3>\n<p>If you\u2019re going to book a monster tag team, it would be tough to do it much better than this. Nobody has beaten the Authors of Pain and few have even appeared to get close, so the Authors have become the NXT\u2019s Ascension 2.0, though hopefully they\u2019ll fare better when they reach the main roster down the road. The company hasn\u2019t half-assed any of these major victories, as the win over \u2122-61 didn\u2019t take particularly long, and they resisted the urge to go soft on their title chase after #DIY, which culminated in an impressive victory in their first try. The Authors will lose the titles at some point, though it\u2019s tough to imagine who\u2019s going to take it from them, which makes the experiment a big success so far.<\/p>\n<h3>The Future<\/h3>\n<p>There\u2019s definitely room for a team of monsters on the main roster. The Ascension have been neutered completely, and the bulk of the division is made up of smaller, more workrate-skewing guys (though a power vs. power matchup of Authors vs. Sheamus and Cesaro could be good fun). The two of them are still fairly green and there\u2019s no need to shoot them up to the main roster before more seasoning, but they can fill an important role when they arrive. It\u2019ll be interesting to see if Paul Ellering joins them on Raw or SmackDown and goes back on the road full-time.<\/p>\n<h3>Predictions<\/h3>\n<p>For the sake of Akam and Rezar, I really hope the WWE doesn\u2019t go soft on their initial push. Guys like American Alpha can recover in time, but monsters lose their shine quickly, and can rarely get it back, if they aren\u2019t booked strong out of the gate. Once they arrive on the main roster, if the company doesn\u2019t immediately want to put them over established teams, they should be torturing jobbers and not losing to The Hype Bros or being unceremoniously eliminated third out of eight teams in a battle royal. The WWE should lift the blueprint precisely from the one used in NXT if they want to find any success with the Authors, and I\u2019m going to predict they actually do this, because I\u2019m in an optimistic mood. I don\u2019t know how many great years the Authors will have before some inevitable losses rob them of their monster status, but I suspect they\u2019ll enjoy two years or so as tag champions or real contenders.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK&#8217;S ARTICLE:\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2017\/02\/12\/rising-star-fading-star-week-bryan-jericho-alexa-bliss-mauro-ziggler-crews-ascension-kalisto\/\">NXT TRACKER \u2013 EMBER MOON: A weekly assessment and predictions on the prospects of an NXT wrestler\u2019s main roster future<\/a><\/p><div id=\"pwtor-3115768502\" class=\"pwtor-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280 __336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-253610636\"><div id=\"pwtor-596444322\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Welcome once again to the NXT TRACKER, where I pick an NXT talent, assess their progression to this point and make bold, sure-to-look-hilarious-in-retrospect predictions about their future prospects. Let\u2019s have a look at the still-undefeated <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2017\/02\/12\/nxt-tracker-authors-pain-weekly-assessment-predictions-prospects-nxt-wrestlers-main-roster-future\/\" title=\"NXT TRACKER \u2013 AUTHORS OF PAIN: A weekly assessment and predictions on the prospects of an NXT wrestler\u2019s main roster future\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,4381,27],"tags":[4006,124,4009],"class_list":["post-38724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opnionandanalysis","category-nxt-tracker","category-specialists","tag-authors-of-pain","tag-nxt","tag-paul-ellering"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/post\/2016\/11\/NXT_3x2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38732,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38724\/revisions\/38732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}