Cook: Keith Lee Is Not Doomed

Keith Lee gets called up, a new theme song, new gear, and suddenly it’ll be harder to Bask In His Glory? Steve Cook has some perspective for you…

We need to have a conversation about Keith Lee, people. But first…

I’ve been trying to tell people that NXT wrestlers getting called up to the main roster isn’t a bad thing.

It’s definitely not a bad thing for NXT. One of the problems plaguing the Black & Yellow Brand at the moment is the fact there’s a lot of people taking up space there that have been around forever. Why are any of the Undisputed Era members still there? Johnny Gargano? Tommaso Ciampa? I could go up and down the line of NXT wrestlers that have accomplished all that they can possibly accomplish at Full Sail. At some point, those veterans have to get out of the way and let the next group take over.

People come back to me with how those wrestlers will get used so much worse on the main roster. I mean…ok…but we’re past the point where NXT’s booking is unquestionably perfect for everybody on their roster. Gargano’s spinning his wheels as a heel, Ciampa’s finally coming back this week to likely put Karrion Kross over again, the Undisputed Era got turned face to feud with Pat McAfee and I have no idea what else they can do with that.

And let’s face it, those WWE Performance Center shelves are well stocked with talent we haven’t seen or thought about in months or even years. At some point, NXT needs to play with those toys.

So I was happy to hear that Keith Lee was called up to Raw. About damn time! They should have done that back around Survivor Series when he was standing across the ring from Roman Reigns & looking believable. Or, hell, how about Royal Rumble when he came down to the ring and Brock Lesnar was impressed? OK, so he got to win the North American & NXT Championships over the past few months, which is all well & good, and will look nice on that Hall of Fame resume someday. Eventually we’ll forget how forgettable his NXT Championship reign was. We tend to forget things like that.

It’s time for Keith Lee to get called up.

The only problem? I’m not entirely sure whether they called up Keith Lee or his weird doppelganger brother. They tried to change everything about this dude on Monday night.

New music. No more facial hair. New ring attire covering up his torso & lower mid-section. I think we could have handled these changes had they happened in some kind of gradual fashion. Or if they didn’t all happen within two days of his last NXT match.

The music situation apparently can’t be helped. WWE wants to get rid of theme songs produced by CFO$, a group they stopped working with last year. CFO$ stopped working with each other this week. I would assume it’s not even a finished product, as it sounded super generic and like a work in progress. Maybe in a month it’ll have Keith Lee-rapped lyrics over it and it’ll be all right.

We can’t be surprised about the new ring attire. Lee didn’t quite wear as much as we were accustomed to seeing men his size wear on NXT. Not shocking Vince (or whoever, but most likely Vince) thought something else might be in order. I’m not the one to go to for fashion tips, but I will say that covering his upper body isn’t a bad idea. I would forget the tennis skirt idea though.

You know one thing that didn’t bother me? The booking.

It did bother some people that wanted to see Keith Lee squash Randy Orton in under a minute. All I’m saying about it is the guy has a featured match with Randy Orton on a PPV this weekend. Whether he wins or loses, it’s pretty darn impressive that they’re throwing him in there with Randy Orton right away. Obviously somebody there sees something in Keith Lee, and they hope Randy will bring it out of him.

So while I won’t say everything went perfectly on Monday night, I do feel comfortable in saying one thing, at least after a grand total of one appearance on Monday Night Raw…

Keith Lee is not doomed.