Matt Rehwoldt has shared his memories of a “special” time in NXT history.
NXT began life as a hybrid between WWE’s usual programming and a reality TV series in 2010 and ran for five series. However, following the closure of WWE’s developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling in 2012, things began to change.
This led to the creation of the NXT brand that still exists to this day, although it has been through numerous changes. After the launch of the brand’s “TakeOver” specials, NXT became a cult hit with fans and its popularity grew incredibly. During this period between 2015 and 2018 especially, it wasn’t uncommon to hear WWE fans say they enjoyed the developmental brand more than the main roster.
One man who was on the front line of the revolution was Matt Rehwoldt, who was better known as Aiden English in WWE. After joining the company in 2012 he competed in FCW and eventually NXT. However, it wasn’t until he began teaming with Simon Gotch in 2014 that his career really took off.
The pair won the NXT Tag Team Titles and clashed with the likes of American Alpha and the team now known as FTR. The duo’s Tag Title win came at the famous NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn event that played host to the acclaimed Women’s Title match between Sasha Banks and Bayley.
Speaking in a new interview with Nick Hausman for Inside The Ropes, Rehwoldt reflected on this NXT run and explained how everyone involved was very aware of just how special that period was.
“Like I told you, again it was a lot of ‘Head down just go, go, go, trying to be the best we can be.’ But I will say for a lot of us during that time, I think we could feel it, which I’m very grateful for because there were a lot of moments.
Shout out to guys like Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, who I had great conversations with about that exact thing like he would — Rami — Sami Zayn would point out, ‘This is cool. This is Punk Rock kind of stuff, man.’ He’s like, ‘This is something really special we’re doing here,’ especially when we started touring on the road, and then selling out these big TV-level venues for our NXT show.
So there was very, very much that feeling where we’re doing something cool here, we’re doing something special, we’re lighting something on fire. But yeah, I’m very grateful for at the time both, now being able to look back at that time, but more importantly, in the moment, we were able to really appreciate a lot of that.”
What Did Matt Rehwoldt Do After NXT?
After finding success in NXT, The Vaudevillains moved to the main roster in 2016 but never managed to capture tag team gold before Gotch was released in April 2017. However, Rehwoldt enjoyed another popular run alongside Rusev as Rusev Day ran wild over WWE.
Since both men have now left WWE, there have been calls from fans for the pair to reunite, but this seems unlikely. During the same interview, the former Aiden English said he hasn’t spoken to the man now known as Miro for some time.
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