Zilla Fatu debuts

After some speculation in recent months, Zilla Fatu, son of the late Umaga and member of the Samoan dynasty, made his surprise debut on NXT television earlier this week. The 26-year-old athlete interrupted a match up between Cruz Montana, the former Mike Santana, and Grayson Waller to determine the number one contender for the NXT championship. The fact that Zilla debuted on the brand during this segment implies that he will be involved in the title picture of the developmental show.

So, the question is, will this be too much too soon for the newest addition to the WWE of the Samoan family tree?

My initial impression is yes, mostly because despite only being in the business for three years, Zilla had a public dispute with Booker T, prompting him to exit the Hall of Famer's Reality of Wrestling organization where he trained to learn the ropes for the period of time before the two mended fences. Fatu also had a stint with Game Changer Wrestling two years ago before the company announced that he wouldn't be working for them again in the future, cancelling his previously scheduled dates for the company.

I could be wrong, and truthfully, I hope I am, but for someone to have those types of public rifts less than two years into their tenure as a wrestler, it just doesn't seem like national television, with the exposure and the responsibility that goes with it, will be something that will be handled well by Zilla Fatu at this point in his life. It's doubtful that someone, regardless of who they are, can go from the point of online arguments with a trainer to mature enough to handle the publicity of WWE television in the span of a few years.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't meant as some type of personal knock on the son of Umaga, but rather to point out the nature of the business for young performers that get too much responsibility to handle too early in their careers when they don't have the proper perspective to realize the opportunities in front of them. Nattie and TJ Wilson were signed to WWE contracts when they were very young, but were mature enough to handle it and the result is that they still work for the company more than two decades later. On the flip side, Tony Atlas (or whoever the ghost writer was) literally wrote the book "Too much, Too soon" that was released more than a decade ago before it was also the title of an episode of Dark Side of The Ring about his career last year. Teddy Hart had more than one chance to be the next generation high-flyer of the Hart lineage before he became such a dumpster fire that he wasted any potential he might've had. Renee Dupree signed a contract at 18, and five years later, his career was basically over.

To put Zilla Fatu on national television with just three years of in-ring experience is very rare, at least for the modern era, a period when talents that had several years of international experience under their belts, making them more than ready for the main roster, still had to spend at least a few of the prime years of their career on the developmental show. If Zilla is mature enough to handle this level of notoriety or the responsibility, that by extension, is a representation of a publicly-traded, global corporation remains to be seen.

However, that doesn't mean that was automatically the wrong move, at least in terms of the broad concept.

I wrote a few articles about second generation stars earlier this week, and one thing is for sure, the WWE definitely needs to make a significant and consistent push toward a youth movement. Despite all of his already noted personal blunders in recent years, the reality is that Vince McMahon's latter tenure as the boss  was woefully sloppy. If I had to guess the reasoning behind the professional woes, I'd say that it was unintentional complacency, particularly after TNA fell off a cliff in the aftermath of the Hulk Hogan debacle in the early-2010s, and before the launch of All Elite Wrestling in 2019.

Vince took the easy, predictable, and stale road to use part-timers at the top of the card since it didn't require any of the heavy lifting involved in putting a level of faith into a younger talent and then constructing storylines that could showcase them to the fullest potential. With any investment in sports entertainment, there's some risk. Does anyone remember the extremely monotonous Raw show throughout the mid-2010s when you could skip a month of the program without actually missing anything from the angles? Brock Lesnar was the part-time champion, and the brand was booked around the centerpiece not being there for three months at a time.

The domino effect of that was that the WWE audience, particularly the more causal demographic, got conditioned to view the vast majority of the current roster as secondary to guys from the past. There was a reason that at certain points in time that nostalgia was the biggest drawing card that the company had. I'm not saying to discard the stars from a previous generation at all, their cache is an extremely valuable asset in a variety of ways. But, outside of very few exceptions, the office hasn't truly run with, or put stock into younger talent to take the top spots that are trusted to move the needle. John Cena, Bill Goldberg, AJ Styles, and Brock Lesnar are retired. Seth Rollins is younger than those peers, but given his laundry list of injuries, as talented as he is, it's possible that his career will end earlier than it would've other wise. Roman Reigns claimed in recent interviews that he will explore the potential of retirement within a few years. At the very least, I could see Roman stepping away from full-time competition in favor of limited cameos a few times a year. Randy Orton is one of the last guys standing from that early-2000s group, but again, his injuries, including as recent as Wrestlemania earlier this year, make the time he has left in the ring unpredictable.

Thankfully, it seems like there has been a push toward younger wrestlers more recently, specifically with Oba Femi being pushed as the future at 28 years old rather than a decade from now. Bron Breakker is the same age, and should be considered as much, if not even more of a priority in terms of moving up the card. As mentioned, only time will tell if Zilla will be a part of that youth movement, but he's undoubtedly getting the chance to make a name for himself after a debut like that. Of course, it goes without saying that management shouldn't try to rush him, and should view him as a long-term project. If he spends three years on NXT to arrive onto the main roster as a polished pro by the time he hits the age of thirty, WWE brass could potentially have a star for the next 15 years for the organization. Ironically, despite the cache that goes along with the Samoan family, I'd say that the office should allow Zilla to work on his own to avoid him getting lost in the shuffle of the lackluster retread of the Bloodline storyline. The biggest takeaway from this story might not be the debut of Zilla himself, but rather the indication of a possible youth movement since the company needs new stars.