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What’s the story?
Remember Josh Bredl? Apparently, you do, because Dave Meltzer’s been fielding questions about his WWE status in this week’s issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Meltzer noted that Bredl is indeed still under contract with WWE, although he hasn’t actually wrestled in more than a year.
In case you didn’t know…
A few months ago, in April of this year, rumours started swirling that Bredl had indeed been released from his contract with WWE. Of course, all that talk proved to be unfounded. PWInsider were amongst those sources to debunk the story before Ryan Satin of Pro Wrestling Sheet revealed that WWE themselves had confirmed that Bredl was still under his NXT deal.
The heart of the matter
Per Meltzer, Bredl’s prolonged absence from a developmental ring is “due to issues related to concussions,” though there’s no word on when exactly those issues began.
Nothing out of the ordinary was reported off the back of his last official match—a defeat to Dan Matha at an NXT Live Event back in July of 2016. That suggests the case may be that these concussion issues stemmed from something that happened at the Performance Centre, as opposed to an incident from a particular match, per se.
What's next?
Getting healthy is obviously the biggest priority here for Bredl, not only for the sake of a potential WWE career but for his own personal, long-term well-being.
Beyond that, though, if and when he does return to the ring, don’t expect to see Bredl featured on WWE programming particularly soon. With his tutelage at the Performance Centre being disrupted this much, there’ll still plenty of work to be done before he’s ready for WWE television.
Author’s take
It’s a good-news-bad-news story for Bredl. The positive is that he’s still under contract with the biggest pro wrestling company in the world. The negative—he hasn’t competed for the last 13 months, at a time when he could really do with gaining as much experience as possible.
Still, the fact that the company has held onto him this long suggests the powers that be do have some kind of hope for him, and that in their eyes he showed enough potential on Tough Enough to convince them he’s worth taking a punt on.
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