WWE Has Two Weeks Worth of Taped Shows Featuring a Recently Released Superstar

[Liz]

WWE recently pretaped the June 14 and June 21 episodes of NXT, but have seemingly run into a problem with those episodes. It was announced over the weekend that NXT star Troy Donovan, wrestling as one of Tony D'Angelo's henchmen named Two Dimes, had been released due to an undisclosed WWE policy violation. Reports have since popped up that the split was amicable enough to where Donovan could be back with the company down the line and his Twitter statement on the matter seemed to reinforce that — "Thank you to everyone who's reached out. Mistakes happen and lessons are learned. A bump in the road doesn't define me though. I'll be back."

But based on the spoilers for those two episodes, WWE will have to do some serious editing if they want Donovan removed from their product in the near future. The spoilers that pertain to Donovan are as follows:

On tonight's episode, he'll be involved in an in-ring segment that sets up a North American Championship match between Carmelo Hayes and D'Angelo

He'll later take part in a tag team match alongside Stacks and lose to Hayes and Trick Williams

On the June 21 episode he'll be at ringside for a tag team match involving Roderick Strong, Damon Kemp, Cruz Del Toro and Joaquin Wilde

Then in the show's main event, he'll be one of the wrestlers who attempts to interfere on D'Angelo's behalf in the NA Championship match. Hayes winds up retaining thanks to an assist from Santos Escobar

Dave Meltzer speculated that WWE could try to re-edit the episodes to cut out Donovan, but said it's "not the end of the world" if he's shown on TV. Given how much he's featured, that seems to be unavoidable.

Donovan debuted on the independent scene as Cole Karter back in August 2020 and wrestled a number of matches for AEW before arriving on NXT programming in April. He, D'Angelo and Stacks won a six-man tag team match at this year's NXT In Your House, which forced Legado del Fantasma to join their faction, The Family. Stay tuned for full coverage of tonight's NXT episode!