Ask 411 Wrestling: How Many nWo Members Are Still Wrestling?

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I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

Hey, ya wanna banner?

Tyler from Winnipeg is trapped in the figure four:

Can you give me a yay or nah on Bryan Alverez?

I’ll give Bryan a “yay.”

I have actually been a subscriber to his website, Figure Four Online, going back to either 2005 or 2006 – prior to its merger with the Wrestling Observer. Though the nature of its content has changed over the years, it’s been consistently engaging and entertaining. Bryan’s reporting is typically accurate, and I agree with his opinions on wrestling more often than not. (In fact, I’d say more often than his mentor, Dave Meltzer.)

Of course, Bryan has also been a wrestler. He is not flashy in the ring but is technically competent and knows how to guide less experienced opponents through bouts.

All in all, there’s not much to dislike about Super Chico.

Big Al is here for the short term:

What is the point to have a wrestler win a title, just to have them lose it right back to the wrestler they just won it from? I understand if you want to have a transitional champion, but it seems dumb to have someone win it and then lose it days later right back to the same person they won it from.

It depends on the context. Perhaps most frequently, it is something that is done to an extend a feud. If the plan is for Wrestler A to have a title reign but you want him to have a four or five month run with Wrestler B, having Wrestler B take the belt for a month or two makes it easier to keep the rivalry going for that period of time and doesn’t disrupt the long-term plan for Wrestler A all that much.

It could also be that the booker believes that a brief title run, even if it’s ended by the same wrestler to the champ took the belt off of in the first place, will do something to get the wrestler in question over.

Finally, it could be that putting the belt on the newly crowned champion just isn’t working, causing the powers to be to basically do a reset and start over again with the prior champion.

GRT: The Franchise is taking over via Disqus:

How many members of the NWO (Hollywood, Wolf Pack and WWE NWO) are still actively wrestling?

The answer is very few.

In fact, the most active former members of the nWo weren’t even members of the the nWo as we saw it in the United States. If you want to see former members of wrestling’s most iconic stable having matches in 2025, you need to head to the Land of the Rising Sun.

That’s right. For those of you not aware, New Japan Pro Wrestling, which had a working relationship with WCW in the mid-to-late 1990s, was allowed to run its own version of the nWo storyline. Some of the members of nWo Japan were American wrestlers who would travel overseas to work on NJPW shows, but the real core members were native Japanese grapplers.

Satoshi Kojima and Hiroyoshi Tenzan are the ex-nWo-ites who currently wrestle the closest thing to a full-time schedule. Both of them are still regulars on New Japan cards, but Kojima takes it a step further than that, as he is also heavily associated with MLW in the United States and has held both their World Heavyweight Title and World Tag Team Titles in 2025. On top of that, Kojima also did a tour of CMLL earlier this month has part of the working relationship between that company and NJPW. He’s 54 years old, and he’s still running all over the world.

Yuji Nagata is also still an active wrestler in New Japan. Admittedly, he was not what I would call a regular member of the nWo, but he did have one match as a fill-in member of the group. When the pickings are as slim for an answer as they are for this one, I may as well mention that.

But what about the United States? Is there anybody from the nWo who is working something that looks somewhat like a regular schedule?

There is only one name I could find which meets those criteria, and it’s probably not who you’re thinking of:

It’s good ole’ Double J, Jeff Jarrett.

Yes, that’s right. Jarrett, who was part of the silver-and-black nWo 2000 revival of the stable, is the most active U.S.-based former nWo member. Of course, he’s under contract to AEW and, though he is teasing retirement, he’s had four matches thusfar in 2025 and had quite a few more than that in 2024, including high profile bouts with Adam Page and Bryan Danielson.

Aside from that, things get pretty sparse pretty quickly. Booker T., who was a member of the WWE version of the nWo, had one match in 2025 but before that had not wrestled since the 2023 Royal Rumble. Disco Inferno, who was briefly in the Wolfpac, has appeared in one indy battle royale this year, but before that he’d not been in the ring since 2021. The Big Show and Buff Bagwell each had one match in 2024, though they’ve been MIA since then.

And that’s about where things come to an end. Not to be too much of a bummer, but we’ve also started to lose an uncomfortably high number of former nWo members, with Scott Hall, Vincent, Miss Elizabeth, Big Bubba, Randy Savage, Curt Hennig, Rick Rude, Dusty Rhodes, and Brian Adams from the U.S. group having all having passed away in addition to nWo Japan’s Masa Saito and Big Titan.

Ignacio is wild and young:

Where are they now? time. Can you do a “Where are they now?” of every NXT rookie, from seasons 1 to 5, and also the NXT Lost Season?

Okay, here we go. This is going to take a while, so I’m not going to give a huge preamble setting it up.

Wade Barrett: Wade Barrett is a color commentator employed by WWE. That one was pretty simple.

David Otunga: First off, David Otunga was in WWE for a heck of a lot longer than I realized. He spent four years from 2015 to 2019 as part of the announce team, mostly doing those pre-and-post shows that you couldn’t pay me to watch. After getting cut by WWE, he went into acting. No doubt his most notable role has been a bit part on two episodes of the She-Hulk television series, and most recently he’s been the lead in a low budget detective show called Wrath & Rituals that appears to have produced five episodes but has not landed any distribution deal as far as I can tell.

Justin Gabriel: Gabriel was cut by WWE in 2015 and became a real journeyman after that, wrestling at different points for Impact, Lucha Underground, NWA, AEW, and ROH but seemingly never remaining in one place for too long. On a March 2025 episode of the Two Man Power Trip podcast, he revealed that he has been out of commission since July 2024 when he tore his patella tendon on a dive during a match.

Heath Slater: Slater had a long post-Nexus run as a comedy character in WWE and lasted there through 2019. From 2020 to 2023, he was part of the Impact Wrestling roster, including a reunion with his WWE tag team partner Rhyno. Since then he’s been a pretty consistent presence on the U.S. independent scene, though not with any particularly large promotions.

Darren Young: This is another one that I feel as though is pretty well known. Following his WWE departure in 2017, Young bounced around indies for a few years before landing in New Japan Pro Wrestling in 2020. Known now as Fred Rosser, NJPW has been his home promotion ever since, wrestling mainly on the company’s U.S. shows.

Skip Sheffield: Of course, this is the Ryback. WWE cut him in 2016 and he wrestled on independents through 2018. Very shortly after WWE let him go, he started a podcast, which ran through June of last year. Though the podcast is gone, you can now watch Ryback on his YouTube channel, which appears to exclusively consist of him reviewing fast food items. (And not doing it anywhere near as well as the Dougboys.) He also has a company through which he sells supplements, which seems more on brand.

Michael Tarver: Tarver was one of the first Nexus members to be shown the door by WWE, leaving in 2011 after an injury. He wrestled pretty consistently on indies, mostly in Florida and Texas, through 2019. He had a couple of matches in NJPW, allegedly as an NWA representative, including an infamous 2014 match in which his partner Big Daddy Yum Yum sold Satoshi Kojima’s chops in the worst way possible. (Look it up.) These days, Tarver primarily seems to be working as a Christian rapper signed to a label called God Over Money.

Daniel Bryan: We know this story.

Kaval: a.k.a. Low Ki, a.k.a. Senshi, a.k.a. the littlest James Earl Jones impersonator. Ki left WWE at the end of 2011 and had further runs with Impact, NJPW, AJPW, and MLW followed by miscellaneous independents. Unfortunately, his Twitter presence has revealed that he’s a nutjob conspiracy theorist and vaccine denier. I’ve not seen any record of him wrestling since November 2024.

Michael McGillicutty: Of course, McGillicutty went on to become an Intercontinental Champion as Curtis Axel. He is one of the few folks on this list who has had absolutely no reported pro wrestling matches since he left WWE in 2020. I was able to find an interview that Axel did with a local news channel in Jacksonville, Florida in July 2024 when he was in the area for a wrestling convention. He said at that point that he had really just be spending his time being a father to his three young sons, though he had recently gotten back into the ring and started taking bumps, perhaps en route to a comeback.

Alex Riley: Riley actually stumped me a little bit. He was cut by WWE in 2016 and then vanished from wrestling for several years, trying out acting where his most prominent role was a small part in the Netflix GLOW series in 2017. He did come back for a small handful of matches under his real name in late 2022 and early 2023, and then he just vanished again. I have seen some vague references in a couple of articles to him working in real estate, but, if he is, he’s doing it in a way that doesn’t leave much of a footprint online.

Husky Harris: This is another well-known story. Husky Harris would become Bray Wyatt, who is sadly no longer with us.

Percy Watson: I actually thought Watson had a unique charisma that would get him further than it ultimately did. He was initially cut by WWE in 2013 but got another contract as an announcer from 2016 through 2019. Since then, like many others on this list, he has done a lot of acting and modeling. He’s had one-episode runs on pretty popular shows like The Walking Dead and Chicago Fire. Perhaps most interestingly, he is also one of the inventors of PushPro, which advertises itself as the world’s first frozen protein bar. Perhaps this means some day we’ll also seem him add Shark Tank to his filmography.

Lucky Cannon: Cannon had roughly half a dozen matches on Florida indies after getting bumped from WWE developmental in 2011. He’s had no connection to the sport since then. Assuming my social media stalking game is strong, it appears that he’s currently working as a registered nurse.

Eli Cottonwood: Much like Mr. Cannon, Eli Cottonwood didn’t stick around in pro wrestling once things wrapped up for him in the WWE system. It seems that he is currently working in the investment real estate industry in addition to tweeting a lot about professional golf and right wing politics.

Titus O’Neil: DO THE DOG BARK! I was a bit surprised to learn that Titus is still under some form of WWE contract, though he’s working for them in more of a public relations capacity than anything else. This past fall, he also released his ghostwritten book Wrestling with Fatherhood: My Championship Journey to My Greatest Title: Dad, which as you can probably guess from the title is a biography intermingled with meditations on parenting.

Kaitlyn: And we move to NXT Season 3, which was focused on female competitors. Kaitlyn, real name Celeste Bonin, wrapped her WWE career in 2014 though she did a brief comeback around the Mae Young Classic in 2018. Prior to WWE, she worked in the bodybuilding and fitness spaces, and that’s where she’s at these days as well. She has a service in which she offers personal fitness coaching for a fee, and she also has her own active-wear brand called Shine.

Naomi: Somewhat surprisingly, she is the first person we’ve covered on this list who is still actively wrestling for WWE.

AJ Lee: Now better known as AJ Mendez, the former Raw General Manager is one-half of the creative team at Scrappy Heart Productions, which has written a variety of comic books, including Wonder Woman and one based on the Netflix GLOW series. They also wrote Blade of the 47 Ronin, a feature length motion picture that premiered on Netflix in 2022.

Aksana: What is llama? I am not seeing a lot out there about Aksana’s life after she was released from WWE in 2014. However, she has had virtually no involvement in wrestling, doing personal appearances at a couple of shows but not actually having a match. There are vague references out there to her being involved in fitness training and modeling, which is essentially what she was doing before she signed with WWE as well. Also, fun fact: When another reader asked me a few years ago to identify the best pro wrestler from each country in the world, I had to declare Aksana to be Lithuania’s best wrestler, though it was more by default than anything else.

Maxine: Not to be confused with the current Maxine Dupree, this gal’s real name is Karlee Perez. She requested and was granted her WWE release in 2012 and stayed away from wrestling for a couple of years, though in 2014 she popped up in Lucha Underground, where she was a valet and ring announcer, and she has done the same in MLW’s more recent LU reboot of sorts. Otherwise, she seems to have some involvement in the worlds of modeling and acting but does not have a huge public presence.

Jamie: Also known as Jamie Keyes, this NXT competitor’s real name was Brittany Beede, and she was a model in the mid-2000s who was recruited to joint Wrestlicious, which for those of you who don’t recall was supposed to be an updated version of David McLane’s GLOW from the 1980s. She never made it to Wrestlicious, but the interest she showed in wrestling got her a one-off appearance at Impact Wrestling’s 2009 Final Resolution pay per view and then a WWE developmental deal. During her time in developmental, she was tried out as both a wrestler and an announcer and wasn’t very good at either. Ultimately, she was the first person eliminated from her season of NXT, and she was cut from her WWE contract weeks later. Since then, she’s had zero public life that I can find, almost immediately reverting to being a private citizen.

Aloisia: Independent wrestler Isis the Amazon debuted in 2007 and immediately garnered some attention because of her height, standing 6’8” tall, one foot and four inches taller than the average American woman. After a couple of years on Florida indies and appearances for ICP’s Juggalo Championship Wrestling, WWE signed her for NXT Season 3 in 2010. Even though she was featured in promotional material for the show, she was cut before the first episode aired, allegedly because she did not disclose some past work in the adult entertainment industry. She did a handful of indy matches and one Impact Wrestling dark match after her release but started to focus more on acting. She had a few small roles here and there and, most notably, was one of four taller-than-average women who appeared on a TLC reality show called My Giant Life which produced three seasons between 2015 and 2017. She has largely been out of the public eye since then.

Johnny Curtis: And now we move on to the final season of NXT to feature new cast members. The first of them is Johnny Curtis, who would go on to more fame in a later role as Fandango. After some early success and an infamous Wrestlemania win over Chris Jericho, Curtis’s momentum stalled out, though he wouldn’t be cut until 2021, after spending almost fifteen years under WWE contract if you include his time in developmental. Since then, he has continued to wrestle, mostly for Impact, using the name Dirty Dango. In fact, he recently returned to NXT as part of the WWE/Impact working relationship.

Brodus Clay: After his NXT run, Brodus served as muscle for Alberto Del Rio for a bit and was then repackaged as the Funkasaurus, a dancing fool character. After a couple of years of being relatively popular for an undercard babyface, he was sacked in 2014. He then had one of the most unexpected post-WWE career changes on this list, becoming a right wing political commentator on Fox News and its associated streaming platform. Using the name Tyrus, he has done work for Fox since 2016, and he has also wrestled through 2023, initially for Impact Wrestling and subsequently for the Billy Corgan NWA, where he became the NWA World Heavyweight Champion for a time. The title run proved somewhat controversial with fans, with some of them deriding it because they felt it platformed some of his problematic political views, while others were uncomfortable with the notion that Tyrus, a marginal in-ring performer at best, would hold the championship that used to belong to Thesz, Flair, and the Funks.

Derrick Bateman: Bateman never really made a mark in WWE after his NXT runs, floating around developmental before getting released in 2013. Almost immediately, he took advantage of some of his family ties and debuted as Ethan Carter III in Impact Wrestling, where he received a huge push thanks to his aunt, Dixie Carter, heading up the promotion. EC3 was an Impact mainstay through 2018, when he actually re-signed with WWE. He continued to use the EC3 name but went nowhere fast and was released in 2020 in the wave of cuts brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. He was continued to wrestle to this day, working in Ring of Honor for a time but mostly appearing for the NWA, where his a former NWA World Heavyweight Champion.

Byron Saxton: I never would have guessed this when I was watching NXT Season 4, but Byron Saxton is still employed by WWE, over a decade later. However, he transitioned from wrestling to announcing almost immediately after his NXT run. Nowadays, he mostly appears on the company’s pre-and-post shows, which, again, I cannot imagine anybody actually watching.

Conor O’Brian: This guy’s gimmick was that he looked kind of like a rat. No, seriously. Fortunately, he was repackaged not long after his NXT run and became part of the Ascension, a change that probably extended his career because the team seemed to be a favorite of Triple H. As Konnor of the Ascension, he remained with WWE through 2019, after which he worked a variety of indies, sometimes with his former Ascension partner under the new name of “The Awakening.” In 2022, he showed up in Impact Wrestling and made that his home promotion through the fall of last year. He’s had some indy shots since then but appears to have scaled his wrestling career way back for reasons I am not aware of.

Jacob Novak: Last but certainly not least, we’ve got Jacob Novak. (I can’t say he’s “the least” on a list that includes Eli Cottonwood.) Novak had a background in rugby and, as near as I can tell, he had no background in wrestling before signing his WWE developmental deal. According to the March 19, 2012 Wrestling Observer Newsletter he was taken off of television due to a hip injury and then released while he was laid up with that injury. The April 2 Observer from the same year mentioned that Novak was going to start wrestling under the name Drew Sheppard on a tour of Colombia, and I found a couple of U.S. indy results for him under that name in 2012 but otherwise as near as I can tell he’s slipped out of the public eye.

Ignacio’s question also asks about the “lost season” of NXT, which was a contemplated additional season of the show on SyFy that would have included a new crop of rookies. Promo videos were shot, but then the whole thing was scrapped. I the planned rookies were Seth Rollins, Big E Langston, Xavier Woods, Jinder Mahal, and Bo “Uncle Howdy” Dallas. I don’t think I need to tell any of you where they’re at now.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.