Diamond Mine Will Be Roderick Strong’s Time to Shine

Roderick Strong will become a star with his new faction

This week, NXT debuted it’s latest in a long line of factions. After a few weeks of vignettes with an MMA edge to them, we finally saw the newest group in NXT. Malcolm Bivens (one of the funniest people on Twitter) will be the group mouthpiece. Tyler Rust (who has been a client of Bivens before) and Hideki Suzuki will be part of it. The leader of the group will be Roderick Strong, who is no stranger to groups. There were supposed to be two others, but those plans were scrapped with releases. The group debuted and took out KUSHIDA.

Strong’s inclusion in the group is a surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t be. We haven’t seen Strong since the disbanding of his last group, Undisputed Era. The group disbanded when leader Adam Cole turned on Kyle O’Reilly, who was getting more of the spotlight. Bobby Fish was injured and missed the break up. Strong, however, was part of it and just said he was “done with this”.

Roddy Strong isn’t a stranger to stables and teams. Before the Undisputed Era, Strong had aligned briefly with the Authors of Pain to oppose the group. In the independent scene, Strong has teamed with both Austin Aries and Eddie Edwards. Fans might be inclined to think of Strong as not worthy of leading man material. Diamond Mine is his chance to prove them wrong.

He’s been a world champion with lengthy title reigns in both Ring of Honor and Pro Wrestling Guerilla. It has been a while since we’ve seen Strong get major singles feuds, but when he debuted in NXT he was doing just that. Strong had shots at the NXT Championship on multiple occasions. He’s got the skills to go in the ring, and being the clear leader of a young group of talented grapplers will give him even more credit. Strong won’t need to be the mouthpiece either; he’s got Bivens to do the heavy share of the group’s talking. Instead Strong will be relied upon for quality matches and a vicious edge, two things we know he can provide.

Strong is going to be an absolute star in The Diamond Mine. We know that NXT likes to push it’s stables strong, with lots of world title opportunities for their leaders. That means it is Strong’s time for treasure.