As 2025 draws to a close there are a number of stars in WWE who are poised for a breakout year. To be clear, this does not include names like Cody Rhodes, CM Punk, or Gunther who stand atop the business already and will likely as not continue their winning ways in 2026. Rather, it’s time to consider talents WWE or at least NXT fans already know who stands to graduate to a new level in 2026. Who are the men to watch for in the new year?
Oba Femi
For NXT fans, Oba Femi isn’t just a hot prospect. He’s the present and he’s an inevitability. Nonetheless, The Ruler is still mostly unknown to main-roster-only fans aside from a lowkey coming-out party opposite Cody Rhodes at the final Saturday Night’s Main Event of 2025.
Femi has so many tools, from size and strength to athleticism to having quite quickly picked up on in-ring performance. He’s even reasonably solid on the microphone, especially by the standards of someone who was competing in shot put for the University of Alabama as recently as 2022.
Specifically in an era when WWE has taken some heat for not featuring a lot of Black men on top, Femi may well be a main roster main event attraction in 2026.
Austin Theory
No one’s career trajectory was more tumultuous than Austin Theory’s when Vince McMahon fell under scandal and wound up in and out of the company before seemingly being exiled for good. Indeed, few and far between are the men who’ve held the United States Championship and a Money in the Bank briefcase, besides having beaten John Cena one-on-one at WrestleMania. Combine that with a fall from grace, spending much of the last two years in a semi-comedic tag team with Grayson Waller.
The prevailing wisdom was that McMahon arbitrarily tried to shove Theory down fans’ throats too soon in the dying days of his reign over WWE. Just the same, with his great look, his deceptive athleticism, and his charisma coming along, the late stages of A-Town Down Under made clear fans were ready to take him a lot more seriously.
The reveal of Theory as The Vison’s masked man has potential to elevate him. While he also runs the risk of playing a Buddy Roberts style bump machine for Bron Breakker, Bronson Reed, and Logan Paul, a lot of interesting possibilities await as Theory will be positioned to engage with top babyfaces, including plenty of intrigue about what will await him when Seth Rollins returns to the WWE landscape.
Joe Hendry
One could readily argue Joe Hendry had his breakout year already as 2025 saw him win the TNA Championship, work his first Royal Rumble, and wrestle Randy Orton at WrestleMania. Hendry did all of this while existing within a strange purgatory—an explosive star by TNA standards, but the writing was on the wall that he was WWE-bound (though he wasn’t signed to WWE yet).
Despite becoming an NXT mainstay over the year, Hendry has only relatively recently officially signed with WWE. The jury’s out as to his ceiling—if going viral on the Internet and becoming TNA’s hottest attraction actually were his peak or if he had a ways to go. Nonetheless, given Hendry’s popularity, there’s every reason for optimism that at least a rock solid mid-card run on the main roster is imminent for him.
Je’Von Evans
With the exception of Oba Femi, there may be no surer thing on the NXT roster than Je’Von Evans. He may have caught fans’ eyes via sheer athleticism, but performances over the course of 2025 demonstrated he’s much more than just a high-spot guy. Rather, he’s more than capable of holding his own in big match scenarios—not least of all the main event of Stand & Deliver over WrestleMania 41 weekend.
The biggest question for Evans in 2026 may well come down to whether he’ll finally win the NXT Championship and become “the guy” in developmental, move up to the main roster, or do both. The choice to feature The Young OG on John Cena’s farewell Saturday Night’s Main Event seemed to affirm WWE sees him as a main roster attraction imminently.
Dominik Mysterio
Dominik Mysterio has enjoyed major progress every year since turning heel in 2022, overachieving as a villain and becoming one of WWE’s biggest heat seekers. 2025 saw some of his most appreciable growth. He won the Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania and enjoyed an over-half-year reign. He won the AAA Mega Championship. When he lost the IC title, it was in front of a raucous crowd for John Cena’s last match in Boston, and Dirty Dom won it back in front of a stadium crowd in San Diego at Survivor Series.
As recently as a year ago, Mysterio was performing well, but it still felt like a stretch to imagine he’d ever win a proper world title in WWE. Now? The idea of him winning Money in the Bank and successfully converting the briefcase into a top title reign feels feasible. Heck, even him more organically continuing to scale the ladder to become a bona fide main event level threat without cash-in shenanigans feels much more than abstractly possible. 2026 may well be Mysterio’s biggest year yet.
