RUMOR: Is Legendary TNA Tag Team's NXT Debut Imminent? (UPDATED)

The legendary duo are exactly what the NXT tag division needs.

Tag Team CLASSIC | Motor City Machine Guns vs. Bailey and Gresham | IMPACT Feb. 23, 2023 / TNA Wrestling

Updated 9/14/24
We can now say that the Motor City Machine Guns have signed with WWE. Word broke (via Fightful) during SmackDown's season premiere on the USA Network Friday night that the veteran tag specialists have signed the dotted line and will debut soon. It's rumored that they'll be showing up at NXT sooner rather than later but that hasn't been confirmed yet.

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The Motor City Machine Guns are legends. They've won single and tag championships in every major promotion in the world, except one: WWE.

That may change in the next week or two according to PW Nexus.

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Other than a lengthy injury layoff for Chris Sabin and commitments to indy and international promotions, Sabin and his longtime tag partner Alex Shelley were mainstays in TNA for almost two decades.

In the aftermath of The Hardy Boys' ascension to the top of the pro wrestling world, teams like MCMG, The Young Bucks, and The Briscoe Brothers helped shape a new evolution of tag team warfare in promotions like TNA, Ring of Honor, CZW, All Japan, and NJPW.

Sources close to #PWNexus have informed us that MCMG are #WWENXT bound, with their debut potentially as soon as NXT's CW premiere. We are working to reach out to other sources to further confirm.

More details for subscribers of the #PWN Army on our discord. @Cory_Hays407 -… pic.twitter.com/0hK8OOae5T

— PW Nexus (@hashtagPWN) September 12, 2024

They're fast, insanely athletic, and maintain an incredibly high IQ that helped take tag team wrestling from the mid-card to the main event. Sabin and Shelley also had plenty of single-competition success, each holding the TNA World Championship and X Division Championship at one time or another.

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Even more impressive than their résumés is they're both slightly north of 40, have endured brutal bumps in ROH and TNA, and still look like they haven't missed a step. They may be, today, as good as they've ever been, and they'd be a boon to any promotion smart enough to add them to their roster.

Sabin and Shelley finished up their TNA commitment in April, and have since been in the market for a new home. The tag team specialists reportedly had discussions with AEW and WWE with both promotions highly interested in the duo.

Whispers abounded for months that they're WWE-bound, and if these new rumors are true, we may see them debut in NXT during the CW premiere on October 1. NXT's tag division sorely needs a shot in the arm. If Sabin and Shelley show up, that's exactly what they'll get.

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