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NXT Champion Bron Breakker finds himself in a rather unique position.

Breakker has been positioned as “the guy” in NXT for over a year now. He was one of leader of Team 2.0 in the 2021 NXT WarGames Match. A few weeks later, he won the NXT title from Tommaso Ciampa and has held it ever since (with the exception of the month when Dolph Ziggler inexplicably held it).

But what is Bron Breakker? What is he? Who is he?

Let’s look at the feuds Bron Breakker has had since winning the title in January 2022:

• Santos Escobar

• Dolph Ziggler

• Joe Gacy

• Cameron Grimes

• J.D. McDonough

• Apollo Crews

• Grayson Waller

There has been nothing, and I mean nothing, memorable about those feuds. Nor has anybody really been elevated by working with Bron Breakker.

That speaks as much to Breakker’s character work as anything else. Which is to say: what character work?

Name? Dumb.

Theme music? Generic.

Promos? Average.

Ringwork? Physically impressive, but average. Though this endorsement probably doesn’t help.

Is he over with the fans? Well, it’s hard to say with the meta we’re-part-of-the-show-too audience you always get at NXT tapings. But the crowd singing “Bron Breakker sucks” to the tune of the old “John Cena Sucks” chant says something.

But it gets back to the question of: who is Bron Breakker’s character? It’s a real-life version of the storyline that Von Wagner is playing out on NXT TV right now.

We know that Bron Breakker played college football and went to camp with the Baltimore Ravens. We know that he is Rick Steiner’s kid and Scott Steiner’s nephew. We know he shares some of their move sets, he wears a singlet like they often did, and does the barking like his dad did. His promos sound like a combination o the two.

But other than being a familiar relation, why should I care about Bron Breakker? And why isn’t he just “Bron Steiner?”

The NXT-to-Raw or Smackdown pipeline has gotten a little stale recently. But it is clear that Breakker is poised to be the next guy to get called up to the main roster. The question is whether or not he will succeed or flourish on Mondays or Fridays. He defeated Akira Tozawa on Main Event this week in a match taped on Monday at Raw. Tozawa has been the gatekeep recently for NXT guys, having Main Event matches recently with Breakker, Tony D’Angelo, Xyon Quinn, and Odyssey Jones, making it appear that a post-Wrestlemania call-up for Breakker is imminent.

But based on what we have seen so far, without a serious repackaging of Breakker’s character, I find it hard to imagine he will have any serious success on the main roster. And if things remain unchained, the five-year run of NXT champions who haven’t made it on the main roster will likely continue.

Breakker's character on NXT has not been compelling. Without some changes, he will likely be the latest NXT Champ to fail at the next level.

Brian Griffiths is the publisher of The Duckpin. He is on Twitter at @briangriffiths and on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok @briangriffithsmd.