I was told by several that Vince McMahon also loved Sasha Banks' work on the NXT live event in San Jose, CA.
Hideo Itami got the nod to win the tournament for the NXT tournament for the Andre the Giant Battle Royal at the last minute. The original plan was for Finn Balor or Adrian Neville to go over. Once the match was moved to the pre-show, the decision was made to go with Itami as a way to tie him into Tatsumi Fujinami going into the WWE Hall of Fame, since there was a lot of Japanese media in town covering Fujinami.
The Neville call up has been in place for some time.
CJ Parker decision to leave NXT was said to have been motivated by the feeling he had been in developmental for a long time (almost four years) and wanting to get out and make a name for himself outside of WWE as well as not wanting to be seen as one of those types of talents who are in developmental forever and never move on. I was also told it was a case of Parker wanting to better himself by wrestling internationally and up his game.
A number of NXT talents played the soldiers in the Triple H entrance at Wrestlemania, including Enzo Amore and Solomon Crowe.
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