Hiromu Takahashi WWE Debut Headlines a Loaded Ottawa Undercard

Hiromu Takahashi WWE fans have been waiting years for this crossover, and it finally happened in Ottawa this week — and it wasn’t the only surprise on the card. Hiromu, teaming with Shinsuke Nakamura on SmackDown, wrestled a dark match against Kit Wilson before the show even started, and reportedly beat him. By the time the main card rolled around, Raw had already thrown a curveball of its own: Royce Keys, a babyface just weeks ago, turned heel out of nowhere and helped two total unknowns lay out LA Knight, Solo Sikoa, and the Usos. Throw in a genuinely personal Cody Rhodes/Randy Orton face-off and Nikki Bella running in on Paige, and this was one of the busiest undercards WWE has produced in Ottawa in years.

None of these stories got the marquee treatment of the Oba Femi contract signing or the main event chaos. But taken together, they’re a preview of where WWE’s midcard is actually heading over the next few months.

Hiromu Takahashi’s WWE Debut Is a Bigger Deal Than the Card Suggested

The Hiromu Takahashi WWE arrival happened almost quietly: a dark match win over Kit Wilson before Raw even went on the air, easy to miss unless you were actually in the building. That undersells what this means. Hiromu spent years as one of New Japan’s most decorated, most beloved performers, with a genuine larger-than-life character and a body of work that includes one of the most brutal, memorable matches of the last decade against Dragon Lee, the one where Hiromu suplexed Dragon Lee and skidded on his own neck, and somehow kept wrestling.

Neck injuries have taken some of the physical peak off Hiromu since then, but the character work, the charisma, and the “big personality” gimmick WWE loves are all still there, fully intact exactly what the Hiromu Takahashi WWE experiment needs to succeed.

Pairing him with Shinsuke Nakamura on SmackDown is smart on paper — two rock-star, larger-than-life gimmicks who already have real history against each other and against the wider New Japan roster. If WWE lets that history breathe instead of burying it under a generic tag formula, there’s a genuine tag title run in Hiromu Takahashi’s WWE future. The one thing WWE has to get right immediately: whatever name they put on him going forward, don’t strip away what made him a star in the first place.

Royce Keys Turns Heel, Debuts OTM

Royce Keys spent the last several weeks as a sympathetic babyface getting run over by the Bloodline offshoot around Jacob Fatu and the Usos. This week, with zero build, he walked out with two new faces — a tag team going by OTM, reportedly out of NXT and AAA — and attacked LA Knight and Solo Sikoa before turning around and laying out the Usos too.

The live crowd genuinely didn’t know how to react, because the babyface-heel lines got scrambled in real time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. A surprise heel turn that actually confuses the audience for a minute is rarer than it should be in modern WWE, where turns are usually telegraphed for weeks.

The obvious risk is that OTM debuts as three interchangeable “goons” with no distinct identity, the same trap that’s swallowed a dozen faceless stables before them. WWE has a couple of months to give Royce Keys and his new partners an actual reason for existing before the novelty of the surprise wears off.

Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton Get Personal

Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton can’t touch each other yet under the current stipulation, which forced their confrontation this week into pure verbal territory — and it worked. Orton brought up Cody’s late dog and, more pointedly, called out Cody’s mother by name, asking if she’d be sitting in the front row next week. Cody fired back that the two of them are about to find out whether Randy is a generational superstar like his father, or a first-class screw-up like his. It’s the kind of personal, specific insult work that the style guide’s own voice principles call for — nothing generic about it, and it set the actual stakes for next week’s match cleanly.

Nikki Bella Attacks Paige

Jacy Jayne beat Paige in a match that got a genuinely good showing from Paige, and then Nikki Bella ran in with a Rack Attack 2.0 the second the bell rang. Some of the arena booed. That’s the wrong reaction. Fearless Nikki attacking people who are already down is the entire point of the character, and it’s good to have her back doing exactly that instead of the awkward babyface comeback tour the Bellas have been on since returning to WWE television.

Reality Check: WWE’s Midcard Is Actually Doing Its Job

The Reality: None of these four stories needed a main-event slot to land. Hiromu Takahashi’s WWE arrival, a genuine surprise heel turn from Royce Keys, a personal Cody-Randy confrontation, and Nikki Bella back to doing damage all happened underneath the marquee segments of the night, and all four gave the live crowd in Ottawa something to talk about on the drive home.

That’s what a functioning midcard looks like, and the Hiromu Takahashi WWE arrival is the clearest proof of it — the problem this week wasn’t a lack of good storytelling, it was WWE’s continued refusal to let the top of the card actually finish a match. Fix that, and this was a genuinely strong week of television.

The Cody/Randy stipulation match builds directly out of the same Smackdown fallout that made Randy Orton must-watch television a few weeks back, and Dragon Lee’s presence on this card is more evidence that the WWE lucha contingent keeps delivering when the company actually trusts them. Individually, these are undercard stories. Together, they’re the clearest sign yet that WWE’s depth chart is deeper than the main-event booking gives it credit for.

Hiromu Takahashi WWE Debut FAQ