Lucha Star Bolts For WWE After Ending FTR Title Reign
Dragon Lee, last seen on American television as part of La Faccion Ingobernable on the August 17 episode of "AEW Dynamite." is reportedly WWE-bound on the same night that he and his brother Dralistico defeated FTR to win the AAA World Tag Team Titles, which means that he's also vacating them.
ESPN's Marc Raimondi reported that Lee signed with WWE and is set to report to Orlando, Florida in January to start on the "NXT" developmental brand.
"Dragon Lee is a tremendous talent that will immediately add value to the NXT roster," WWE head of talent strategy and operations James Kimball told ESPN. "This signing is reflective of WWE's renewed emphasis on globalizing our talent pipeline with Latin America positioned as a focal market."
Lee, meanwhile, said that a conversation with Finn Balor was the catalyst for his signing.
"[Balor] told me, 'Would you like to be in WWE?'" Lee told Raimondi through laughter. "I said, 'Yeah, sure. Why not?'"
Dragon Lee's Exit From AAA
Luchablog added that, "WWE has been aware of Dragon Lee for a while but made no recent move to sign him until he appeared on the August 17th AEW Dynamite."
He was brought in for two tryouts, the first of which was alongside Dralistico. The report adds that Lee gave AAA fair warning about his signing long before its event Wednesday night, but with FTR also finishing up with the promotion, the call was made to have Los Hermanos Lee win the tag titles and then vacate them right away en route to Lee debuting on "NXT" in February. The video packages are, per Luchablog, already being worked on.
Los Hermanos Lee dethroned FTR by pinfall after Dralistico hit Dax Harwood with a springboard senton atomico. That now leaves FTR with only one set of belts, the IWGP Tag Team Titles, which they will defend next Wednesday against Bishamon (Hirooki Goto and YOSHI-HASHI) at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 17 inside the Tokyo Dome.