I will say that the fact that people even
thought there was a chance that Melo might actually lose to Tozawa before the match on SD shows how shaky his booking has been. I was actually willing to give the storyline the benefit of the doubt until the Rumble where he was the first one eliminated.
The beards on twitter defend it as “paying his dues” and “everyone can’t instantly be a champion” which would make sense if the other regularly featured NXT callups like Tiffany, Bron, and Lyra weren’t all current champs.
I see “he’s on tv weekly so everything’s okay” a lot too but is that much better if he’s constantly looking like a clown? He does get decent mic time so there’s that but still.