The negative reaction to MSK from the NXT crowd has been a topic of discussion amongst fans since their debut this past January.
A recent Reddit post that has been making the rounds on social media suggests that the reason the current NXT Tag Team Champions were getting such a nasty reaction was due to a tweet that Nash Carter, one-half of MSK, had made in 2018 criticizing a spot that included a 13-year old Izzy taking a choke-slam at an Indy show. Izzy, who you may remember as the “Bayley fan” that Sasha Banks made cry during the Banks/Bayley 30-Minute Ironman match at NXT Takeover: Respect, along with her parents have been very prominent figures in the NXT community for years. The post alleges that Izzy’s parents held a grudge against Carter and got a group of very vocal NXT fans to boo the team mercilessly whenever they would appear.
I not only can confirm that this rumor has been floating around the NXT community since at least February, but that numerous sources close to the situation have told me that it is true.
Sources say the parents, along with a contingent of fans they convinced to join them in the negative reaction to MSK, were asked to move away from the hard-camera side of the arena due to the group visibly booing the team on-screen. “Go back and watch NXT before Takeover: Stand and Deliver, their posse is [on] hard cam every show.” one source said. “After [Takeover] a decision was made to move them off hard cam because of the booing of MSK, but by then the crowd had been ingrained to boo them because “it was cool.”
The group cannot be seen in their usual spot in the audience in the episodes of NXT following Stand and Deliver, and reportedly moved to a corner of seating away from the main camera’s view following the event.
One source even said that they had overheard a member of the group, that was not Izzy or her parents, suggest that they should chant “Your dad’s dead” to Carter after the NXT superstar had been vocal on social media about the 12th anniversary of his father’s passing in February. NXT officials were reportedly notified of the comment by a nearby audience member.
Former NXT and current IMPACT, Ring of Honor, and NWA star Chelsea Green seemed to confirm that she had suffered the same treatment from fans Thursday on Twitter:
Green was also critical of the choke-slam spot on social media, along with many others in the business such as Lance Storm, Lince Dorado, and her fiancé Matt Cardona.
MSK is currently in the midst of a 197-day reign as the NXT Tag Team Champions.
