For the past five or so months, Aaron Rodgers has become either a good guy or a bad guy among the public with nobody feeling indifferent about him. In pro wrestling, that’s either being a “face” (good guy) or a “heel” (bad guy) and before Rodgers cemented that status with everybody, he was reportedly being considered to potentially take part in WWE’s NXT division.
According to Sports Illustrated’s Justin Barrasso, Rodgers was considered for a role as Pat McAfee’s mystery partner back in the beginning of 2021 when McAfee was in NXT.
[Pat] McAfee is also well-respected within the world of sports. After his breathtaking performance at WarGames in December 2020, there was serious internal discussion of having McAfee reappear after the loss to The Undisputed Era and jump [Adam] Cole and align himself with a new partner, Sports Illustrated learned. The mystery reveal was going to be NFL superstar Aaron Rodgers, which would have brought instant mainstream notoriety to NXT. Though it never materialized, McAfee has all kinds of connections that could be capitalized upon in WWE.
It’s unknown how far this idea went and there’s a pretty good assumption that this never even got to Rodgers in the first place but considering the timeline, it would’ve made some sense to do this.
Rodgers probably couldn’t show up until after the NFL season but the end of the 2020 Packers’ season was rough. In January 2021, the top seed Packers lost to the Buccaneers and Rodgers made it seem like he was heading out of Green Bay. And given he’s friends with McAfee, and his willingness to branch out into other media ventures (like guest hosting Jeopardy!), it wouldn’t have been that far fetched for Rodgers to show up.
For WWE, this was at a time where NXT was on at the same time as AEW: Dynamite on Wednesday night and with AEW getting the edge on viewership, having a mainstream star like Rodgers on NXT would’ve been huge. Rodgers wouldn’t have needed to do anything, and as an active NFL player he probably couldn’t do much, but WWE still would’ve reaped the benefits.
Obviously, none of this happened. McAfee moved to the SmackDown commentary booth with Michael Cole while NXT moved to Tuesday night. Rodgers, meanwhile, became one of the most polarizing athletes with his appearances on McAfee’s show back when he tested positive for COVID while being unvaccinated as he previously claimed he was “immunized.”
