Killian Dain On SAnitY Moving To The Main Roster: We Lost Nikki Cross, She Was Our Most Unique Thing

In June 2018, SAnitY (Eric Young, Killian Dain, and Alexander Wolfe) moved up from NXT to the main roster. Nikki Cross, who was part of the group in NXT, stayed behind. 

After finding success in NXT, even enjoying a run as NXT Tag Team Champions, SAnitY failed to get off the ground on the main roster. 

Speaking on the All Night Long podcast, Dain explained what went wrong on the main roster. 

“Sanity was always going to have a shelf-life because, how long can people be crazy for without having a goal or a focus? We loved every second and we felt we were getting better but a lot of it comes down to timing. We lost Nikki from the group and that was our most unique thing,” he said. “Yes, we’re crazy people, but we had a female in the group, which there hadn’t been for years. I think she was genuinely needed as a competitor in NXT and at the same time, we knew on the main roster, as villains, we would have to take beatings. You can’t really have man on woman violence. In NXT, it’s fine. She can beat up Adam Cole and then disappear off camera, it’s a smaller building. It’s more difficult to hide these things (on the main roster). In my head, that’s what it was. We were never told, of course. They were like, ‘Yeah, this is what happened.’ One of my favorite things is that they filmed us being told that we were being promoted, but they never used the footage because they said ‘Nikki is not going’ and all three of us were gutted because she was such an instrumental part of the act. The truth is, it was a very one-dimensional character. As brilliant as she was at it, it was very limiting for her. Nikki is a great talker and she couldn’t talk. We needed to have extra dimensions.”

Dain continued by saying, “When we went up, from what I was told by a writer, they saw a promo of ours and loved it. Two weeks later, they watched the exact same promo and they hated it. I wish they never watched it a second time [laughs].”

SAnitY was broken up in the 2019 Superstar Shake-Up. Dain, Wolfe, and Young have all since been released by WWE. 

Elsewhere during the interview, Dain discussed his team with Drake Maverick and how COVID changed plans for them. You can find his full comments by clicking here. 

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