>>12482835NXT is his ceiling at the moment. Ilya is pretty small, kinda goofy looking, and is a foreigner so going solo on the main roster would kill him dead. To get Dragunov over on the main roster you would need to put him in a faction where his weaknesses could be covered by the other members long enough for the audience to warm up to him. I think that Ilya would have been a natural fit for Imperium were it not for the history he had with Gunther prior to WWE and the way they finished that story in NXT.
Ilya is good and has great intensity, but being a Russian pigeonholes him as always being a heel, and he storyline has heat with the European heel faction. I don't think Trips and Shawn are going to shit all over their booking in NXT like Vince seemed to enjoy doing, so there really isn't a place for him in the main roster right now.
You might be able to work some program with Baby Steiner, but Shawn has been booking Bron very consistently as a guy who wants to go it alone and doesn't want or trust other people. You would really have to play the long game to get Bron and Ilya working, and have to devote a significant amount of time to advancing the story so as to make these two wildly individualistic heel characters have a believable partnership.
