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The NXT Discussion Thread


DJM

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1 hour ago, Supremo said:

Something needed to change. Itā€™s been a dead brand ever since Dynamite murdered them. The only people I feel sorry for are the nutters who were somehow still convinced NXT was still a good show and hadnā€™t nosedived in quality these past few years.

Imagine being Gargano and Ciampa right now though. Sitting backstage in their HBK cosplay, knowing the writing is on the wall.

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"You're a DIYĀ soldier. Yeah? Eh? Yeah?

Stiff upper lip and all that, eh?

Spirit of the The RevivalĀ busters. Yeah?
The squadron never dies, does it?"

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13 minutes ago, The King Of Swing said:

Did anyone other than the biggest of marks actually believe that Triple H was some sort of saviour?Ā 

I think it was more an 'anyone but Vince', thing rather than a HHH thing.Ā 

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15 minutes ago, Nick James said:

I think it was more an 'anyone but Vince', thing rather than a HHH thing.Ā 

Nah, people who "don't watch WWE, just NXT" definitely think/thought Triple H was going to be the big difference maker when he took over.

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I think one of the things that always made NXT so great was that every 6 months it would have a completely different roster, it was always so fresh, and everytime they lost their main eventers you'd wonder how the show would continue to be so good, but then it would be better.Ā  Ā But then they started deciding that NXT wasn't a move towards Raw/Smackdown and they'd keep certain people there forever and the show stopped feeling fresh.Ā  Ā At least the likes of Ciampa and Gargano haven't been main eventing shows too much lately, but they're still there.Ā  Ā And when the alternative is Karrion Kross, then that's also another problem.

Ā 

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I think it's easy to forget but for a while NXT was the closest thing we had to what AEW is doing now. It was a tight show with its moments driven by actual character motivations, space for people to breathe without endless rematches and everyone appearing on every show, and the ability for different wrestlers & stories to be the focal point on any given night. I totally understand why people bought in to the idea that this could be the future of how the WWE put shows together and believed that the crew in charge, including HHH, could be the spearhead for that.

That mystique was gone as soon as it went to two hours & got put on national TV and it turns out that all the same problems in their approach to Raw & Smackdown were hiding down there in NXT too, to the point you'd be forgiven for wondering why we ever believed it would be different. But for a while there it was possibly the best wrestling TV show on the planet.

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1 hour ago, tiger_rick said:

Nah, people who "don't watch WWE, just NXT" definitely think/thought Triple H was going to be the big difference maker when he took over.

Fair point, to be fair.

I forgot about the group who genuinely thought NXT was the competition to WWE and by supporting them, they were 'sticking it to the man'. I remember going to the NXT live event in Sheffield the first time they toured and an advert played for one of the PPV's and a large group of males in front of me stood up and boo'd loudly for the duration of the advert, then lost their shit at Enzo and Big Cass.Ā 

Edited by Nick James
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2 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Nah, people who "don't watch WWE, just NXT" definitely think/thought Triple H was going to be the big difference maker when he took over.

That was always the biggest fallacy.

People trying to kid themselves that NXT was outside of the WWE umbrella or the ā€œacceptable face of the company.ā€

At times it has served as nothing more than a cynicalĀ vehicle to tread on the toes of smaller national or existing indy promotions and squeeze out that remaining market share the WWE didnā€™t own.

Edited by garynysmon
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9 minutes ago, garynysmon said:

Ā 

People trying to kid themselves that NXT was outside of the WWE umbrella or the ā€œacceptable face of the company.ā€

Like the guy on our NXT date who referring to Finn BalorĀ as Prince Devitt because ā€œFinn BalorĀ is his slave nameā€. Ā BalorĀ was working the main event that night and this guy bought a ticket, yeah thatā€™ll show ā€˜em

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HHH isn't some mark for the indie scene though. This is the guy who spent years trying to emulate Harley Race and Ric Flair, down to the gimmick and match style. When NXT was first restarted and handed to him as a project, his remit was likely just to bring the best wrestlers in the current world to WWE and WWE them up. And he did. HHH, Bloom, Regal and whoever else were involved managed to hit on a formula that gave us, as a previous poster rightly said, arguably the best wrestling show on TV for a long, long time.

The writing's been on the wall for years. The week after Vince attended a takeover, tall Corbin went to the main roster, as did the still-heating-up American Alpha/Jason Jordan. The matches and storylines on NXT got longer and longer, while guys like Nakamura, Roode, and FTR were hoofed onto the main roster with barely an intro. Then the need for more content grew, meaning more in-ring time needed to be filled, leading to even longer matches, and the guard changed behind the scenes which only seemed to feed that workrate focus, when in-ring workrate wasn't what any of the current indie crop needed training in.

There's also a number of stories of Vince in Gorilla appreciating simple stories and basic chain, and with HHH being in the position he's in, I doubt he'd be deliberately feeding his father-in-law/bossĀ stuff he didn't like, but he is. Perhaps what Vince is after simply isn't out there. Realistically, how muchĀ 6ft+ 240lb talent isĀ there on the current indie scene? 10 years ago, I worked at 6'3" and 220lb, and still tower over most of the talent in the UK, at least.

I wonder if it's time to put NXT to bed, and transition the PC into a 'finishing school', or out-and-out moneymaker of paid 'tryouts'. Edge's recent doc highlighted that WWF/E essentially gave him a scholarship, paying for him to travel and train elsewhere, and, for the cost of keeping the current talent roiling in their own juices for years on end growing stale, it might be worth diversifying that way, albeit with a select few recommended promotions. Vinny mac would no doubt rail at the idea of such devolution, but money talks.

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I don't think a developmental territoryĀ alsoĀ being a globally broadcast, conventional weekly wrestlingĀ TV show, is sustainable at all - when NXT started, there was still the sense that you were watching a few people throw shit at the wall and see what stuck, and generally both the booking and the audience were prepared to give them a little space in that regard. I don't know how much that ended after Dusty died, and how much was other external factors in play, but it was a circle they never fully squared.

The more NXT became a show that needed to draw, whether people watching on TV or attending Takeover, the less it could act as a true development territory because it neededĀ names.

NXT as a "workrate brand" was a pretty genius idea at the time, to capitalise on a growing desire by a lot of fans to see a more "indie" style of wrestling, but without havingĀ the time, know-how or inclination to find it, or to watch multiple promotions to see the people they liked - all of that consolidated into an easy-to-access WWE package was a solid idea, before you even get into the genius marketing of appealing to "never WWE" fans by convincing them they were buying something different.

The mistake was making that brand the same thing as their farm league. You don't prepare people for the main roster by teaching them to work a style that is, by design, unlike the WWE house style. And by focusing on indie talent that they signed likely with no intent ofĀ everĀ calling them up to the main roster (or, if they did, never as anything more than meat in the room), theĀ actualĀ developmental talent were left with limited opportunities to actually wrestle in front of audiences. But then any wrestler in NXT whoĀ didĀ make TV and got called up to RAW and Smackdown would be coming in with months or years of NXT history and TV time invested, and it was much harder for WWE to present them as something new or fresh, and any deviation from their NXT persona or style would be seen as a betrayal. It's no surprise that certain wrestlers - Braun Strowman and Omos come to mind - bypassed NXT TV altogether, not because they were sufficiently packaged and well-trained without it, but because the shock of a TV debut was more valuable than the on-the-job training WWE offered.

Ā 

It'll be interesting to see what the apparent repackage and rebrand of NXT will be. Maybe it will separate off into a workrate brand and a developmental brand as two separate entities - which, in terms of producing content for Peacock would seem like a solid solution - but it's more likely that the "Super-Indie" aspect is killed off altogether. I don't know if NXT even survives as a TV product beyond whenever the deal with the USA Network expires - it started airing on USA in September 2019, so if they have a two-year deal, I wouldn't be surprised if we see the end of it. If that deal is up, there's no longer any real incentive to make NXT a viable TV product. NXT UK will almost certainly go the same way when the BT Sport deal is up.

There may still be a token show on the Network/Peacock, but I expect the bulk of "developmental" work will be done at the Performance Center and on a house show developmental circuit, without the focus on the televised product any more.Ā 

The bigger question for me is what does a WWE talent developmental programme look like considering they released Canyon Ceman, Gerald Brisco, Mark Henry, and likely others I'm forgetting that have had responsibility for talent scouting. Are they just planning to hold open try-outs with no clear succession plan for the people they got rid of? I don't buy the rumours that WWE is up for sale, but the lack of clear investment in their future is the one thing that makes me think otherwise.

Ā 

And @CavemanLynnĀ is exactly right - Triple H is an old school NWA fan, a body guy who used to routinely mock "smaller" wrestlers in promos. The idea that the guy who called CM Punk "skinny fat" and cut thoroughly gotten to promos about "my friend Mark" and the like for years isn't someone I can believe has been genuinely enthused by the Roderick Strongs of the world, he's just playing his part, and it's a part that they no longer have any need for.

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Good points made. It's interesting to note that for the "no more midgets" quotes getting traction, a lot of the recent releases aren't exactly small, indyriffic guys. Giant Zanjeer is literally called "Giant"! Bronson Reed is a big guy, Zechariah Smith was a former Basketball player, Kone Reeves is a big dude and Ari Sterling is over 6ft too. I'm not sure they know what they want currently except this isn't it.

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Just now, tiger_rick said:

Good points made. It's interesting to note that for the "no more midgets" quotes getting traction, a lot of the recent releases aren't exactly small, indyriffic guys. Giant Zanjeer is literally called "Giant"! Bronson Reed is a big guy, Zechariah Smith was a former Basketball player, Kone Reeves is a big dude and Ari Sterling is over 6ft too. I'm not sure they know what they want currently except this isn't it.

Bronson's the biggest surprise for me - he's "only" 6', but big enough to make an impression, and VinceĀ lovesĀ a fat guy. After an initial decent run, you'd think he'd have been dancing in the ring on RAW for months.Ā 

Giant Zanjeer I imagine is a sign of the death of the global expansion project, what with Kavita Devi and The Bollywood Boys having been sacked off too.Ā Ā 

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