AEW star Shane ‘Swerve’ Strickland has said that Triple H refused to let him follow scripted word-for-word promos as part of WWE NXT.
Strickland joined WWE’s third brand in 2019, becoming a one-time NXT North American Champion, but was released weeks into his main-roster call up in November 2021.
Speaking on Talk is Jericho this week, Strickland discussed working with the Game, saying:
“We did Great American Bash and we [Strickland and Leon Ruff] had a blow-off match. That’s when Hit Row was introduced. I was cutting promos in the studio backstage and Triple H was like ‘Nope – take away the script. Don’t let him use the script anymore.’ So I was like ‘cool’.”
WWE’s policy is for promos to be written ahead of time by the creative team and for Superstars to recite these promos verbatim.
The company has been heavily criticized for this approach, with fans and wrestlers alike arguing that this stifles the creativity of the Superstars.
Triple H ran NXT until the show’s rebrand as NXT 2.0 in September 2021 and has recently been recovering from a cardiac event.
Strickland joined AEW at Revolution 2022 in March and most recently faced Darby Allin on last week’s Rampage in a losing effort.
In addition to WWE and AEW, Strickland has worked for Lucha Underground and MLW, and is a former World Heavyweight Champion of the latter.
