Every single wrestling company on the planet wants to generate a buzz, to be THE company that every fan is talking about, and steadily over the last 2-3 years NXT has become arguably the most talked about wrestling brand in the world.
What first started as a quasi-gameshow program set in arenas with fans either bored or waiting for Smackdown or ECW to start has now become a breeding ground for cultivating the best talent and preparing them for life on the main WWE roster. The importance of a developmental territory for the WWE can not be understated, before NXT trainees would cut their teeth in OVW and FCW although to a much smaller audience than the Network now provides, and while NXT can still be classed as a developmental system their on screen product is a large majority of the time leaps and bounds above the television that is produced on a Monday night.
The fact that NXT is a one-hour, taped and edited program instantly gives it the edge over RAW as burnout and fatigue are not a factor, but conversely it is really impressive how every character seemingly has a strongly defined role on the show and have that all important emotional connection to the audience. A huge amount of praise has been given to the show’s simplistic but hugely effective creative, and Triple H has been at the reigns (….) of the product and built it to what it has now become.
What is fairly intriguing in the change of mindset in the wrestling community (myself included), is that when a wrestler would go to the WWE before NXT existed we would all worry that they would be watered down, given a generic character or be completely stripped of what made them unique and what made us like them in the first place (insert your own favourite here), but now we have NXT, and we all worry that when someone goes from NXT to the main roster they’ll be gutted of all of their great (Tyler Breeze) qualities. But again, NXT is a developmental show, everyone strives to be on RAW
I think this tweet sums it up nicely:
Just went to the bank…. I'm good? https://t.co/FtDG1rJp6P
— Prince Pretty (@MmmGorgeous) April 6, 2016
But my question is, to make the main roster product good, and I mean REALLY good, should they completely ‘raid’ NXT and shake things up? I know what some people’s reaction to this would be “bringing up loads of NXT talent won’t change anything” – but I have to ask what benefit is there to keeping the likes of Finn Balor, someone with a huge marketing potential to the company down in NXT? It’s not just the in-ring talent I feel they should be bringing up either – the video packages (that I assume were created by Full Sail students?) for the Takeover show in Dallas were visually stunning, the actual in-ring camera work and direction feels a lot less clunky and shaky than the main shows, the idea of a Mauro Ranallo and Corey Graves tandem on Smackdown is exciting and the comedy (although rare) on NXT is actually funny.
Now the main reason against a mass influx of talent from NXT is usually attributed to Vince McMahon, but what is important to remember is that EVERYTHING on the main roster goes through him first, and while we can all say he is out of touch – AJ Styles is main eventing Payback and the Bullet Club have invaded the main show, so there are glimmers of hope.
I think a fresh change of pace for the look and feel of the main shows is long, long overdue and with Triple H possibly taking a more focused off camera role in the coming months I really hope that he can implement some of the ideas that have worked well in NXT on the main roster, we’re already seeing the signs with the death of the divas division and the rebirth of Women’s wrestling in the WWE.
I hope that as more talents make their up from NXT the show that I love to watch every week (because it’s an easy hour) doesn’t suffer, but ideally I’d love for the show that I find a chore because it is 3 hours long to be better, and a seismic shift in talent, production and management mentality could do that.
Thanks for reading, let me know what you think in the comments below and if there’s a different way you would look at freshening up the main product.
Please check out the first episode of R&J Wrestling’s ‘WHO BOOKED THIS CRAP!?’ a show where we take horrifically bad ideas for storylines and try to make them work with randomly generated wrestlers…..almost as if we work for WWE Creative:
