WWE President Nick Khan: "We are doing a complete revamp on NXT"

You get the idea. No need to nitpick. The point is that it’s like a football team signing Brett Favre in his prime, then sitting him for the season, because the coaches can’t concentrate on more than one player at a time.

I look at it more like a GM goes out and gets Brett Favre in his prime and has an amazing scheme in place, but his 75 year old crazy team owner wont stop meddling and just fucks everything up. I dont blame the GM for that.

Yup…at the end of the day I dont care if you are Hunter, Tony Khan, Paul Heyman, or whomever…if you have to answer to crazy Vince at the end of the day, you are limited in what you can accomplish.

Its like being a head writer for a show on NBC and writing a masterpiece, then having some network executive change things last minute that just messes with everything you have written over the past X episodes. If Vince booked guys from NXT exactly how they were booked in NXT, and looked at main roster as more of their “next chapter”, didnt try to change them, and didnt try to use NXT as a roadblock for AEW, NXT would have been a massive success internally (I say internally because prior to the move on USA, NXT was adored by the 99.9% of fans that watched it).

Exactly. Whether or not you agree with Vince’s vision, the goal of NXT was to do two things. One was to draw people that liked indie weestling away from ROH and eventually AEW, and the second is to make me main roster stars.

It failed on both accounts. Regardless of what you think of Vinces vision, if the talent he was getting isn’t what he was going to push then he needs to make a change. Hopefully by getting younger and bigger he will start to push people that excel there now.

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It’s possible that Hunter was developing wrestling stars and WWE only ever wanted superstars.
The quote about wanting it to be easy for people who want to be superstars is pretty noteworthy.

What confuses me is why say this stuff before the Takeover. By saying it last nights show was extremely confusing. They fired Samoa Joe and now he’s the champion of a brand they are doing a reboot on. How was I suppose to be invested in a payoff to a story where the guy winning was already released months ago knowing what we know now about what kind of talent they are looking for.
Ditto for a match like Cole / O Reilly where neither of these guys likely have big futures in the new NXT. I found that to be very disheartening and even on the surface it just seems totally misguided to push talent you are trying to condition fans to aren’t the future of NXT.

I assume it has to do with getting them off NXT. With kross losing he’s probably done there, and same with Cole. I think it was just done as a way to get those talents officially done with an NXT by losing.

I’m curious how they do the whole relaunch.

Yeah I get Cole losing for obvious or non obvious reasons but don’t feel anything towards Kyle winning and not because I’m not into him and this story but because they basically told us over 3 weeks a guy like Kyle isn’t who they want (so why should I believe)

Joe recapturing the NXT title should have felt like a real moment. Instead it feels like a short term pit stop en route to something even further away from the NXT Joe was previously champion of.

Grimes won and I’d be more likely to bet he’s released by December than getting a further push. That’s a strange turn for Takeover outcomes to feel like B show ppvs don’t really matter. Unfortunately not nurturing and protecting the Takeover brand results in my feeling toward it which erodes fandom.

So it’s a pretty self fulfilling prophecy of NXTs reboot

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Sorry, many thoughts on this. NXT took a swan dive when Karrion Kross became champion. Did they pivot and listen to fans? No, they doubled down and then in the last few weeks practically trolled their NXT fan base with his Raw appearances. This is such a self-fulfilling strategy…book something fans don’t want to see, when fans voice displeasure or tune out, say the current system is broken justifying a complete change.
The WWEs campaign to re-boot NXT was not in response to fans disliking the product. It was in response to their own attempts to turn fans off (re-booking Kross as champion, continued push of Velveteen Dream long after he was problematic, ongoing mishandlings of can’t miss talents on the main roster). How bout refusing to get in front of actual crowds again that always made NXT feel 50% more hot.

If for once WWE truly tried to understand what Fans loved about NXT they may have kept up in the Wed Night Wars (their numbers were actually solid for a long time before AEW pulled away). I hope one day the full story on the 2019-2021 / NXT-USA Era is told.

I have a feeling it is more of a response to fan reactions to the handling of NXT stars on the main roster, and their pitch that NXT was a third brand of WWE. It is a return to “this is developmental” don’t expect these guys to be stars on call up.

Which is a good idea overall.

Let’s not forget that the goal of NXT was to be a developmental territory. Then it was a third brand. Then it was developmental again. Then they did that survivor series where they were presented as being better, then they were moved to the USA network. Then they were a third brand, but only developmental (depending on the ratings that week), then it was developmental. All the while, housing guys that came down from the main roster.
I mean, when you shift goals that much, you are bound to fail

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I still find the narrative that it was a “failure” laughable. They didn’t beat AEW, but it was a third brand getting about 700K viewers a week and it earned 50mil-100mil per year from USA. If you look at it solely though the lens of “Wednesday night Wars”, then sure it failed, but thats silly and is like saying Rampage failed because it did half the viewers of SD.

I ask the following questions: Did they put on a good weekly TV show, I would say from what I read yes (I admit I didnt watch week to week). Did they put on good PPV’s? 100% yes, better then anything else out there. Did they get stars ready for the main roster? Yes.

Now, once the superstars got to the main roster, no doubt Vince fucked everything up, but look at someone like Bayley. Unless you following all the indies, she was an unknown performer to the average WWE fan, after her stint on NXT you had arenas chanting for her callup. Thats NXT doing its job!!1

I feel that unless you hold a grudge against Hunter (and I dont mean you, this is more towards the trolls on tik tok and twitter), nobody is going to say that its his fault with the way things played out. This is 100% on Vince for refusing to take guys from NXT is staying true to their NXT selves.

Its like an NHL player being developed in the AHL, and the kid look like he could be an amazing D-man. Then the NHL team calls him up, and their idiot coach moves him to Center and he flops. I dont blame the AHL coach for that.

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I think it is a failure of presentation. When you present NXT as on the same level as the main roster, and then call guys up that we’re top guys in NXT to be mediocre on the main roster it does damage to them as talents. It is probably why some of the most positively viewed call ups weren’t huge in NXT.

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100% agree with this. Hunter handed Vince talents who were ready to to jump right in as main players, and with the men at least Vince just started them from scratch and made them feel like rookies.

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Guys!!! How did you guys think of Ariel did in this? Did it come off well? Did he ask the right questions?

@jallonar4040 I think it is problematic Ariel got this interview. He has never covered WWE regularly and got the interview because Nick Kahn and him have past relationships. I wonder if Nick would speak the Ariel’s good friend John Pollock who actually covers Wrestling. I also wonder if John helped Ariel prep for this interview.

Now that isn’t a negative against Ariel, he got a great subject for an interview. I’m a long time Ariel fan from the halls of the SI Newhouse School of Communications. But let’s call this what it is.

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And here comes Ariel with WWE numbers too.

Despite the fact the actual number is easily found…

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I’m a Helwani guy but yeah this isn’t exactly journalism. And his partner at the Ringer just signed a deal with WWE for podcasts. Tough look for his credibility to go shill for WWE. Something he notoriously wouldn’t do for UFC.

As always just call it out it appears whether I like/look up to the person or not

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Yeah I am a huge Helwani fan but his WWE stuff feels very shill-ish especially considering how he dealt with UFC over the years.

I also hate the Ringer doing exclusive post shows with WWE. Not only is there not much demand for it, I don’t see how they will be honest and critical.

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