10 Major Problems Facing WWE In 2017

7. Lack Of Homegrown Talent

The Performance Center is one of WWE’s biggest successes in recent years. The bulk of the company’s current main eventers passed through the training school, and a stint down in central Florida is usually WWE’s preference when integrating new talents. With that said, NXT is far from a conventional developmental territory anymore, and while guys like Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins have been huge successes, they were already excellent wrestlers before they joined WWE.

The bulk of the Performance Center’s most exciting wrestlers came from elsewhere. Shinsuke Nakamura was a huge, stadium-headlining star for NJPW, Samoa Joe, Eric Young, and Bobby Roode are former TNA Champions, and even guys like Andrade Almas had built their reputations elsewhere first. Thus, building new stars from the ground-up has become a secondary concern in NXT, and that’s a problem.

The aforementioned wrestlers bring bucketloads to NXT, and their presence has stifled opportunities for others. Guys like Rusev and Baron Corbin (WWE system products through and through) are increasingly rare, and “developmental” is no longer about training new stars, but pushing big names.

That’s fine from an entertainment standpoint, but much of NXT’s appeal came from watching previously unknown reputations growing into their skin as performers. That has largely been lost, and for all NXT’s progress as a brand, WWE’s inability to mould its own hot prospects has never been apparent.