50 Ups & 50 Downs For WWE's Decade: The 2010s
1. NXT
The greatest in-house creation of the last decade got greater at the very end of it following WWE's decision to counter-programme All Elite Wrestling's flagship show Dynamite, but even being swept up in wider company concerns hasn't blunted the black-and-gold brand's blade.
Set up by Triple H in response to a system he'd seen collapse under mismanagement during the latter days of his in-ring career, NXT felt as much a proving ground for him as anything else. Instead, it morphed into the one thing wary and weathered WWE fans could still rely on. A weekly product offering logical progression and great matches that all fed into the aforementioned TakeOvers with their amazing payoffs and incredible matches. On its best day, it is quite simply a f*cking exceptional wrestling product - something Raw and SmackDown can only really harness in microcosmic moments.
Funded and augmented by WWE money and production respectively, it grew hand in hand with an Orlando-based Performance Center that, for better and worse, has determined a far securer future than the wretched one promised by a mid-2000s malaise.