10 Things WWE Can Learn From Marvel

4. If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

Marvel may change and amend certain bits and pieces - character backstories, for the most part - but the core of its major characters and storylines remains more or less the same. It€™s just streamlined from the material it's being adapted from. Costumes are tweaked, names changed or amended. The material being adapted is still being treated with respect. WWE used to have a really bad habit of taking a successful independent talent and changing the name, the moveset, the style to fit their mould: removing nearly everything that the talent brought to the party, in favour of fitting a WWE cookie cutter. Now that NXT's in place, that€™s not happening nearly so much - when you see Apollo Crews or Fin Balor in NXT, you€™re seeing a character and a moveset not a million miles away from Uhaa Nation and Prince Devitt. However, this being WWE, they€™ve just adopted a whole new set of bad habits to compensate. These days, they€™ll take a character honed and developed in NXT - their developmental arm, remember - and decide they€™re ready to move up to the main roster€ and then debut them with a completely different personality, in different kinds of matches, and under match layouts that don€™t work to their strengths. Neville is a case in point. Benjamin Satterley was always a genius high flyer on the independent circuit. In NXT as Adrian Neville, he worked long and hard to become a better professional wrestler - the kind of all round performer that WWE need at or near their main event. He got better at telling a story, at working on television. His selling improved in leaps and bounds. His character work - facial expressions, and especially promos - became so much better, more natural and more fluid, that it was actually incredibly rewarding as a fan of Pac, to see him become so much better. On RAW, Neville (no first name!) wears a cape and works five minute matches designed to get to the Red Arrow as quickly as possible. You can literally see all the confidence he gained in NXT oozing out of him week by week. If a character works in NXT, it€™s not necessarily proof he or she will work on the main roster in front of a larger, more casual crowd€ but there€™s no way of knowing unless you move that successful character over and give it a try. Completely ignoring what got them over in NXT and made them successful enough to be called up is just putting the mental into developmental.