10 Things WWE Doesn't Want You To Know About Independent Wrestling
3. It's A More Fertile Talent Breeding Ground Than The Performance Center
The WWE Performance Center is the most expensive pro wrestling training school ever constructed, and yet, its boasts very few valedictorians.
Charlotte Flair was trained there exclusively, as was Braun Strowman. To date, they are the only two top-level performers of note to do anything of significance on the main roster. Arguably, certain acts do improve or develop there - Sami Zayn is a completely different act to the masked man that first walked in - but one need only look at AJ Styles, and his seamless transition, to determine that it is almost redundant. Adam Cole could have walked straight onto RAW's stage and projected himself as the star he is. He doesn't need NXT; NXT needs him to bolster its status as a touring entity.
There's something deeply irritating about the traditional "New Class" photo opportunity, in how the likes of Keith Lee are literally branded WWE property. Lee is a man of his own making, and he made his name in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla. It's ironic; WWE's Performance Center is a ludicrously expensive state-of-the-art facility, whereas PWG's old residence, the American Legion Post #308, was a charmingly dilapidated, deeply basic building with little in the way of ventilation or adornment. To be less kind, it was a sh*thole.
The best wrestlers need only an environment of unbridled creativity to discover themselves, and that's precisely what PWG is. That sh*thole produced far more over WWE acts (Daniel Bryan, Kevin Owens, Cole, Styles) than the Performance Center which, reductively, is a glorified gym.