10 Times WWE Was Categorically Worse Than It Is Right Now
8. The Original NXT
Like Marvel's Daredevil when Netflix finally wrestled control of the character away from an Affleckian abomination, NXT's initials were once the most poisonous in pro wrestling before Triple H completely reimagined them as the hallmark the hottest 'developmental' territory in industry history.
A seeping, weeping infection exposed after the scab that was John Laurinaitis' talent development era was picked in public, the wrestling/talent/reality format was a collective of several concepts that managed to sour each one individually and sink the performers that were forced to suffer through it.
Eventual 'winner' Wade Barrett may have led his Nexus runners up on a brief tear through WWE in the aftermath of something even his 'Pro' Chris Jericho later openly called a "total rib", but the stink never left the original eight nor the castaways that were re-marooned on future seasons of the shows.
NXT was where Curtis Axel exposed his fundamental lack of the fundamentals, where Bray Wyatt was deathly dull without his sub-Cape Fear claptrap and where Titus O'Neil first fell on his a*se. Nothing good could come of it, and very little did.