Watch Raw and Smackdown, and prior to saying anything about the match in the ring, Michael Cole or Rich Brennan is mentioning a corporate sponsor, Twitter hashtag, social media factoid and WWE Network plug before telling you anything about the competitors themselves. There's something that's really intrinsically not "pro wrestling" about that which takes away from the story that WWE's both trying to tell and sell. Compare this to the vastly different presentation of NXT. In NXT not necessarily being a brand obsessed with corporate sponsorship, social media or pushing multi-media spectacles, the company has the chance to get over performers on their own merits, rather than just being cogs in a corporate machine much larger than they are. It's the small "u" WWE universe presentation of NXT that makes it stand out in the sense that it feels a litte more based on the story being told in the ring being the thing selling the show moreso than any outside interest's benefit being overall more important than what's happening in the ring.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.