9 Times WWE Turned Treasure Into TRASH
1. The NXT Class Of 2015
In 2014, NXT was blossoming as a secret walled garden within a WWE ecosystem that otherwise just drew derision from the lifers that had stuck around.
As he shifted out of his gear and into his suit, Triple H very wisely surveyed the smartest way to rise up the ranks underneath Vince McMahon, and quickly realised that there was no praise or credit waiting for him on the main roster. To that end, he took hold of a broken developmental system, reshaped it from within the new Performance Center facility, and produced a magic hour of weekly television that mirrored a version of the product so many disillusioned millennials and beyond had grown up watching.
Right as Ring Of Honor, Impact Wrestling and the rest of the chasing pack were struggling to maintain a foothold in the mid-2010s, NXT slid into the spot, took half of the talent from both and used some WWE production polish to provide a slick "alternative" that was in fact as part of the system as any standard Raw or SmackDown.
The magic was best reflected through the babyface rises of Bayley and Sami Zayn, through the matches featuring any and every combination of the Four Horsewomen, and the rebirth of tag wrestling in general thanks to The Revival, Enzo & Cass and American Alpha. The magic may as well have been just that - a trick - by the time all of the above came up to the main roster, they were picked apart by terrible booking, loveless agenting and all the other cold realities of a product booked by Vince McMahon.