It's Official: WWE NXT 2.0 Already Sucks

The success of the show as a developmental league cannot yet be analysed, because these hosses are still in development, but it also can. We've been here before.

The failure of what came before led to the creation of NXT 1.0. Everything proceeds cyclically. The initial, pre-NXT developmental system - i.e., NXT 2.0 under different names - was a single territory emulator in which big lads were recruited, handed different, generic names arbitrarily, all taught from the same basic, methodical playbook, and were not encouraged to organically connect with different sets of fans using their own expression. They did the sh*t they were taught to do in front of the same people on a loop. The promising Creed Brothers and the assured Carmelo Hayes are both very different workers, at different stages of their development, so the cookie cutter homogeneity is not quite as punishingly drab as it was in the 2000s. But they'll get there soon enough. They have tropes to hit and limited in-ring with which to hit them. Minoru Suzuki described this phenomenon as the creation of grey, boring lumps of trash. He is not wrong.

Meanwhile, the main roster is ageing. In four years, virtually every star that isn't Edge nor Randy Orton, and there aren't many, will be over 40. Vince's refusal to promote the NXT stars that were meant to replace them will create a damning gap. It's left, for now, up to...Josh Briggs to replace them. The women will fare little better. The very obvious selling point of Toxic Attraction is quite the opposite of revolutionary.

It isn't all bad.

CONT'D...(5 of 6)