Scotty 2 Hotty Reveals Vince McMahon's BIZARRE Demand To NXT Coaches
The NXT 2.0 youth movement extends to WWE Performance Center staff, apparently...
WWE NXT underwent a transformation in 2021, with Vince McMahon completely revamping his company's developmental system into a more traditional format focused on younger, bigger athletes who don't necessarily have backgrounds in wrestling. The "super indie" era was brought to an end, replaced by one placing greater importance on aesthetics.
Apparently, this extended to Performance Center staff.
Speaking on Talk Is Jericho, former NXT coach Scotty 2 Hotty said that when Triple H left the brand and its new staff members arrived, the trainers were told they needed to freshen up their images (h/t Wrestling Inc.):-
“We got to the Performance Center for television, we don’t have any fans outside. For the longest time, there weren’t any fans. And then in the building, it’s all in-house people, so we were wearing our NXT tracksuits. But as soon it started to change and Hunter went away. The other guys started to come in it was, ‘okay we are back to business casual now.’ Then the next week, this is awesome. Next week it was, ‘Vince wants the coaches looking younger. So we need you guys to start dying your beards and cutting your hair.’ The coaches. I literally lost sleep over that.”
Those trainers, by the way, rarely (if ever) make television.
Scotty continued, calling the death of NXT's black and gold era "sad":-
“There’s just not a lot of explanation to it about what happened. And yeah, it pisses you off, right? As being a part of it. But, it’s also sad because it’s kind of like they killed it off and they killed this awesome thing that we had off. So we lost this awesome thing, it was almost like dealing with a death, dude, it was just sad.”
The 48-year-old requested his WWE release in November 2021, claiming he had lost his passion for the job.