The Impossible End Of Wrestling’s Worst Era
Bryan capitalised on his newfound popularity by reinventing himself as an incandescent babyface sports entertainer. He simplified his work, but it was beautifully potent - pro wrestling’s version of the major label debut. He was so over that fans jeered a returning Batista at the 2014 Royal Rumble. They could not sanction that WWE was not a meritocracy, in spite of so much evidence to the contrary, and the threatened revolt was so embarrassing that WWE had to pivot. Bryan defeated Triple H, and then Randy Orton and Batista, to walk out of WrestleMania XXX with the WWE World Heavyweight title. Vince McMahon was dragged, after much resistance, into placating the second audience.
On the week of WrestleMania XXX, Vince told Bryan that he wanted Roman Reigns, not him, to be the next John Cena. Were Bryan to have stayed healthy, he was scheduled to take the John Cena squash at Brock Lesnar’s hands at SummerSlam 2014. The answer to the revolt was only a temporary measure.
Virtually everything WWE did in this era was a reaction to its various, arrogant blunders.
If they could just get ahead of it, and not treat positive fan-friendly moves as if flustered with an almighty sigh and passive aggressive “OK, fine,” WWE could have changed the timeline.
In yet another continuation of the same pattern, the ‘Women’s Revolution’ only happened because it was a reactive measure to dismal PR. The candid AJ Lee ripped apart WWE’s approach to women’s wrestling by pointing out a certain hypocrisy on Stephanie McMahon’s part. Stephanie had tweeted her support of Patricia Arquette, who at the 2015 Academy Awards ceremony had campaigned for wage equality in the United States. AJ pointed out that WWE was vastly behind that curve as, on the very same night, the hashtag #GiveDivasAChance trended on Twitter in response to Paige and Emma Vs. the Bella Twins being allocated just 30 seconds on Monday Night Raw. The message was again shouted, unmistakably, in WWE’s ignorant face.
The ‘Revolution’ took root in NXT. Paige and Emma instigated it by wrestling a comparatively lengthy and well-received match (13:01) at NXT ArRIVAL on February 27, 2014. It hasn’t aged spectacularly well, in truth, but the match signified that WWE - not that they deserve much praise for not treating women like sex objects for once - might start taking women’s wrestling seriously. This wasn’t entirely benevolent. Paul Levesque had identified the success of the UFC women’s division and the drawing power of Ronda Rousey as something to replicate in WWE. Even the moderately more progressive approach to women’s wrestling in NXT was, ultimately, another reaction.
Lapsed fans, by the mid-2010s, felt they had been saved. Paul Leveque’s peak NXT run was a special, vital time. NXT and the main roster oscillated wildly in quality, so much so that the bond between fans and the former intensified. ‘Papa H’, as he came to be known, was received as a saviour figure. The Reddit community extended their gratitude by gifting him a fruit basket. Levesque didn’t get to where he was by being an idiot. Even though he enjoyed burying them in the same breath, he was very much aware of the second audience and built his product around appeasing them. He was on the campaign trail for the throne.
NXT was at its best when it was plain nice. It wasn’t merely more on the pulse. It wasn’t just a place in which a wrestler like Sami Zayn could be a babyface without you being told that he was some uppity geek who was actually terrible and the only people who like him are internet nerds. (That isn’t a snarky joke; Michael Cole said almost precisely that, and worse, about Daniel Bryan in 2010). It wasn’t just the place in which Zayn could unleash some of the most heart-pounding state-of-the-art offence that WWE fans had ever seen. It was nice.
NXT at its best was near-perfect. Through the unique purpose that it served, for a while anyway, the show and brand solved the problem that befalls every major outfit. Wrestling never ends. There is no off-season. While tinged with a degree of guilt, there’s no escaping the fact that even your favourite wrestlers become boring. Overexposed. AEW fans didn’t expect to want Jon Moxley to take an extended vacation in 2023 when he was the hero they needed in 2020. Becky Lynch was The Man at WrestleMania 35; at WrestleMania 40, despite having already played heel in the interim, she as a babyface was booed by over half of the stadium.
WWF fans were a bit bored of Steve Austin by late 2000!
NXT circumvented the issue because it was designed for wrestlers to eventually graduate from the system. Consider the rise of American Alpha. Neither Jason Jordan nor Chad Gable had made a name for themselves on the independent circuit. Both were box-fresh. Fans weren’t bored of them; quite the opposite. They developed near-instant chemistry as a unit. A faster and more wholesome update on the Steiner Brothers fused with a more earnest babyface vulnerability, the team was a total joy, and watching them capture the NXT Tag Team titles at NXT TakeOver: Dallas was a strangely paternal experience no matter your age.
After years and years of two flawed extremes - to be reductive about it, most wrestlers who didn’t break big or flame out fell under two archetypes and were either a multi-gimmicked nightmare like pre-fame Cody Rhodes or a tedious ever-present like Dolph Ziggler - NXT crafted actual, complete character arcs.
American Alpha really were “able”. Bayley was the wrestler who spoke to your inner child but was hardened enough to repeatedly crush the bones in your hand to jelly if you wronged her and her fans. The Revival proved that you could actually invest in tag team wrestling all over again, and were two wrestlers honed on the unfashionable reaches of the indie circuit. Before Levesque opted for the hot free agent shortcut deeper into his run as booker, Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder completed their own arc from virtual nobodies to a unit that made fans believe in an art that should never have been lost.
NXT was the place in which a megastar could finally arrive in WWE as a megastar - Shinsuke Nakamura was presented as nothing short of a game-changing living legend - and a meritocracy in which less-fancied signees, like Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa, could ascend to the top of the card and define the entire brand in their image because you, the audience, wanted them to.
The problem, of course, was that Vince McMahon didn’t push these gift-wrapped, demonstrable stars on the main roster. He treated his new young talents like Saturn Devouring His Son. It’s no shock whatsoever that Vince resolutely failed to grasp the feel-good NXT vibe. Levesque built a second audience that actually “belonged” to WWE, and Vince still told them to hit the bricks!
NXT, ultimately, was a failure - and Vince wasn’t solely to blame. In retrospect, it was not sufficient enough an alternative to draw the lapsed fans back. The brand was the very definition of too little, too late.
The television was largely solid. It was easier to ruffle its hair for a job well done than to feel spellbound by it. The plotting made sense. Wrestlers who needed a push won often enough. Only on very rare occasions would something with a true creative spark to it play out - for example, the brilliant use of Dan Matha as a subverted bait-and-switch sacrificed to portray Samoa Joe as the true monster of the brand.
The promos were scripted, just never in the deeply embarrassing “WWE way”. Consider this: how many NXT promos make it into the grand pantheon of classics? Which NXT promo would you rank up there with Dusty Rhodes raging against “hard times”, Eddie Kingston vowing to crawl on his hands and knees to CHIKARA High Noon, Jon Moxley demanding the ball?
Very few, if any. The promos were solid enough, but in that modern WWE tradition, they existed to build towards a soundbite inserted into the video package just before the chorus or the breakdown in the accompanying song. There was synthetic quality to NXT. It was great sports entertainment, but sports entertainment all the same. There was a polished lack of authenticity to the product. It was pedestrian in a way that wrestling shouldn’t be, formal, stilted. You could hardly fault it. It made sense. The “right” things happened - but was NXT ever a true alternative?
Paul Levesque is not blameless. Whether he was permitted to book entirely of his own volition or not, there was no blood. No fire. No spittle flecked at the camera.
Even the best patterns eventually begin to feel patterned. Drew McIntyre is currently a smash hit on the main roster as the paranoid “hater” troll, but in 2017, he was just the latest shortcut.
Sign hot free agent > strap up hot free agent > NXT champion drops title > main roster debut was the pattern, and that version of Drew McIntyre wasn’t quite Shinsuke Nakamura, despite the opposite being true now.
As NXT was exposed as a sporadically incredible but hardly must-see or distinct pro wrestling brand, in parallel, the true King of Pro Wrestling made inroads into the United States.
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