The Rise & Fall Of WWE NXT

After spending years ensuring that none of the mostly-bland FCW (or FCW-adjacent) talents could get over against stars of his era and ilk in the 2000s, Triple H used the early-2010s to formally seize control of WWE's crumbling developmental system and make it his own mini-empire.

Ousting the totally exposed rodeo clown John Laurinaitis from his position in 2011, Hunter's next move was taking the abysmal NXT talent/training show vehicle and turning it into a force for good. Crucially thinking outside of the painfully small box the brand had been placed into, he took the logo and the colour scheme and built a relationship with Orlando's Full Sail University with the bare bones. Promising and delivering awesome opportunities for media and communications students in return for slick studio wrestling akin to the non-WWE 1980s products he fell in love with, it served every master because the audience of one wasn't watching.

This factor grew in importance as the years passed. Triple H had at very least gained his Father-In-Law's trust enough that the old man simply stopped giving a sh*t. This didn't appear to just a speculative take either - almost every call-up as the years passed featured some sort of tweak, as if McMahon had been shown an 8x10 rather than a highlight reel and wanted to flesh out his vision regardless of pre-existing canon.

Not that anybody could have known that when, in August 2012, FCW and NXT standout Seth Rollins defeated Raw and SmackDown also-ran Jinder Mahal in a tournament final to highlight the gulf between Laurinaitis' past and 'The Game's future.

Inaugural Champion Rollins was the perfect ideal of a talent that hadn't yet been exposed/ruined by the system and had enough links to an independent past that wrestling hardcores couldn't help but check out and check in to. This philosophy was vital, constant and remained consistent.

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