Why NXT Requires A Total Rethink
The Full Sail facility, again, is a sound investment, with its symbiotic relationship recruiting key postgraduate personnel - but the sounds emanating from the TV show range from obnoxious to apathetic. The venue is full of punters desperate to get themselves over, when they’re not thoroughly worn out by the marathon taping schedule. Again: that charm has long since been lost.
The brand, as revealed earlier this year, haemorrhages money, not that that is of immediate concern to a company that make more money from New Generation-obsessed Saudi Arabia than it does from WrestleMania.
Anything patently ‘Performance Center’ is a non-starter, in terms of driving viewer interest, on the TV show. The facility itself has not given rise to the Superstars of the Future. With few, rule-proving exceptions—Braun Strowman, Charlotte Flair—it is a glorified training school in which countless “legitimate” athletes, and wrestlers representing emerging markets, have failed to make the grade as pro wrestlers.
Haunting everything is the sad spectre of the main roster. There’s no reason to tread this ground here. It’s so self-evident as to be depressing. If the Indy stars of NXT become, almost to a man, stripped of their value on a main roster overseen by Vince McMahon, why make that main roster the destination? Why not rethink NXT as a televised brand in its own right, broadcast on Fox Sports 1/2?
Pete Dunne Vs. Ricochet drew viewers. TakeOver events are evidently well-received. The best of the Two NXTs, transposed to television, stripped mostly of the Performance Center products, and overseen exclusively by Triple H, is exactly the sort of consistent product to bat away consistent criticisms of the main product. NXT, in its current incarnation, is in danger of receding from the conversation. We know now that it has lost the WrestleMania Weekend silver podium to New Japan Pro Wrestling and Ring Of Honor.
Reestablishing the brand as the destination, not the journey, is quite literally the next logical step.
As for the recruits unsullied by the dreaded Independent circuit Vince still so clearly prefers to push—look at your Universal Champion, your Acting General Manager of Monday Night RAW—above all others?
Perhaps sending them to WWE-affiliated Independent promotions—EVOLVE. ICW, PROGRESS, and per the latest whispers, Germany’s wXw— is the way forward. These men and women aren’t getting over in Florida because they wrestle the same style in front of the same audience on the same circuit. This can only inspire the same performances, the same reactions.
Diversify their acts, their knowledge, and they may yet generate noise in arenas, as opposed to silence in a studio setting separated only from FCW by name.