Triple H Comments On Some WWE NXT Stars Staying There Instead of Going to WWE’s Main Roster
Triple H wears many hats in WWE as a part-time wrestler (how’s the torn pec?), on screen Chief Operating Officer of WWE and his official job title is Executive Vice President of Talent, Live Events and Creative. What that means is he’s also running WWE’s developmental system, which included NXT, plus all the talent that haven’t debuted on a television show yet and he’s running NXT UK as well with their first Takeover event taking place later today. Yesterday, WWE announced the new Performance Centre in England.
Our good friends at Inside the Ropes led by Kenny McIntosh got a chance to talk to Triple H about his ideas for NXT. I’ll post the two full videos at the bottom of the post, but here are few excerpts of the chat with thanks to WrestlingInc for the transcript.
Triple H on talents moving through WWE’s system:
“There are some talent here, that you might see come from the UK, that might move straight to RAW or SmackDown. I think right now there’s sort of this perceived system of where it’s kinda – 1. RAW, 2. SmackDown, 3. NXT, 4. NXT UK. I don’t believe that, I believe that talent are talent and I believe they will sit where they sit, and I believe you’ll see talent over the next few years start coming up to Raw and SmackDown. And I think you’ll see them move back over in to NXT, or come back in to the NXT UK system. I think talent will begin to evolve and rotate through territories, so to speak.”
Triple H on some wrestlers staying in NXT for most of their careers:
“I think there will be some talent that will be incredibly successful, will be global names, will be global, household names, that will probably never leave that NXT system because that’s their home base and that’s where they fit, and they’ll have incredibly successful, meaningful careers. And probably over those careers they’ll gravitate through different locations within the globe, maybe without never being on RAW or SmackDown, but that not being any lesser to their careers.”
Triple H on comparing this environment to what wrestling was like in the territory days:
“I think it depends on the talent and the moment and I think it’s no different than it was if you go back, 30 – 40 years, into the territory system in the US. No different. You left one place, you went someplace else, sometimes you reinvented because you thought, ‘What I’m doing is good, but here, I want to do something different, I want to make it something more.’ And you reinvent, and you become something different.”
TJR Thoughts: The point about some guys staying in NXT for the majority of their careers is interesting. I wonder if guys like Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano will be those kinds of guys because if they get to the main roster they may get lost in the shuffle even though they are among the best wrestlers in the company. In NXT, they can be the main event like we saw regularly in 2018. I don’t know if Vince McMahon would push them that same way on Raw or Smackdown.
Anyway, please check out Triple H’s discussion with Inside The Ropes because I’ve known Kenny for a lot of years and he’s a great guy that’s doing well in terms of covering this wacky business of wrestling.