NXT Thread *SPOILERS*

beakerjoe wrote: »

The product is stale. The WWE main roster sanitation has creeped in slowly. Booking hasnt seemed to have a solid direction and while its not been booked on the fly ala the main roster, it doesnt seem well planned.

No one is really getting over with me beyond maybe Kyle and Cole and thats being generous. Ive very little reason to care about many of their talent. Part of that is their inability to crwate top babyfaces.

I think NXT is a prime candidate for a deep dive on what's gone wrong because it's incredibly interesting.

Just throwing some things out there and people can react as they may:

The arrival of AEW's Dynamite is one of the big things. NXT was the young person's brand in WWE, the "cool" brand, you only need to go back to 2016/2017 and see how their audience perceived the NXT stars and how favorably it was compared to main roster WWE. An actual alternative arrived that captured the 18-49 demo and in comparison NXT looked old. It wasn't until Dynamite that anyone would've thought NXT infact did not appeal to young people. That the brand was used as a shameless pawn to try to take away some, any, of the AEW audience only made killed off the coolness factor more.

WWE tendencies taking over. NXT was never a bastion of pure wrestling, there were always elements of main roster WWE about it, but they were largely offset by it being the alternative brand of WWE programming, hidden away on the WWE Network. The issue has been that the longer the brand existed, the more WWE it became (kinda, it was straight developmental at the start). The WWE speak commentary, those damn cameras, the wooden promos and then it seeped into the storylines, more whacky, more OTT, more melodrama. By the time Gargano/Ciampa are nearing the end of their run of matches against each other the writing is clearly on the wall, this is mini main roster WWE.

The lack of talent turnover. The best thing about peak NXT was that you were seeing dream matches involving guys who they'd signed from NJPW, PWG, British indies that you'd thought you'd never see and you were seeing it in front of big hot Takeover crowds with WWE production standards. But, you reap what you sow. The generation of indie talent that they last signed (Ricochet, Gargano, Ciampa, Owens, Cole, Black ect. ect.) is the last great crop of indie talent for the foreseeable future, maybe ever unless something dramatically changes in the pro wrestling landscape. All guys that, had they been coming through now, would be signed a year into their career. Ricochet's runs in Dragon Gate, NJPW, PWG, the king of the indies never would've happened, he would've been signed post Evolve 4 or 5 (think about how much he grew in that time from those early Evolve shows on the Network to where he was when he was signed). You can do the same thing with the rest of those guys mentioned. They hoover everyone up too quickly, they created a situation that turned pro wrestling into an arms race and now they can't replenish the roster because there's nobody to sign whose ready or who has any cache and that's why you've ended up with a stagnant NXT roster for nearly 3 years now.

The failure of the Performance Center. Never has a training school cost so much and produced so little. If they could make their own stars then that previous paragraph would matter less but they can't. There's people that spend years in that awful warehouse and still can't put together a 5 minute match without it falling apart. It is ludicrous that it's so bad and not having a stream of homegrown talents ready to step in has contributed to the staleness of the roster.

There's certainly other thing too. The tone of the show is off in a lot of ways, the pandemic has obviously taken a chunk out of interest levels in the brand, main roster declines in interest have impacted NXT and there's probably other stuff too that I can't think of right now.

But at the heart of it all, unopposed on a Tuesday night, 0.18 is really bad. Maybe they move it back to Wednesdays, maybe the only useful function this brand has anymore is taking a small chunk out of the Dynamite viewership. I don't know, but limping on with numbers like that surely can't be the way forward.

Necro wrote: »

Of course it's stale, there haven't been notable call ups in over a year really.

The big send offs for some of their stars of the past, what's happened to them? Non-existent

Take Io Shirai for instance. Lost the title and now doing the sum total of eff all instead of being pushed up to the main rosters and actually given screen time instead of some the useless talent they have on Raw or Smackdown

Ciampa and Gargano in eternal mid card hell on NXT as former champions instead of moving up to inject at least some dynamism into the main rosters

Adam Cole doing stupid interviews that serve no purpose instead of getting a runout on Smackdown

The list is endless.


I get the sense they're holding off on call ups until the live audiences return to give their call ups some sort of meaning at least initially (we all know most will likely go bad as per normal WWE protocol)

But as a result it's actually stagnating the brand completely because there's no movement at all so when someone loses the top tier title they're just sort of... Stuck.

I think one of the big issues with call ups is that if you take say Shirai, Gargano, Ciampa and Cole off this brand then what do you have left? In previous times they could call up people because there was a raft full of people they'd sign to replace them. Calling up Sami Zayn? No worries, here's Nakamura. Calling up Finn Balor? Here's Johnny Garagno and Tomasso Ciampa to replace him.

Of course you can send guys down to NXT but do you really want to pay main roster contracts for guys to work on the 3rd brand show that's doing dismal ratings? Of course not.

Necro wrote: »

That's also a problem too, but as you say it's their third tier brand, let the others sink or swim and try and develop new ones for NXT instead of letting the old hats carry the can.

But, (and this is where I think most of us are in agreement, even the hardcore WWE faithful) WWE seem to have lost all ability to create new stars, thus sticking with Cole, Gargano et al on the third brand.

I wouldn't be against that if there was a core group of young wrestlers from their PC who who could step but that's just not the case and also if I thought Cole/Shirai/Gargano were stepping into a better situation on the main roster but they aren't. Kross will go up, probably within the year, but the others look destined for NXT permanently.

It's a shame, I do think there's a debate to be had about how many stars NXT managed to create on their brand rather than how many stars they were handed and just gave a platform to but either way the end result is the same, there's no difference makers on the brand at all.

697k It looks like NXT actually did better up head to head with AEW.

I wonder will Dain eventually join Imperium as a replacement for Wolfe

Let's hope Bronson Reed has a decent enough reign, he strikes me as a guy they could rush to the main roster and get lost in the shuffle

After the long match it seemed Kross must've got knocked a bit silly from how the ref stopped Balor.

Liking how they're using DiBiase.

Not sure who'll go after Raquel now

Did they have a dress code? All 3 commentators and Cameron Grimes in blue suits

NBA but a .13 which had a main event with an NXT Title match with their 2 most pushed guys is not good at all. Whatever they think Kross is, he ain't it.

CastorTroy wrote: »

Didn't like what they did with that triple threat. A few superkicks and that's it? Just a way to get Cole against Kross. Very Charlotte type booking.

Making a big deal about Poppy being there next week. As Candace said, is she trying to be the next Bad Bunny?

Jesus Cole be lucky to get Charlotte booking off them. :pac:

I thought it worked to a certain degree as in Cole is just a prick.

How dare Poppy come between Dexter and Indi?!
Poppy is definitely no Bad Bunny.

PTH2009 wrote: »

Hard to see Kross losing the title but knowing wwe Adam Cole will win it but without Kross been pinned. Will the demon Finn Balor make an appearance at the end to confront the winner

Cool having the Million Dollar title back and it's been a great programme. Who is the face and heels though

If there is a face it seems to be Grimes but both men are extremely entertaining, so I don't think it matters.

CastorTroy wrote: »

For this week's NXT UK

Wasn't expecting that result. Seemed to be a random title change after so long. I guess with no Takeovers planned they decided to go this way. Wonder if Kay Lee is taking time off.

Well it had to happen some way.

But yes nxt uk is a very enjoyable wresting show to watch and I loved the main event and I loved Walters promo to start where he came out and called it professionally wrestling and said it’s a sport and then left and no stupid interruptions for no good reason. So yeah good stuff and the nxt uk women’s division is very good.

Forgot this was on tonight