Report: WWE to Announce NXT's Future on WWE Raw This Week

With AEW set to premiere its weekly live show on TNT at the start of October, reports have been [...]

By Connor Casey

With AEW set to premiere its weekly live show on TNT at the start of October, reports have been popping up for weeks regarding WWE's plan to combat the new promotion by moving NXT from the WWE Network to a cable network. At first reports had NXT moving to Fox Sports 1, given that SmackDown Live is moving to FOX and a weekly studio show is planned to start on FS1 shortly after.

However new reports then came out stating that instead of FS1, NXT would be moving to the USA Network. There has since been speculation over how long the show will be, if it will be broadcast live, if it will tour like WWE's other shows or remain at Full Sail University and/or if Vince McMahon will get more hands-on with the brand

Both wrestling insider @WrestleVotes and Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer reported over that weekend that, whatever WWE has planned for NXT, fans will learn about it on Monday.

"We will know Monday," Meltzer said on the latest episode of Wrestling Observer Radio. "There's going to be an announcement on Raw on Monday."

"The word among the talent spread that it's going to be USA Network, and they're going to get the jump on a couple of weeks on Oct. 2 [AEW's TNT premiere]," he added. "They're not going to start head-to-head, they're going to get a couple week jump."

Meltzer added that part of the reason for the decision was that USA Network is in more homes than FS1, thus giving NXT a better shot of winning a ratings war. It also helps that wrestling fans are familiar with WWE's product being on USA, given that Raw has been back on the network since 2005 and SmackDown has been on the channel since January 2016.

He also addressed the speculation of McMahon's involvement in the show's production.

"This is on the USA Network, Vince is not being hands off on a show on the USA Network," Meltzer said.

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