WWE's Shawn Michaels Addresses Possibility of Second Women's NXT Title and Hesitations
05/26/2023 12:00 am EDT
The WWE NXT Title picture recently had a big shakeup thanks to the WWE Draft, which caused the NXT Women's Championship to be vacated and the NXT Women's Tag Team Championships are currently over on SmackDown. A new NXT Women's Champion will be crowned at NXT Battleground, but without the Tag Titles around, there's currently only one Title for the entire Women's Division, as opposed to something like the North American Title. In today's press event for NXT Battleground, ComicBook.com asked Shawn Michaels if there had been any consideration of adding another Women's Title to NXT, and though he has gone back and forth on it quite a bit, he does have some hesitations about introducing another Championship into the mix.
"So look, every now and then those thoughts drift into your head, but I'll say this. I think that as proud as I am of our Women's division, I would argue there isn't anybody... I don't know. Certainly in my opinion, there isn't anybody that highlights their women as well as we do here in NXT," Michaels said. "Having said that, I just don't know what another Title would be, and sometimes I'm not sure what you really accomplish in that respect."
"So I think the fact that we highlight our women and have them in so many different storylines and have them so unbelievably distributed throughout the roster, I think is a huge success and something that we do very well. I guess to answer your question, I play with it. I go back and forth with it every now and then, but again, when everything is said and done, there's the television show on Tuesday that we have to put on, but we also, it's about developing talent down here and we have a lot of very, very young individuals, especially on our women's side now," Michaels said.
Michaels said the Draft did have an effect on the roster in a variety of ways, including taking veteran stars from the brand and therefore the locker room. "With the draft and everything else, we lost a lot of our, again, what we would consider our veterans and a lot of leaders. And right now we have a very, very young women's locker room," Michaels said. "And so I think right now... And I would argue at one time, the Women's Championship was obviously the only Title that was ever there from the women's standpoint. But as much as I would love to do something like that, I would really want to have it thoroughly vetted out."
"I hope I'm not giving you a runaround BS answer. It is something I think about on a daily basis. I just don't know that I'm comfortable with what that is yet or have made that determination. And again, I also know that with having such young talent, are there going to be people that are prepared to carry on that role? I guess that's my answer for you. I think about it a lot, but I'm not ready to pull the trigger on something like that. I'm just very proud of what it is that we do here with our women in NXT, because I think they're, once again, the strongest women's division in all the country, Michaels said.
The WWE Draft took several veteran NXT stars from the Women's Division, including Indi Hartwell, Zoey Stark, Alba Fyre, Katana Chance, and Kayden Carter. All had been with NXT for a while before NXT 2.0 shifted into gear, and now they are all either on Raw or SmackDown. As for NXT's current roster, there's a great deal of promising talent, and two major stars will battle it out for the NXT Women's Championship at Battleground in Tiffany Stratton and Lyra Valkyria.
The second Women's Title isn't just something that fans have wanted in NXT, but also on SmackDown and Raw, as the Division could use another Title similar to the Intercontinental or United States Titles. We'll have to wait and see if that happens, but in the meantime let us know what you think in the comments. You can also talk all things wrestling with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
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