Between the 13 NXT wrestlers cut on Friday and PWInsider’s follow-up report regarding changes coming to NXT’s presentation, the future of WWE‘s Black and Gold Brand seems to be heading in a different direction. Dave Meltzer appeared on the latest Wrestling Observer Radio to recap what had happened with NXT — Vince McMahon, Bruce Prichard and John Laurinaitis made the call rather than Triple H — and that big changes are coming regarding how the brand will be handled.
Meltzer noted the brand’s original concept was to be solely developmental for WWE’s main roster while building up potential WrestleMania main eventers, and that the cuts were made to take away wrestlers deemed too small or too old.
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“The basic feeling is they lost the war…this is the aftermath and this is the new direction is younger guys and bigger guys,” Meltzer said (WrestlingNews.co).
“The general feeling is that NXT has ventured out…originally it was the competition for Ring Of Honor,” he later added. “Then it became the competition for AEW. When Ring Of Honor started showing life and the independent scene started showing life, this was supposed to be them getting that fan base. Then it became the competition for AEW. What happened happened and now they want to get it back to what it was and so there’s cuts that were made and these were the guys that were cut and there’s gonna be changes. Power play is a weird word [but] there’s divisive opinions about wrestling among the key people and they are fighting for Vince’s ear and this is the ear that Vince has this week. Next week he may listen to somebody else’s ear and may go in a completely different direction but that’s what happened this week.”
While NXT has been considered by many fans to be WWE’s best weekly show over the past several years, the brand has seen a number of identity changes ever since it was first introduced as a competition show back in 2010. Triple H talked about that changing identity during a media conference call in June.
“A year or two in, three years in, four years in, that was a heavy knock on NXT (its identity as developmental),” he said. “I don’t know if you remember it that way but I do. For me doing the interviews at that time it was always said, ‘how can I get into this brand? Whenever I get excited about a talent they move on.’ It kills me for the brand and I don’t like it and it was a heavy criticism. That morphed into a different place where people got accustomed to that and it switched, the brand changed again. It’s changed into a place where yeah there are going to be some talent who are in a position for a long time. They might not fit in different places, they might not want to go different places. There are some talent that don’t want to leave and expand beyond. Maybe the schedule doesn’t work for them physically, whatever it is.”
