Why Did WWE Change Its Recruiting Strategy?
WWE has undergone a significant transformation in its recruiting process over the past year. Not only did the promotion launch a new Name, Image and Likeness program (dubbed Next In Line) to start recruiting current collegiate athletes, but its recent Performance Center signing classes have placed a heavier emphasis on collegiate sports backgrounds over experience in the independent wrestling scene. This change in philosophy has also been reflected on the NXT brand, which was rebooted as NXT 2.0 last September and has placed a higher emphasis on homegrown talent trained at the PC.
So why did all of this happen? According to Samoa Joe — who was working behind the scenes at the WWE PC and as a recruiter prior to being released in January — AEW played a part in it.
"You also have to understand the major shift was mainly because many of the better independent wrestlers are working for AEW," Joe said in the post-show media scrum after returning at Ring of Honor's Supercard of Honor during WrestleMania weekend. "Let's just be honest here, when we were tapping into a market and looking for new athletes when I was with WWE at the time, when the markets tapped, you try to find a new market. That really was probably a lot of the appetence why they chose to switch directions so if there's not a lot of gold in the well, you start digging somewhere else."
WWE president Nick Khan also shed some light on WWE's current recruiting strategy during an interview on The Town. WWE announced its first class of Next in Line signings last December and the program's first official signing, Olympic Gold Medalist and two-time NCAA Heavyweight Champion Gable Steveson, is expected to make his WWE debut soon.
"If you're a football player and you're not going to make it to the NFL or the XFL and you're just a step short, a step not big enough, come to us. Let's make it easy for you," Khan said (h/t Wrestling Inc). "If you look at a shot-putter in college, what's that man or woman going to do next? Are they going to get an office job? Are they going to go into pharmaceutical sales? Are they going to go work at UPS, or are they going to come take a look at us? We want to make it easy for all of these athletes, and that's not limited to just Division I or NCAA."