SummerSlam weekend provided a startling contrast between NXT and WWE crowds. NXT clearly provides a home for the fans who wish to feel like their voices are heard.
WWE is absolutely justified when they use the slogan “Then…Now…Forever” in the intro to their programming. The McMahons have commandeered the professional wrestling industry and have earned their spot as the single-most polarizing family, owning, growing, and operating the biggest company in today’s or any other era.
This is the company that housed “The Living Legend” Bruno Sammartino, allowed Hulkamania to run wild, and allowed “Stone Cold” Steve Austin to be the champion of the working man.
The McMahons and WWE have earned their spot at the top of the professional wrestling mountain. However, their latest innovation may have put the “Forever” aspect of their slogan in jeopardy.
If you are like me, you left SummerSlam weekend scratching your head. NXT: Takeover Brooklyn was a brilliant show from top-to-bottom. As has been typical NXT fashion, the program featured a combination of wrestlers who have gained worldwide fame prior to signing a WWE contract, those who have organically gotten over with the NXT Full Sail crowd, and even one wrestler in Drew McIntyre who left WWE to grow as a performer to return better than he has ever been in his career, and his NXT Championship win took a backseat to the debut of Adam Cole.
The fans were fanatical and entirely enthralled with every match on the card. This makes one wonder. Wouldn’t one think Vince McMahon sees the overwhelming success at each level of NXT and think to himself “I want this for the main roster”?
WWE’s second-biggest (maybe their third-biggest, depending on where you place the Royal Rumble) show of the year took place the following night in the very same building as NXT TakeOver. It was a typically solid WWE event, and featured a truly stellar main event match. However, you had a fan base at the Barclays Center that felt compelled to go into business for themselves, even to the point of passing a beach ball through the audience.
You will see no beach balls at NXT.
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The Barclays Center did not house a group of fans that was totally unique compared to the rest of the WWE live shows. These have become fans that have had their suspension of disbelief, a necessary ingredient needed to fully enjoy professional wrestling, shattered for reasons that usually involve WWE creative decisions. The creative decisions that have chapped the backsides of these fans typically involve certain performers seemingly being forced upon the fan base regardless of who may be receiving legitimate organic love or hate from the audience.
We know who these performers are, and a may or may not agree with these said fans, but that is not what this blog is about.
The entire concept behind NXT is for it to be a developmental system to see who can hack it when Vince comes a-callin’. Much like minor league baseball, the wins, losses, and titles should not mean much, as the whole point is to make it to the main roster where the wins, losses, and titles mean everything.
One goes to the minors to grow. The issue at hand here is that NXT, for the past five years or so, has been filling the WWE Performance Center not only with budding greenhorns, but with a plethora of performers like Shinsuke Nakamura, Hideo Itami, Kevin Owens, Samoa Joe, and now with the likes of Drew McIntyre and Adam Cole, those who have very much grown already and are well-known to almost all die-hard professional wrestling fans.
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Once in NXT, these performers are put into a position for Triple H and others to observe them to see who will and will not benefit the main roster. The performers must organically get over with the crowd based on their own talents. With the seasoning many of these performers have gathered over decades of traveling all over the independent wrestling scene, they have a distinct advantage over WWE’s homegrown talent. They have been able to study multiple companies, thousands of other performers and styles, and have been able to emerge with a blueprint of what makes a star on a silver platter.
NXT allows these veterans to show the world their mastery of professional wrestling without the creative constraints that apparently come with being a member of the WWE main roster. These constraints have been debated over an endless number of blogs, podcasts, tweets, and social media outlets. Whether or not the “brass ring being imaginary” theory is true or false is open to speculation. However, it is clear that there is now a large chunk of the WWE fan base that is growing weary of feeling like they are not being heard.
Those fans, misguided or not, have found a home at NXT, where the performers simply are not allowed to move beyond Full Sail without the fans’ say so.
There is a reason why Steve Austin and The Rock still get the biggest reactions of the night by miles whenever they return. They are two performers who were forced to get over organically in their careers when their original plans backfired, and they recovered in a way that was unplanned and impossible to ignore.
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By proxy, if one is in NXT, one’s feet are put to the fire daily like Austin and Rock because if they can’t get over on their own, they are useless to the company. Every day is spent as if their jobs depended on it. The result is masterful shows like Takeover: Brooklyn and, most importantly, thoroughly happy fans.
Regardless if Vince McMahon notices the vast difference in fan appreciation between both of his products, NXT, as long as the performers remain to allowed to perform organically, will be a home for all diehard fans.