The WWE Performance Center celebrates its 10th anniversary this month, and Shawn Michaels recently spoke about the success of the NXT system on the “Sports Guys Talking Wrestling” podcast. The Heartbreak Kid said,
“I would say 98% of the main roster has got to be people who came through the NXT system. Ultimately, you have to come to the conclusion that it was a success. Look, yes, [Paul Levesque]’s my best friend, but I’m telling you, as a best friend I can’t stand having to give him too many compliments, but the reality is what he built here is indeed a success.”
“And I think you see that throughout WWE, and as you said, even in the business as a whole, there are a lot of people that are on top of other organizations within the wrestling industry that have all, at least at one time or another, came through ‘NXT.’ I couldn’t be more proud of him.”
ECW founder Tod Gordon is set to release his memoir next week, and he recently discussed writing the book.
Gordon spoke with Fox News, and you can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On the reaction from fans after The Night The Line Was Crossed: “After the show was over, we had all the wrestlers back in the Hilton hotel, not far from the airport, and Paul [Heyman] and I drove over. We get out of the car to go the bar and tap the guys on the back, great job, pat on the back, and spilling out into the parking lot were fans, and they all started yelling, ‘E-C-W! E-C-W!,’ as we were walking out of our car and into the building. And it was, ‘Thank you, Tod, thank you, Paul.’ We were sitting, looking at each other, wondering what the heck was going on.
“Paul said, ‘Look, I’ve been doing this for a while in a lot of territories; I’ve never seen a fan reaction like this.’ We realized we had something here. Maybe lightning in a bottle, but whatever it was, we had it. And the fans were a part of the whole thing. They were a major driving force for making the shows better and bigger. And the fans became a major part of the show, like the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ They would bring in weapons to hand out to the wrestlers. They had their own chants they made up for each different guy. It really was like a family atmosphere. They and us were working symbiotically together.”
On writing the book to correct the record on ECW’s story: “It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t honest, and it’s been told completely differently for almost 30 years now. That’s the reason I needed to write a book. I needed to set the record straight.”
On what he hopes fans will take from the book: “I think, for one, not to believe everything that they’ve seen or told. Two, all the debauchery that was the reputation of ECW was real. I tell story after story involving the drugs, the sex, the rock and roll and the whole bit. And who was involved, who wasn’t involved. What we did was pretty inclusive, and some of the stories you will fall down laughing, and some you’d say, ‘Wow, that’s kind of sad.’”
