During a recent interview on Pat McAfee’s DAZN show, Triple H commented on WWE NXT “going to war” with AEW, the growth of NXT so far, and more. You can check out some highlights below:
Triple H on NXT going up against AEW: “You know, the war thing gets brought up a lot. And competition is great. So if they are coming on Wednesday nights and want to put on the best show they can, great. That’s where we are, we’ve been on Wednesday nights like you said for five years, it’s been our home. We’ve been in discussions with various networks about moving NXT and growing it. Now is the right time, so if Wednesdays is the place — they can say ‘war’ they can say ‘not war.’ I don’t see it that way as competitive in that nature. I see it as us putting on the best show possible. I think at the end of the day, the winner is the fans. And they’ll choose what they want to watch. I’m confident in NXT, I’m confident in the talent. There is not one person I would trade anybody for. I can look at that show and say, ‘Bring your best, we will. And good luck.’ And just like we did back in the day [in the Monday Night War], when the NXT talent gets done, their goal will be to put on a show where they can look at the world and say, ‘Follow that.’”
Triple H on if he ever thought NXT would become what it is now: “You know, when we first started it, it wasn’t designed as a feeder. It was designed — the original idea that was basically seeing where WWE was and not seeing where the future would come from. Who is creating talent, and where are talent getting the opportunity to go and learn the right way to do things, and the correct way to do things. Not just in and out of the ring, because that can be taught fairly easily. But how to produce television, how to be a television star, how to be a global star. And so it was originally created for that. And to do that, you need to have a place for — first you needed a Performance Center for talent to be brought in, and the best place in the world to train with the best trainers and the best of everything else. And then you needed a brand and a place for them to go work and ply their craft, and improve. And that became NXT, and as it started, it began to take on this kind of cult following very quickly. And then once we started to roll from there, people started really wanting to get involved in it and I knew we had something special.
“Then the concept quickly became, ‘We have the opportunity to create a, if you will, third global brand.’ Which is where really I think we are now, you know, this USA deal puts it at a different platform level. And the goal will be to create this, to make it as big as Raw and Smackdown and have a third brand that everybody is open to going to, so that talent can, like you said, go from one brand to Raw, to Smackdown, to NXT, to the UK, to wherever we are. And then seamlessly go around so that they can have a very long, meaningful career. But without just being in one place.”
(h/t 411 Wrestling)
