During an interview with Sportskeeda prior to WWE NXT UK TakeOver: Cardiff, Triple H commented on NXT moving to the USA Network, how he sees the brand, and more. He said,
“We’ve used the term but it’s bothered me almost in some ways since the beginning.
There’s aspects of this that you can say are absolutely developmental, especially when you talk about the US. People forget – we just went through this exercise the other day and I don’t want to say the numbers because I’ll say them wrong because we just went through them the other day – but when you start to look at the brand that NXT is and you see people like Braun Strowman, who has never stepped through the ropes before he walked into he performance center. Ever. Alexa Bliss. Never stepped through the ropes before until they walked in the performance center. Charlotte Flair. Right? Homegrown. Velveteen Dream. Homegrown. When you start to make the list of people that came from zero to where they are today, the term developmental in some ways works. Even Tyler Bate as good as he was, how good is he now? Right?
At the same time the developmental term makes it sound almost less than, and the, I don’t even like the word call up. It just sounds, it’s wrong.
There’s three brands to me within the WWE. There’s Raw, there’s SmackDown and there’s NXT. There’s variations within NXT. There’s NXT, I feel like in a lot of ways the Cruiserweights that are on 205 Live are a part of NXT. I feel like NXT UK is just an extension of the NXT brand. There’s here in their country doing their thing but I want to you know build this out and make it bigger but it’s brands. This doesn’t seem developmental, you know what I mean? Barclay’s Center, sold out. Chicago, sold out. LA. Every place we’ve gone, we’ve done it here in London. It’s just a different brand. There are three global touring brands. Legitimately. And that’s really what it is.
The platforms are different but those are all steps of growth and as you see it now on USA in the US I think all these brands have that opportunity to grow. There’s three banners. There’s RAW, there’s SmackDown, there’s NXT.”
