Figured all these cuts needed yet another new thread. Earlier this week, WWE further shoved NXT 2.0 away into its weird future by letting go of a whole bunch of behind the scenes folks, including:
- William Regal!! - Road Dogg and his brother Scott Armstrong - Samoa Joe (his second time in a year!) - Timothy Thatcher and Danny Burch (both working behind the scenes since they haven't been on TV in a long time) - Ace Steel, Allison Danger (who was just hired a few months ago!), Ranjin Singh, Gabe Sapolsky (I didn't know he worked there) - And a few others I was unfamiliar with...
Imagine deciding you don't need *William Regal* in your pro wrestling company anymore...
It's crazy. They've dismantled HHH's vision of NXT now. WHich was pretty much ROH/AEW
Wasn't Regal technically a scout? I guess with the new policy of try-out camps they don't need that anymore. You don't need true talent, we'll just let you work WWE style and you'll be fine!
I'm sure there's plenty of other guys that can still coach (is Steve Corino still there?) and do things but it is baffling. It has to be weird for the people that are still there too both wrestlers and staff alike.
I was a huge fan of NXT for the last few years and I gave the 2.0 version a chance, but I tapped out a couple weeks ago and quit watching. It just became kinda boring and uninteresting.
Originally posted by KevintripodI was a huge fan of NXT for the last few years and I gave the 2.0 version a chance, but I tapped out a couple weeks ago and quit watching. It just became kinda boring and uninteresting.
As the guy who recapped the show for 4 years, I get where you're coming from. My beloved Black & Gold brand has been replaced with Sunday Morning Superstars (which was a show I watched for about 10 years, so , you know (but which was also a show that was pre-taped, edited, and only one hour long, so, you know)). There are definitely still some of my faves around (Pete Dunne, Imperium, and, surprisingly, Cameron Grimes) and some of the new guys are definitely ones to watch (Steiner and Carmello, natch, but also I feel like Joe Gacy is doing his best, and could maybe get over if he can move the gimmick far enough), but overall, it's two hours of green rookies with bad gimmicks making the kind of understandable mistakes that live television has absolutely no forgiveness for. It's not exactly must-see TV.
The departure of the entirety of HHH's staff has me more convinced than ever that this whole thing is a Toys-R-Us-style pump-and-dump. Make the company look incredibly solvent on paper, take out a bunch of loans you have no intention to pay back (and who knows what other mysterious finance black magic you can do alongside that), then gut the company, strip-mine it, and finally declare bankruptcy, walking away with all that cash. I think the sale talk is just to bump the stock price and make people think the company is in really good health. "Oh, yeah, we talked to Fox about selling, but they lowballed our INCREDIBLY VALUABLE COMPANY, so we're holding off for another buyer." I think that Vince would rather destroy the place (and cash out in the process) than ever let anyone else make something with the WWE. If that's the kind of stuff you're up to, then the last people you want around the place is anyone with their eyes on the future - 'cause there ain't gonna be no future.
I started watching back in 92/93 time frame when El Matador , the Rockers, Hi Energy etc were bringing the quality, hi-flying wrestling entertainment. Without accesss to the internet, I never figured out why he disappeared.