During a recent interview with AceOdds (per Fightful), Wade Barrett discussed the state of WWE NXT and where he sees its future. Here are the highlights:
On the state of NXT: “Yeah, I think NXT is turning into its own beast. The show is so significantly different from Raw and SmackDown, you really can’t compare the two,” he said. “There’s a little bit of, we’ve got young, less experienced talent on there, the competitors, and a lot of times you don’t really know what you’re going to get. Some are going to make mistakes and that in itself can be quite entertaining. But I think NXT, takes the hand break off so to speak and they allow a lot of the young talent to go out there just be you. Try things. It may work, you may fall flat on your face but you can get some real moments of magic when people are trying that. You can get real industry-changing talent to come through when they don’t have these constraints put on them. That’s one of the most exciting things about NXT for me. They do try different match types for example.
On it having a different structure: “They try to structure their shows differently,” he added. “I think a few years ago they had a real focus on everything being 100 miles an hour, not just in the ring, but the segments now quickly move along. They were looking at that kind of TikTok generation of fans who don’t have the longest attention span. So, if you give them a long segment, perhaps they’re going to get bored and start looking at their phone and moving on. No, you’ve got to keep it moving like this. I was really interested in the way they were trying that and we’ve absorbed some of that into Raw and SmackDown.”
