In the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reported on more details behind the recent WWE NXT releases.
13 names were let go last Friday and the decision on who to cut was made by Vince McMahon, Bruce Prichard, and John Laurintiais with Triple H and Shawn Michaels having no say at all.
The feeling is that when NXT was launched it was supposed to be a developmental project to get talent ready for Raw and SmackDown. Vince McMahon felt that the brand was filled with people in the 5-foot-8 range that were over 30 years old and while there will be some exceptions, McMahon didn’t think they could be main roster stars.
There is a mindset that there is a need for bigger people and more characters. Meltzer was told by a source that there was a feeling at NXT that when they would sign an independent talent, they would first have to beat “the independent” out of them when it came to their work style and then when they got to the main roster, they would have to beat “the NXT” out of them.
This was described as “toxicity” and it’s what led to NXT Champion Karrion Kross losing twice on Raw, despite being pushed as an unstoppable monster in NXT. Dakota Kai lost on Main Event to Aliyah this week despite the fact that Kai will be challenging NXT Women’s Champion Raquel Gonzalez at NXT TakeOver.
Meltzer reported that when Bronson Reed got his tryout matches, McMahon decided against using him on the main roster and since he wasn’t going to be on the main roster then there was no point in keeping him. It was said that this was the mentality for the other cuts such as Bobby Fish, Mercedes Martinez, and Tyler Rust, among others.
Another interesting thing to note about NXT is that there was talk of going back on the road for live events in Florida and there was a push to get everyone vaccinated before they went on tour but, thus far, there are no live events scheduled and NXT is still stocked with a lot of young talent that is not getting ring time on the road. A while back, there had been talk of an Evolve-like spinoff promotion with NXT talent that is not being used with the idea of having a 1-hour show on Peacock but there has been no talk about that recently.
