Bruce Hart gave his thoughts on WWE eliminating the territories in the 1980s and comparing NXT to the independent scene during his appearance on In The Room podcast. Down below is what he had to say about those topics.
On WWE eliminating territories:
“One of the biggest mistakes [WWE] made, among others, was going to inordinate lengths to get rid of these promotions. I’m not sure if they were insecure or afraid of them being a threat to them or whatever. The promotions like Stampede Wrestling – and there were a number of other ones that I was fortunate enough to visit … – that was, and still is, one of the things that jeopardized the future of the wrestling business. Them going out of their way to eliminate the smaller promotions, that’s where all of the … talent was coming from.”
On NXT vs The Indies:
“If you’ve got the best trainers and training facility in the world, which they don’t, I might add … in any other sport you still have to take raw material. In hockey, [you] develop it in junior hockey, in football you develop it in college or university or the CFL or wherever, in any other sport, even if you have the best talent at your disposal, and I might add that they don’t. Half the guys that I see them developing are crap … You show me the place for people to hone their craft and learn how to do the subtle things: learn how to interact with each other, learn how to interact with fans, all this other, they don’t have that. You take these NXT guys and it’s laughable that you always see guys who have come up supposedly from NXT or from the minors in the last decade or so. You do a little research and find out that they were kicking around … training or wrestling in small indie circuits before they went to NXT. That’s where they learned how to work.”
