WWE held its latest tryouts last week during SummerSlam weekend, which didn’t go smoothly.
Last September, WWE moved away from recruiting and signing indie wrestlers as they rebranded NXT to NXT 2.0 with the idea of focusing on signing athletes.
As previously reported, WWE had contacted a number of independent wrestlers to see if they were interested in attending these tryouts. It was said the idea was still to recruit college athletes and train them to be wrestlers.
In the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reported that the tryouts had 50 athletes from 47 colleges, but nobody stood out like a future superstar.
One source stated this might be the last tryout to only use college athletes as this person believes WWE will revert to wanting independent wrestlers with experience combined with recruiting of athletes.
This would lineup with a previous report about how WWE NXT expected to “somewhat” return to Triple H’s previous vision.
The report noted that WWE signed 14 athletes to contracts, but there were problems with injuries at the tryouts. Meltzer wrote, “There were a few concussions and shoulder injuries and more injuries possibly then any tryout ever due to the in-ring inexperience.”
