Cornette has a lot he could teach, but (1) he’s an asshole know-it-all who would rub everyone the wrong way and (2) it would have to be 100% his way with little-to-no compromise. I think HHH could potentially bring the good of Cornette into the 21st century while leaving the parts of Cornette’s style stuck in the 70s/80s where they belong.
Also, as much as I do think much of Cornette’s style could, and even should, be translated into modern wrestling, Cornette conveniently forgets or tries to explain away all the stupid, hokey stuff he was involved in over the years.
Corny’s perspective is that his goofiness and pratfalls were payoffs for a heel getting his just desserts. When the Jacksons and Omega do it, they’re like frat boys wanting to make their friends laugh.
Corny’s like any old-timer who hates that all the hard work they put into the business is now obsolete or easily replaced with technology. He still has good things to say about relatively new stars like Austin Theory and Keith Lee, but he’s naturally going to take issue with how somebody else handles them. A lot of businesses have to plan for ways to attract the young generation, because the old fans of the product are dying out and won’t be the audience any more. Today’s youth (pardon me if that term makes you queasy) aren’t the same fans Corny attracted in his day. I for one welcome our teenage overlords.
If HHH is in charge he’ll make himself champion again. That’s the only wrestling storyline he knows.
NXT will be gone soon, it’s a money loser, hopefully Steph’s ex-husband will be gone too.
We must all pray Shane does not return.
No matter who takes charge the whole thing could collapse without Vince keeping the pressure on everybody to perform.
He should have retired for causing intense boredom. If he was dead he’d give himself the belt if he could.
The show still lost money. Anyone could take a second-rate indie type show and waste that much money on it to produce some short term ratings before it failed. NXT wasn’t any worse after HHH left, it just lost the handful of viewers remaining after it no longer had to compete with the backyard wrestling show on Wednesday night.
One man’s opinion, and the opposite of my own. Up until NXT had to start counter-programming AEW, it was a very enjoyable watch, IMO because they weren’t chasing 15 minute demos so hard. It produced wrestlers with character that could have slotted much better into Raw and Smackdown had Vince not sucked away everything that made them watchable when he brought them to the main roster.
Of course these are just my opinions, and likely not very popular opinions either.
I’m not saying NXT wasn’t enjoyable wrestling. It oughta be if you run an indie type show on a WWE budget. It wasn’t doing that great a job of producing top level talent. They pushed a lot of small wrestlers, great wrestlers sometimes, but WWE is the Land of the Giants, there isn’t much room for the little guys to excel. Their best graduates came to NXT with plenty of wrestling experience under their belts, they were just getting lessons in how to follow orders the WWE way. I didn’t notice how that produced better wrestlers or better wrestling in the end.
How is that HHH’s fault? Vince didn’t acknowledge the existence of wrestling feds outside of WWE, and that applied to NXT as well. He didn’t observe what got talent over in NXT. If they didn’t get over with how he window dressed them, he just replaced them with the next in line.
Remember how insanely over Killer Kross and Keith Lee got in NXT? Both were big studs Vince turned into cartoon characters and dropped when his magic formula didn’t work.
Two good examples, Lee couldn’t wrestle and Kross was dull. It’s easy to put anyone over in the NXT environment, you can make a champion out of a ham sandwich in NXT. Then after putting in their time in NXT they have to be promoted up to the big time where they are suddenly looking like a deer stuck in the headlights when the crowd isn’t pre-programmed to cheer for them. The WWE ‘universe’, which ironically has plenty of NXT fans in it, does not accept the minor leaguers moving up to the big time. You can blame Vince for messing with their characters if you like, but I think they would have failed anyway.
And again, just my opinion. I find nothing wrong with the existence of NXT and am happy if people enjoy that show. But I give low marks to WWE and AEW, nobody should expect I’d change course and back this minor league show.
That’s bullshit. They were both “Red Rooster-ed”. If you want to make your case, don’t use those two examples, use Apollo Crews who, while an excellent wrestler, wasn’t (initially) saddled with a shit gimmick but had no personality. Or use Allayah, who is neither a good wrestler nor in possession of a lot of personality.
In other news, HHH has been confirmed as the head of creative.
Every one of those guys entered NXT with significant experience and they could have joined the main roster right off the bat because they were ready to go, or would learn rapidly. I appreciate the value of the development system to WWE. They want to weed out the problem wrestlers before investing in them, and get them ready to work in the WWE system, but NXT didn’t look to me like it was doing any better job than recruiting directly out of OVW and FCW, and other territories as they’ve done in the past.
Also, instead of going too far in this direction I have to admit the possibility that once free of Vince’s limitations HHH could right the course of professional wrestling. He’s got the top talent and an existing platform to stand on. He also has a bank of wrestling storylines and gimmicks that Vince vetoed in the past to try out.
NXT was just a FCW rebranding, so I wouldn’t have expected anything different. While they do get some truly green prospects in NXT, it was mostly to instruct top indy prospects how to wrestle the WWE way (ugh) but also how to build a character, how to promo, and how to wrestle for the cameras - all things the indies don’t teach. Heck, I doubt AEW has any formal promo teaching, as opposed to a lot of the current upper carders learning directly from Dusty Rhodes. Despite that, Balor is still a ‘meh’ promo, Moxley is IMO an “acquired taste” (that I haven’t acquired), Danielson truly benefitted, Nakamura isn’t allowed to speak more than a sentence or two because of his accent*, Rollins has also improved greatly, and Owens & Zayn are both naturals who would have been fine without the organized training. I shudder to think how bad Charlotte Flair would be without the training.
*By not having their scripted shows where WWE controls everything done at least a week in advance, WWE shafts all their Japanese talent. Given a week to learn and practice their promo, even Kairi Sane could have spouted a short paragraph. That has always been sloppy management. Even native English speakers like Liv Morgan and Sasha Banks would be able to sound much more natural if everything wasn’t over-scripted and last minute.
Agreed on all that. It isn’t that the wrestlers were no good, maybe it wasn’t HHH’s fault, but I think it was a boondoggle for WWE. A lot of money spent, on production and using creative division resources by connecting NXT to the main show. And then they’re still not ready to work WWE big events, which may not even be their fault.
Let us hope that Katie Vick Part II isn’t one of them.
If you are saying you need personality/charisma to work WWE big events, then I’ll certainly agree. No amount of in-ring skill is going to give Apollo a personality. If Vince didn’t hate (paying) managers, at least he could have the less dynamic as heels.
Even a lot of AEW wrestlers are learning the hard way that in-ring isn’t enough. Jungle Boy, Dante Martin, Lee Moriarity, and others are floundering in the lower-mid card, while those with promo skills are pushed. Not that they are any more than adequate promos, but Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish far outshine them. And the AEW women are even worse. Britt Baker and Nyla Rose are good, Serena Deeb and Athena are ok-plus, but the rest, including Thunder Rosa and Toni Storm, are at best adequate (obviously, IMO). Oops, forgot Jade Cargill, who has been improving her entire run, and vacillates between ok-plus and good. It’s a lot easier to work an audience of a few hundred than to work the TV cameras and an audience of 900,000.