Ever since Vince McMahon and Bruce Prichard rebranded and reimaged NXT from Triple H’s popular vision to a strictly developmental brand fans have had mixed feelings about the product.
Under Triple H’s guidance, NXT was rated above Raw and Smackdown as the company’s best brand by many fans and critics and it remained largely self contained from the main shows.
That started to change as Vince wanted to heighten NXT’s ratings around Survivor Series, but after that it happened less and without much of a boost.
So, Vince decided to make it what it was always intended to be and that’s a true developmental brand, and that meant the Black and Gold was out and a new colorful style meant to attract kids and teens was in.
Same ideas, hoping for different results
To be fair, making his product attractive to children and teens has always been Vince’s idea since he bought the then WWF from his father and ushered in the Golden Era with cartoonish characters.
That took a backseat during the Monday Night Wars when the WWE was in a fight for survival, but it shifted back again.
But the shift to the PG Era and to NXT 2.0 has fallen flat with enough fans that the WWE is reportedly planning to regularly have main roster stars, mainly from Raw, appear on the show to bolster it’s viewership.
We even saw Dolph Ziggler win the NXT Championship from Bron Breakker in a Triple Threat with Tommaso Ciampa.
So it looks like the formula to make NXT 2.0, their official developmental brand, successful and increase viewers is to take TV time away from their young stars and hand it to veterans.
Nothing says a developmental brand without direction like bringing in proven stars to make it palatable.
Stars moving up
It’s been reported that Breakker and Ciampa have been wrestling at the WWE main brand house shows and Ciampa appeared on the Main Event, so it’s likely they’ll be debuting on the main roster before too long.
The standard formula to move previous NXT champions to the main roster is having them lose the title or a shot at it, and with Ziggler as champion it shows they don’t have anyone they feel is ready to step up.
In short, it looks like the typical bad planning we’ve been seeing on the main brands for a while where the WWE hasn’t been able to build stars or have failed to continue what Triple H started in the old NXT.
What do you think about the WWE’s approach? Let us know in the comments below.
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