The current WWE United States champion Finn Balor who is a former two times WWE Intercontinental Champion and a former NXT champion recently talked about the rebranding of NXT and he said it was needed.
The NXT is in existence for over a decade and it has been one of the most famous wrestling brands today. The promotion first started as more of a talent hunt competition but later WWE decided to run it as a separate brand. It was mostly treated as a development territory of WWE.
Finn Balor Thinks The Rebranding Of NXT Was Needed
The NXT was a successor to the Ohio Valley Wrestling and Florida Championship Wrestling which were the two development territories of WWE previously. The NXT has produced a lot of big stars of today including the likes of Seth Rollins and Big E. Roman Reigns was also a product of the NXT.
But last year WWE decided to rebrand the product because it was not much improving in either viewership or ratings. And it was failing to compete with the newly founded professional wrestling promotion AEW. WWE decided to rebrand it and named it NXT 2.0. Since then it is doing quite well even though it would not improve in ratings or viewership yet.
Finn Balor who is a former two times WWE Intercontinental Champion and a former NXT champion recently spoke to WWE After The Bell with Corey Graves where he talked about the rebranding of NXT and he said it was needed. Finn Balor said;
“I think it was needed. I don’t want to say it was getting stale, but you know, having been there for, I think it was about a year and a half into my second run, I felt like all the matches had taken place, or like it was kind of going on like a cycle over and over again, and that something needed to change.
“I feel like pretty much as soon as I left, the 2.0 came in, and it was a completely new crop of superstars, you know, young, fresh people. As a fan, like when I was younger, I never took joy out of seeing the same matches, or the same people every week. I was always hungry like, ‘Hey, who’s this new guy?
“What’s his backstory? Where did he come from? Oh, I wonder what moves he does?’ I was so curious about wanting to learn about these new guys. I feel like for me as a fan, that’s what I want. Pretty much as soon as I moved back to SmackDown at the time, the NXT 2.0 came out. It was so cool to see completely new people.
“I was only gone out the door for about a month, and then there’s people that I’ve never even met before. You know, like on the TV, it was obviously surprising. Maybe a lot of people in the business were like, ‘That’s stupid. Who are these guys? They haven’t paid their dues’, but for me as a fan, I think wow, this is cool.
“There’s guys I’ve never even heard their names before, and now they’re on TV and are succeeding. I remember watching the WarGames much. There were four relatively new guys in the ring with the four experienced guys, and it’s just incredible. It’s like something completely fresh. Maybe I’m just so jaded and so exhausted from seeing so much over the years. But that was something really, really cool.
“You know, just seeing the new guys doing new stuff. It’s unpredictable in the sense that you don’t know their spots, or you don’t know their routine or their shtick, and you’re getting to see and witness something new for the first time, and that’s pretty rare. So hats off to NXT for kind of risking it all, you know, and, really, really committing to the 2.0.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription