As noted, WWE unveiled the brand new, state-of-the-art WWE United Kingdom Performance Center on Friday, ahead of the first-ever NXT U.K. TakeOver live special on Saturday afternoon at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, England. Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On NXT U.K. talent eventually moving straight to WWE’s main roster and the perception of the varying degrees of importance of WWE’s multiple brands: “There are some talent here, that you might see come from the UK, that might move straight to RAW or SmackDown. I think right now there’s sort of this perceived system of where it’s kinda – 1. RAW, 2. SmackDown, 3. NXT, 4. NXT UK. I don’t believe that, I believe that talent are talent and I believe they will sit where they sit, and I believe you’ll see talent over the next few years start coming up to Raw and SmackDown. And I think you’ll see them move back over in to NXT, or come back in to the NXT UK system. I think talent will begin to evolve and rotate through territories, so to speak.”
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On some talents never leaving their respective brands, NXT U.K. or otherwise, and still having completely full and successful careers: “I think there will be some talent that will be incredibly successful — will be global names — will be global household names, that will probably never leave that NXT system because that’s their home base and that’s where they fit … and they’ll have incredibly successful, meaningful careers, and probably over those careers they’ll gravitate through different locations within the globe. Maybe without never being on RAW or SmackDown, but that not being any lesser to their careers.”
On the importance of reinventing a character when a talent feels it’s time being no different than decades ago when talents would travel to different territories to present their new characters to an audience: “I think it depends on the talent and the moment and I think it’s no different than it was if you go back, 30 – 40 years, into the territory system in the US. No different. You left one place, you went someplace else, sometimes you reinvented because you thought, ‘What I’m doing is good, but here, I want to do something different, I want to make it something more.’ And you reinvent, and you become something different.”
Check out the complete Inside The Ropes interview with Triple H at the WWE U.K. Performance Center below, or at YouTube.com.
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