There was another round of WWE releases this weekend. We still don’t know if the full list of talent affected has gone public, but as of now, it seems like Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson, Isla Dawn, Blair Davenport, Giovanni Vinci, Authors Of Pain, Paul Ellering and Cedric Alexander were all released, while Sonya Deville was told her contract would not be renewed. As always happens after releases, fans are taking to social media to talk about how Triple H and company dropped the ball and should have booked performers differently or given them more chances. I certainly agree with that take on a few of these, but there’s one recurring theme amongst the complaints that I want to address.
Every time WWE does releases, thousands of people either tweet or like tweets that express something like this: Why did Triple H call up ____ from NXT if he wasn’t going to use them? We heard it with Dijak. We heard it with Cameron Grimes. Now we’re hearing it again, especially around Blair Davenport. From one perspective, the logic makes sense. These people were all, to some extent, thriving in NXT. If WWE isn’t planning to use them on a regular basis or doesn’t have a main roster storyline for them to step into, why wouldn’t they just stay in NXT until the powers that be were ready to use them? The problem with that thinking, however, is that it ignores the most basic point of NXT.
Believe it or not, the primary goal of NXT is not to put on the best possible television program each week. That’s certainly important. Shawn Michaels and company are definitely trying to write storylines and execute matches that fans enjoy and want to see. WWE definitely also cares about the ratings to some extent, but the most important goal for NXT, the basic driving force behind its existence, is to find talent that can contribute to the main roster. It is a developmental brand, tasked with developing wrestlers, and there is a limited amount of time, effort and screen time that NXT and its trainers can spend with the pool of talent at any given time.
As wrestling fans, we all obsess every week about who is getting screentime and what storylines our favorite wrestlers are involved in. We’re all keenly aware that it’s a zero sum game. Only one man and one woman can win The Royal Rumble, which is why we all had so many thoughts about Jey Uso winning. That same thing is true with everything NXT does too, but because the goal isn’t always to use the best available people, it’s a lot more complicated than the main roster.
Think of WWE like a baseball franchise. Every MLB franchise has a professional baseball team, as well as several developmental teams they work directly with. They draft players, who almost exclusively start playing for those developmental teams at varying levels, and the goal is to slowly progress those drafted players from one team to another until they eventually find a spot on your major league roster. Sure, those teams care about winning, but what they care about more than anything else is developing players that can eventually help the major league franchise win games. They would rather lose every single game and see the key young players get better than win every game with older players that are never going to meaningfully contribute to the big club.
For the purposes of NXT, that means it’s ultimately bad for WWE’s future if pretty good wrestlers stick around for too long. To use Blair Davenport as an example, she’s better and more polished than many of the women on the NXT roster, but if she stuck around at NXT instead of getting called up, every time she appeared in a key storyline or wrestled an important match, it would have meant one less available spot for Giulia or Stephanie Vaquer or Jordynne Grace or Lash Legend or Jaida Parker or Sol Ruca or any other woman WWE is trying to develop.
Every time WWE does call-ups, they’re actually evaluating two different things. The first is who can step in and help the main roster, and the second is who they need to move out of NXT in order to give newer, more high potential superstars more attention and screen time. So, if someone is called up to the main roster and doesn’t have an obvious thing to do, by process of elimination, we know the reason they were called up was to get them off the NXT roster in order to create opportunities for others.
I’m not saying WWE is always right with their evaluations. There are definitely people I think should have been given bigger roles or pushed harder when they got to the main roster. This editorial is not arguing Triple H is always correct in his opinions or that you shouldn’t be upset by someone getting released that you think could have helped the main roster. Plenty of people have gone to other companies and thrived or even eventually come back and gotten much bigger roles after proving themselves. So, by all means, hit up social media and complain if you want when people are released.
But if you see someone called up to the main roster without a plan, also be aware of what’s actually going on. WWE doesn’t want them in NXT anymore. That means the company can either just straight up release them, or they can collect a main roster paycheck for a period of time and more often than not, get a couple of matches and small segments to see if they can catch lightning in a bottle. Sometimes that works out and people like Maxxine Dupri end up connecting with the main roster crowd and finding a nice home for themselves. More often than not, it means they eventually get waived, but either way, if it were me, I’d rather get that small chance and a year of a steady main roster paycheck versus the alternative, since sticking around in NXT forever is not an option.
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