Triple H Addresses Rumors Of NXT Reportedly Changing Its Format

Triple H has addressed recent reports that NXT will be changing format very soon due to the likes of Vince McMahon, Nick Khan and John Laurinaitis wanting the brand to feature bigger-bodied and younger wrestlers.

This is what he had to say following the tryouts in Las Vegas:

“It’s a funny thing, people talk about the shifting of what it is. It never really shifted. So if you go back and look at the hiring process, not the hiring process of a television show, the hiring process of who we’re looking to train and make WWE Superstars. Long term. If you go back and look at it, it hasn’t shifted. It’s been the same process. I don’t negate anybody. From a standpoint of, ‘I wrestled some independent stuff’. ‘Well all right, you’re out!’ That’s not a factor to me, but it’s also not the factor that makes me go, ‘Okay, you’re in’. When they get in here today, if somebody goes in and hits the ropes perfectly every time, has every roll perfect, does all the stuff, (makes) it look easy because they’ve been training, that’s not really showing me anything. You should be able to, if you’ve been training, if you’ve been working indies you should be able to do all of that.

“To me, what is the potential long-term? What is that potential? And are they willing to do the work to live up to that potential. Vince used to always say, ‘We’re a variety show’. We are. In some manner, you need a little bit of everything. That’s the key to all of this. But people hear one statement and then make one (assumption). ‘Now it’s that. No, now it’s this’. It always has been.

“People use that term ‘it factor’, ‘x-factor’, ‘charisma’. It’s hard to put your finger on what it is. Sometimes I feel like, for women, there’s this emphasis on, ‘Oh man she looked like a million bucks when she walked in here’. They’re dressed a certain way, makeup is a certain way, hair’s a certain way, doing all those things. It’s important. At the end of the day though, it’s more personality to me. I don’t care, if somebody doesn’t have the money and they don’t wear makeup. I mean present yourself well, but you don’t have to have high dollar hair extensions and a bunch of makeup on and do all these other things in high dollar clothes to come in here and go, ‘Oh yeah, they’ve got it’. To me it almost has nothing to do with it.

“It’s personality, it’s how they engage with you, it’s how they connect with you. Do they make you feel something when you them when they’re working? What’s that connection point that you have with these people? Do you feel something from them? Do they engage you in some manner? Some people you don’t see that when they’re here. Sometimes the red light goes on and they got it, ‘Boom’. I’m sure you’ve heard people say, ‘The camera loves them’. Yeah they take great pictures. I’ve seen that a lot too. When you get to a tryout you’re like, ‘This person looks great’. Then they get there and you’re like, ‘When do they get in?’ It’s not the same person. In person it doesn’t resonate. On camera it does. There’s factors of that but it’s not an image thing. That’ll fade. I feel like that’s part of the process of the two-day journey or the three-day journey or the four-day journey, depending on the tryout style that we’re doing.

“Yes somebody walks in the room, those things might catch your eye for a minute. And then very quickly, that person’s not really doing anything else, and this person is. And they don’t have any makeup on, they don’t have their hair done. So it’s never those other things. You can look past those. What’s really in here, that’s what it factor, charisma, all those things. Part of that is a passion and a connection to the person, and if you feel that, that person has charisma, that person has an it factor. It’s funny because I look at these tryouts sometimes totally differently. I find myself, catching myself, looking back at the same person in the first half of the first day.

“I find myself constantly looking back at that same person for some reason, or the same 10, 15, whatever people. Like constantly find myself, catching myself interested in what they’re doing. And if I mentally see that, I put a check there. I check that person out 10 times, I keep seeing that person do this. They might be terrible. But I keep going back to it. There’s a reason, they’re drawing my eye for whatever reason. I don’t have to figure that out, I don’t have to tell you what that reason is, I just have to know that it’s there. So I don’t know, I just look at it a little differently. But that’s a factor. Is it different for men and women? It’s different for every single person. It doesn’t matter, man, woman, it doesn’t matter. It’s different for everybody. You’ve just got to open to it.”