Triple H provides a detailed answer.
The founder and senior producer of NXT Triple H, along with the trainers and staff of the WWE Performance Center in Orlando have built NXT from the ground up and turned it into one of more popular brands in all of WWE. NXT has brought fans stars such as Seth Rollins, Bray Wyatt, Big E and Bo Dallas. The brand is also known for bringing in some of the best in-ring performers from around the world and helping those performers master the skills that they come up short in. Superstars like Adam Cole, Ricochet, Samoa Joe, Bobby Roode and Andrade "Cien" Almas joined NXT and further built up their resumes' under the brand.
Following NXT TakeOver: Chicago II, Triple H spoke with media outlets about the future of NXT, and the progression of its stars among other topics.
"You know, I think that comes down to anything, where you try to prep them, you try to give them the tools and you try to, get them, give them everything they can to succeed on the main roster, but the truth is if you believe that everybody is going to get called up and be ‘the guy’ or ‘the girl’ or the next big thing, its kind of an unreal expectation." He said. "Its a weird… there’s this weird thing in the business I feel like that happened--I’m not really sure how it happened; where if you didn’t become the champion, or if you didn’t become the ‘John Cena’ character that you were this, ‘Awww, they robbed this guy’s career forever’.” He continued, “I don’t recall Roddy Piper being the guy, I don’t recall Mr. Perfect being the guy. I can go down a list of who’s who of Hall Of Fame performers that some people would make arguments that [they] were the best in the world or the best at what they did at that moment in time or their all-time favorite character that never got past the middle card.” Triple H said. “If you look at it honestly, right, and today you would look at those people and say, ‘Oh my God, so… Hall Of Fame worthy career--I can’t believe it took them this long to put them in the Hall Of Fame’. But the truth is if you went back and looked at it today, you would have said, ‘He’s mid-card for life man’ or, ‘They screwed him and never gave him his spot’ or whatever. I don’t know how that changed and became the thing," said Triple H.
The reality is regardless of whether its a homegrown talent or a talent that has a plethora of experience outside of WWE, not every star that comes from NXT will reach stardom when they hit the main roster. Triple H would zero in on a question that had to do with talents who were highly successful in NXT not reaching that same level of success on either RAW or SmackDown.
"Not everybody is gonna’ be the guy, not everybody’s gonna’ be the girl, not everybody’s gonna’ be the champ, and its not about, ‘Well, they should get their turn’." He continued, "Its the funniest thing of all-time. It’s like you say you should get a participation medal.” He said. “You know that isn’t it at all, there’s no deserve, everybody works hard. I hear that sometimes, ‘Oh he’s the hardest working guy in the business’. I don’t know anybody on our roster who doesn’t work hard. Well I do, actually, *laughs*, completely false. I do know some people that don’t work hard, [but] there’s a lot of people who do work hard. Most of them, 99% of them work their asses off day-in day-out, just [like] everybody else does, and they’re proud of that, and they work hard for it, and they should be excited and rewarded for successful careers--to me making it to the WWE is the ‘wow'. Being successful making it to the main roster, making it to these TakeOvers ‘wow’, making it to the main roster, ‘wow’, and being there for a long period of time and you know; not getting injured, making money for your family, taking care of your family for generations like all of that is ‘wow’ and phenomenal and, that is success so, I think sometimes when people look at it and say like, ‘Oh boy you have to watch these guys fail.’ I haven’t seen so many of them fail."
Triple H has also gained a measure of control over WWE's Tuesday night 205 Live brand, which has seen several stars from the WWE Performance Center brought there, as opposed to WWE Raw and Smackdown. Fightful also ran a story this week reporting that WWE commentators weren't to refer to Sanity's NXT run during their debut this week.
The full media call is available to listen to by heading over to the Fightful YouTube channel.
