Baron Corbin talks to Fightful about his current run on NXT.
Baron Corbin recently returned to NXT in an effort to completely revamp his character. In vignettes on NXT television, Corbin literally burned artifacts of his past, wanting to start over with no gimmicks attached to his personality.
In a new interview that occurred during WWE SummerSlam 2023 weekend, Corbin spoke with Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp about Shawn Michaels allotting him the freedom to tell his story his way.
"I think that's something I've always had as well. They put me in the ring with Kurt Angle. They put me in with Cena. They put me in with The Rock because they trust what I can do. They know whatever I do, it's going to be 110%. So the free agent [status], same thing. I was like, 'What is this? What does this mean? Am I out of a job? What are we doing?' They were like, 'No, we just don't know what story we want to put you in yet, so we don't want to pigeonhole you and have you on Raw or SmackDown. That was kind of the way it was originally told me. 'We want you to be able to float because when we figure it out —' because the character was coming off the JBL stuff, it wasn't working, obviously. So it was like, 'Okay, well, what are we doing?' It kind of came up at Draft time, and they did that. So then I was asked, 'Hey, would you be interested in going to NXT and working?' I said, ' Absolutely.' It's an hour and a half up the road from me. I'll be able to go do the show, go home, and get my bed," Corbin said. "So when they presented it to me, I just saw it as an opportunity. I didn't know what the opportunity was, but when I went down there, Shawn [Michaels] is going, 'Hey, what do you want this to be?' I go, 'Well, here's what I would love to do. I would love to not be on Raw or SmackDown.' Because I was also working at Cameron Grimes at the time on SmackDown, so I was doing NXT and SmackDown. I said, 'I would love to just be here, and let's redo my character. Let's let me tell you what I think I am.' He's like, 'I love that. Let's do you. You have full control, essentially, on what you want to do, and they keep me in parameters, obviously, but they're letting me just kind of reinvent myself as me, and I think we're presenting a really cool thing to the fans in NXT."
Corbin says he's enjoying the opportunity to work with younger talent and help get them ready for the main roster of WWE because there's no true preparation for the main roster quite like working with someone that has been at the top.
"It's also elevating those guys, you know? It gave Ilja [Dragunov] a guy to work with from the main roster. Trick [Williams], who I think is an amazing superstar with Carmelo [Hayes], and they, think, are going to try to do their own thing a little bit, and then Melo," he said. "I want to bring them to that next level. I think going and working with them. They understand there's a different speed, a different way, a different crispness. There's a different promo with the main roster to NXT. When you can go down and do that, and they feel it because they're not going to know until they experience it. If you take a guy from NXT and you just drop them into the main roster, it's like sink-or-swim, like, are they gonna make it? But if they've worked with three or four proven Superstars, they know they can transition."
Baron Corbin recently had the debut matchup Gable Steveson at WWE NXT Great American Bash. Kurt Angle recently commented on the crowd reaction to the match. Fans can read his thoughts here.
Corbin also recently further elaborated about why the JBL pairing did not work for him. Read more here.
