Triple H Provides An Update On WWE's Plans For NXT Europe
On Friday, with the caveat that the interview at the heart of it was conducted on January 4, hours before Vince McMahon's coup to reinstall himself atop WWE, Variety published a feature on WWE Chief Content Officer Paul "Triple H" Levesque. Among other topics, Levesque went into detail about a story that has largely laid dormant since it broke last August: The NXT UK brand being folded to make way for a replacement circuit, NXT Europe, to come in 2023.
Though Levesque didn't provide an updated timeline for the relaunch, he did make one thing clear: NXT Europe is going to more closely resemble its American counterpart in terms of the scouting and recruitment process than its predecessor did. "I would like to be able to find the best athletes and the largest personalities and the most entertaining people from every place in the world, and bring them into what we do," Levesque said.
After explaining how his vision included having local heroes from all corners of the world, Levesque returned to the topic of recruitment. "NXT UK was based mostly on independent wrestling workers, guys that worked their way up and found their way to us," he explained. "We're starting the process there doing the same thing we're doing here. There isn't an NCAA collegiate level of athletics in Europe, but there's a lot of athletes that are training in a lot of places like Loughborough or whatever, for specific sports. We're beginning to engage with them now and finding the same interest level that we're finding in NCAA athletes here."
The Variety article stressed that with McMahon back in power, all of this could change, as "global localization" with all sorts of international NXT brands was specifically a Levesque idea.