Two More Athletes Reportedly Confirmed For Upcoming WWE Tryouts
WWE is looking for the next class of Next In Line (NIL) signees, and two more names have been confirmed.
PWInsider has confirmed that Trevor Robbins of San Jose State and Anna Keefer of the University of North Carolina will both be attending the tryouts, set to take place in Nashville, Tennessee during WWE SummerSlam weekend. Over 5o college athletes are expected at the tryouts, which begin on July 27th.
Keefer is a track & field star out of UNC, originally from Minnesota. Keefer won this year's ACC Women's Indoor Long Jump Championship. The last track & field star that WWE signed was none other than WWE Raw Women's Champion Bianca Belair.
Robbins is an Offensive Lineman who spent the last 6 years in the San Jose State Spartans football program, playing for the team when they won the 2020 Mountain West Conference championship.
With Robbins' colorful hair, and linebacker build, and Keefer's penchant for video blogging on her popular YouTube channel, both athletes feel like quintessential examples of WWE's new recruitment ethos, which has seen the company move away from developing already-established independent wrestling talent for WWE television, and instead starting with college athletes and giving them the media training required for their transition out of the college sports world. The upcoming three-day tryout will reportedly include "performance evaluations, individual and group promo evaluations, in-ring technical sessions and sit-down interviews".
WWE held a similar tryout event during last year's SummerSlam weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada. A number of talents who were signed following those tryouts are already being featured regularly on "NXT". They include Edris Enofé, Nikkita Lyons, Sofia Cromwell, and Tatum Paxley.
Other recent signees to the WWE Performance Center include former Bellator MMA fighter Valerie Loureda, who is set to begin her training at the WWE Performance Center next week, as well as Olympic gold medalist Gable Steveson. Steveson has reportedly begun to consider a return to the world of amateur wrestling before becoming a WWE Superstar.