William Regal: “NXT Is The Part Of WWE That Is Competition”
Throughout William Regal’s time as NXT general manager, he has never been one to crave the spotlight to be on television every week, saying he wants the show to be about the talent itself.
For months, NXT has been airing live on Wednesdays on the USA Network, a departure of doing one-hour shows that were taped weeks prior for years. Although there are several changes when it comes to going from doing taped shows to two hours of live television every week, Regal said it doesn’t really change the mentality and approach of how to do shows.
“No (it doesn’t change anything). We got an incredible team of people and we are all like minded people and we all want NXT to be the best product that we can do. I don’t care about what’s going on anywhere else. We go on and do what we do best and that is competitive pro wrestling and that’s what NXT is. NXT is the part of WWE that is competition. It’s not sports entertainment, it’s the pro wrestling side of it. Yes, there’s always going to be an entertainment value of pro wrestling, but our style is getting the best competitors and getting in the ring together. It wasn’t a change. It was, ‘Right we’re going live. We’ll do what we do at TakeOvers and we just do it (every week).’ We do it with such a small team. If you know how few people we use to do NXT compared to what most production companies, it’s a small team. There’s no egos, we’re all here for the talent,” Regal told Inside The Ropes.
Regal spoke about the need to put the focus on the talent every week and not on the names that work behind the scenes such as Triple H and Shawn Michaels. Despite being the NXT general manager, Regal said he doesn’t want to be put on television every week, instead wanting to give the wrestlers the opportunity to shine.
“I tell them, ‘Don’t put me on TV. I’m not interested in being on TV. If you want to use me in that role as a general manager (I’ll do it), but I don’t need to be on TV (every week). This is about them.’ No Shawn Michaels, no Triple H, this is about them. This is for the talent, get them out there and make it about them. For the first couple of weeks, we were figuring stuff out, timing issues, but we’re used to doing stuff live at TakeOvers. We’re basically in our own little world at NXT and we just go straight to it. Every person is working there every second to make NXT the best thing it could be,” Regal said.
Regal’s comments can be heard at in the video at the top of the page.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit Fightful for the transcription.
