Beth Phoenix spoke about the changes made to WWE NXT 2.0 during an appearance on Busted Open Radio.
The WWE Hall of Famer serves as a commentator for the brand that has a different product than it once did with an edgier product and younger talent with shorter matches. Here are the highlights:
The commentators are being encouraged to be themselves on TV:
“No [NXT 2.0 has not led to me changing my commentary style] and there’s not, per se, new people in charge. I would just say we’re freshening up the brand more than anything and like I said, focusing more on like — instead of NXT being really branded as the yellow brand or the little engine that could, we’re looking to produce stars. That’s our entire directive, our entire motivation. The matches that you see are not only just reps for these stars but also for everybody to kind of push the envelope a little bit and I love that. We’re uncuffing a lot of the talent and giving them an opportunity to just try some stuff, try it. Like let us reel you back instead of telling you, ‘Come on, you gotta light it up. You gotta light it up.’ Like go out there, try different things and it’s the same for us as commentators. We’re being encouraged right now to just kind be ourselves more, show more personality, don’t be so married to the agenda and be walking the straight line. Like let’s just have fun out there and if we mess up, we mess up. You know, we’re human. We don’t wanna be perceived as robots. We wanna bring personality and a big part of ourselves to the show.”
NXT stars making the transition to the main roster:
“Yes [I think NXT 2.0 creates an easier transition to the main roster]. I think in a lot of ways, the talent is getting an opportunity not only in their training behind the scenes, all their preparation for TV, but they’re getting a great education in learning television as well which is a whole different animal. It’s something you can’t learn doing live shows on the independent scene unless you’re being filmed with multiple cameras in the WWE style, you know? We’re always working the camera and if you’ve never done that, it’s different. It’s theater versus movies. It’s completely different so, I feel like there’s been an emphasis now, working with the talent very closely to help them to slow down and to find your camera and to, you know, really be expressive in more ways than just doing high spots.”
H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcript