Former WWE NXT Superstar Tyler Rust (fka Rust Taylor) recently appeared on The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast with Nick Hausman and addressed rumors on WWE Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon wanting to overhaul the NXT product, and Vince allegedly being mad at the brand for losing the Wednesday Night War to AEW.
Rust recalled the internal reaction to NXT moving to Tuesdays, and what happened with Vince and other executives visited the WWE Performance Center.
“Honestly, I would think they’re just speculation, personally, because the vibe around NXT has always been very good,” Rust said. “It’s always been very controlled. When we did move to Tuesday, for example, it was made very clear that, hey, this is a total network thing. This doesn’t have anything to do with the Wednesday night deal. This is just a deal with USA. They want to move us over. They wanted to promote hockey more on a Wednesday night is what it was, and I love hockey, so I was all about it.
“I’m like, hey, let’s promote the NHL. Everybody really needs to watch more NHL. Personally, I’m all down for it. I know there’s a lot of rumors now as far as Vince wanting to overhaul the NXT product and everything. Sometimes, rumors, maybe they’re right. We’ll see how it is going forward from there, but from my experience there, there wasn’t really many eggshells as far as upper management not being happy.
“Everything they saw whenever they came to the Performance Center and they saw us training, they absolutely loved it. I remember hearing exact words were always like, ‘This is amazing. This is everything that we want to invest in,’ how much they were proud of all the hard work we were doing there at the Performance Center, and they see the way we train, the way that we work. They see how hard we really, really work on this product, and it was always such positive feedback from everybody upstairs, honestly.”
Rust was released from WWE back on August 6 with other NXT cuts. He just debuted back in December 2020, and was a member of The Diamond Mine stable on NXT. It’s believed that Rust will become a free agent after Sunday, September 5 once his non-compete clause with WWE expires.
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