Wade Barrett made an appearance on Busted Open Radio to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, the NXT color commentator talked about the transition from the Black and Gold brand to NXT 2.0 last year:
“I would say it was a seismic shift when we went from the Black and Gold brand to NXT 2.0 about a year ago. I know it turned off a lot of our viewers. A lot of people who were fans of The Black and Gold era kind of felt slapped in the face maybe and there was such a jarring change to what we went to. I felt previously the Black and Gold era wasn’t really serving that traditional developmental show that we once had when I went through OVW or Florida Championship Wrestling. It was all about these young guys coming through, okay 12-18 months at most, and then you’re on your way. You’re gonna be off and running. I feel like Black and Gold, great TV show in its own right, great wrestling show, but it kind of morphed away from that. There was an element of the younger talent who were trying to break through not able to get those opportunities on the show and perhaps the roster at times was starting to get a little stale. It was the same faces for many years. Great competitors in their own right, but I think the change was necessary, and now opened up a ton of opportunity for people like Carmelo Hayes, Tiffany Stratton, Bron Breakker to go out, develop, grow, and show what they can do and be the next generation of WWE stars who are going to be on Raw and SmackDown.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription