What’s Next for Hapless Jets?
It’s difficult to imagine Minor League Baseball or G League basketball occupying a prime-time slot on network broadcast television. But on Oct. 1, following a five-year deal worth a reported $20 million to $25 million annually, NXT—the WWE’s developmental circuit—debuted on The CW.
The somewhat surprising media win is due to the unique business of pro wrestling’s farm system.
NXT not only produces generational talent—like Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Charlotte Flair, and Bianca Belair—for WWE’s weekly flagship shows, but also routinely creates stars out of athletes with no background in the ring.
And NXT’s “talent factory” is not a figurative reference. Unlike the sprawl of other developmental leagues, there is a single complex in Orlando that cultivates wrestling stars and puts them on a fast track to the main pro rosters.
“I think the Performance Center and NXT have been a game-changer for the WWE and for the industry,” says WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels, the company’s SVP of talent development, who spearheads NXT’s creative. “We want to be on a level with the NFL and the NBA. I think we’re close. We feel like we’re college football. If Raw or SmackDown are the NFL, we’re the NCAA.”
NXT’s success has also spelled a body-slamming boom for the big league business. Earlier this year, WWE and Netflix reached a reported 10-year, $5 billion–plus deal to bring Monday Night Raw to the streaming titan in January 2025. That was followed by Friday Night SmackDown returning to the USA Network just this month as part of a reported five-year, $1 billion–plus deal worth.
NXT’s debut on The CW hit a peak audience of 965,000. The 895,000 average viewers were a 44% increase over the final episode on USA Network, and the telecast was The CW’s top telecast this year among the 25-to-54 and 18-to-49 demographics. The Tuesday night network could continue to mean that many more eyes on WWE’s developmental hotbed—something that NXT Women’s North American Champion Kelani Jordan is psyched about.
“It’s a huge opportunity for us,” Jordan tells FOS. “Just as a brand to see a broadcast network pick up NXT, it also just shows that the future is now.”
Since opening its doors in 2013, the WWE Performance Center in Orlando has become a well-oiled machine.
The philosophy is simple: Garner talent from the company’s various tryouts, relocate them to Florida, engage them in daily in-ring training and professional development classes led by former pro wrestlers, and place them on NXT television where they cultivate their skills in pursuit of landing on the main rosters of Raw or SmackDown. (The Performance Center, and this path to the pros, was portrayed in the 2019 movie Fighting with My Family, which highlighted the journey of former WWE superstar Paige in NXT.)
Prospective wrestlers who step foot into the Performance Center learn the WWE’s nuts and bolts from the ground up. Before anything, they’re taught to respect the ring, getting in and out of the squared circle safely, while also keeping it clean.
The next step is simply getting comfortable moving around the ring and then hitting the ropes. This is followed by learning how to execute fundamental moves. As wrestlers grasp those basics, Performance Center coaches increase their skill sets curated to the archetypes they usually fall in: technicians, high-flyers, powerhouses, giants, and more.
Wrestlers take the ring for three hours a day, four days a week, working on everything from in-ring training to strength and conditioning and promo class where they practice the art of public speaking and develop their characters.
A promo is a wrestler’s way of holding court on the mic and addressing the live crowd and TV audience. The worst result is an indifferent crowd, which could stagnate that character and prevent the storyline from progressing. A pop in the form of cheers or the ability to generate heat—or animosity—is vital to success.
“Sometimes promo classes can run, like, two to three hours,” says Carmelo Hayes, who earned the call-up from NXT to SmackDown earlier this year. “I remember one time we did a promo class where they printed out old promos from different wrestlers, so it was like [John] Cena. You’d have six minutes to memorize the whole promo and pretty much perform it in front of everybody and that was just a drill. ‘How quickly, if you were given a promo, can you recite it?’ It was just like an exercise to kind of get comfortable with memorizing bullet points and things like that.”
The microphone work paid off for Hayes who likes to charismatically remind WWE fans that he is him—that guy—after becoming the first superstar in history to win the NXT Cruiserweight Championship, North American Championship, and NXT Championship.
Hayes and Kelani Jordan, who are in an off-screen relationship, had far different journeys to the WWE Performance Center and NXT.
Fresh off the COVID-19 pandemic, Hayes knew someone with a link to WWE. Already competing on the pro-wrestling industry’s independent scene, he filled out an application and sent photos to the company and got a call back.
He quickly ascended under the tutelage of Shawn Michaels, who estimates he logs about 80 hours each week running NXT’s creative, though he loves it too much to dub it “work.” Michaels saw components of Hayes’s wrestling game that reminded him of himself.
Meanwhile, Jordan was a gymnast at Michigan State when she was solicited by the WWE directly. Jordan says she received a message on Instagram from WWE Recruit. The company’s recruiting website, which lays out the tryout process with transparency and touts its own Instagram page with more than 122,000 followers.
“I remember reading the DM, but I was also finishing up school. But the message kept lingering in my mind,” she continues. “At first, I didn’t believe that it was real because I was like, ‘There’s no way WWE is reaching out to me.’ But the page had a blue check mark. So I was like, ‘O.K., you know what? I’m gonna go for it.’”
Since December 2021, when WWE’s Next In Line program launched as a pipeline from collegiate athletics to pro wrestling, 60 athletes have signed NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals. Its fourth class saw 14 college athletes ranging from two of the nation’s top-ranked wrestlers to Division I football players and firsts in the form of a baseball player, male cheerleader, and acrobatics athlete. Upon completion of the program, these athletes may earn a WWE contract.
WWE has tryouts centered on its premium live events—WrestleMania and SummerSlam—in addition to auditions in the form of college campus rushes. Jordan participated in the SummerSlam 2022 tryout and made the cut.
“You have a Carmelo Hayes who has had a little bit of a path in from an independent standpoint. So he had a little bit of experience, clearly talented and has the ability,” Michaels says. “But then you go to a Kelani Jordan, who has never done this, who comes in from a college and a university with a background in gymnastics, and then you see that she has all of these tools and also this unbelievably, very wonderful, infectious personality. I’m sure she has a one-way ticket to the main roster not too far down the road. So, it’s a system that certainly works, but I think you have to be able to know that there isn’t a one size fits all.”
WWE’s main competitor, All Elite Wrestling (AEW), doesn’t have official training grounds like the Performance Center. It signs talent from pro-wrestling schools such as the Nightmare Factory in Atlanta; the Monster Factory in Paulsboro, N.J.; and Create A Pro Wrestling Academy in Hicksville, N.Y. But Pat Buck, AEW’s VP of talent development, says AEW may follow suit: “I would not be surprised if we have some sort of official training ground. … I think, personally, it’s just a matter of time.”
Meanwhile, for Michaels, an undoubted pro-wrestling legend who has won every major WWE title, steering the next batch of superstars is most gratifying when he’s able to observe their “aha moments.”
“It happened probably about, maybe a month ago now with [NXT Women’s Champion] Roxanne Perez,” Michaels says. “It happened with her and Thea [Hail] live on TV and you just saw Roxanne just … everything kind of came together and it’s that light bulb went on and she sort of became in that moment a ring general. You felt like, ‘Oh my goodness, this one’s going to be the catalyst that moves her forward.’”
One of many to come. For Kelani Jordan, Trick Williams—who regained the NXT Championship last week—and others, the opportunity is there in prime time to make the development circuit increasingly mainstream.
