Heath Recalls the Mindset of Talents During Competition Era of WWE NXT

Heath recently looked back on the competition show era of WWE NXT and how the talent felt about the show. NXT began life as a reality competition show and ran that era from 2010 through 2012, and Health discussed the era on Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw. You can see some highlights below, per Wrestling Inc:

On the talent’s mindset during the competition era of NXT: “We were so scared too. Because it was like, ‘this might be yall’s last little chance to succeed, you are getting this push, you are getting this.’ Once you got released from NXT, not released but like out of the whole gameshow thing that they were doing, you were put back down to developmental thinking, ‘oh s–t, what’s going to happen?’ You didn’t know, they didn’t tell you nothing.”

On talent being unaware of what was happening each week: “They didn’t even tell us the games that we were doing. We would show up and the next thing you know, we’ve got an obstacle course that you’ve got to run. Then we got to be in front of the O2 Arena, which holds at least 50,000 people and it’s already sold out. We would be in the middle of the ring and they would say, ‘Alright Heath, you’ve got one minute — a promo about cereal.’ I am like, ‘Um, I like cereal, I eat it with milk,’ you know what I mean?”

On how WWE handled the concept: “In my way of thinking with the whole NXT thing, I don’t think they knew exactly what they wanted to do but they had a good idea. But thank god we knew what we were doing while we were out there so we didn’t look stupid. That was a fact. The only time we looked stupid was when we had to do the game stuff, you know? Because it was right on the fly, on television.”