PJ Black Recalls Original Plan For NXT, Would Have Been Like The Ultimate Fighter

PJ Black was part of the original season of the reality competition era of NXT, and he recently recalled the original plans for the show. Black competed on the first season of the show in 2010 as Justin Gabriel, making it to the final week of the competition before being eliminated. He recently spoke with Steve Fall for WrestlingNews.Co and during the conversation he talked about how the experience; you can see some highlights below (per Fightful):

On being part of the first season of NXT: “At that time, it was cool because we just wanted to be on TV. We were a bunch of rookies. Well, in the storyline. I had been wrestling for 10 years at that time. Honestly, I didn’t care what I was doing on TV. I was like, oh cool, I’m on TV, I’m on the road. That was my goal in life, to wrestle full-time.”

On the original plan for the show: “That game show went completely in a different direction. The original plan was for us to live in a house like the Ultimate Fighter and actually compete and do proper athletic challenges. But as the wrestling goes, time ran out, and on the day, they were like, ‘Oh, let’s write a show,’ and then they were like, ‘Oh, we don’t even have time to write a show.’ So we kind of free-styled pretty much everything. It was pretty much all on the fly.”