Seth Rollins Shares His Concern for Upcoming Generation of WWE NIL Talent

– During a recent interview with Outta Pocket, WWE Superstar Seth Rollins discussed his concern for the upcoming generation of WWE talent who might not have as much time to gain experience from WWE live events as wrestlers in years’ past as WWE has reduced its number of non-televised live events. Below are some highlights (via Fightful):

Seth Rollins on his concern for the NIL generation not getting as much experience with more WWE live events: “My biggest concern, and I’ll try not to expound on this too much, but my biggest concern is the generation that is being groomed now, we are dipping our toe heavily into the NIL world. Taking a lot of college athletes who, maybe after college, there is no future for them as far as money in sports, so we offer them deals to get paid while they are in college to come and maybe be part of WWE when they are older.”

On training recruits from scratch: “There is nothing wrong with training these people from scratch, I have no problem with that, but couple that with our live event schedule. We used to do them every weekend, sometimes two shows every day on Saturdays and Sundays, there would be two running simultaneously in different towns. That’s where I learned my craft and the art of wrestling and storytelling. If you don’t get the repetitions to learn that, I don’t care what kind of athlete you are or how impressive your vertical leap is or how many times you can bench press 400 pounds, it’s not going to translate because you don’t know how to tell stories. You might be a hell of a performer, but ‘I need a promo. Go out there, five minutes, get it done.'”

On no substitute for in-game experience: “If you don’t know how to do that because you haven’t learned and practiced and failed so many times that, there is no substitute for in-game. There is no substitute for doing a live show in front of a paying audience because they will give you instant feedback, and you’ll know what you have to change. That’s my biggest concern for our next generation. You’re plucking from a world where these guys don’t really follow wrestling or may not be fans, and then they’re not getting the experience on top of it to learn how to be part of what we do and how to tell those stories. I do have a concern that over a few generations, that might be harmful to the future of the industry.”

Seth Rollins was victorious last Saturday at WrestleMania 41: Night 1. In the main event, he defeated Roman Reigns and CM Punk in a Triple Threat Match. Paul Heyman interfered, betraying both Punk and Reigns, to help Rollins win the match.
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