Tyler Rust On Rumors That NXT Changes Are Due to Losing the Wednesday Night War

Tyler Rust doesn’t buy into rumors than the reported upcoming NXT changes are because the brand lost Wednesday nights to AEW. Rust, who was released earlier this month as part of the big set of NXT release, spoke with Wrestling Inc and you can check out some highlights below:

On what AEW is doing: “I think they’re doing amazing stuff. I think wrestling needs competition to WWE in the states because competition breeds improvement. Even if they don’t want to say they don’t view them as competition, they still have to make sure they’re ahead of them. It’s up to them to make sure that they’re not falling behind, and that’s going to make them be better and that’s what’s also going to make AEW push to be more every time. They just started their second show last Friday night, and things like that are going to just make the wrestling world in general, for everybody involved, even if they’re not in the two companies, have more opportunities because it’s just gonna keep this boom going. I think AEW’s doing a fantastic thing, and I hope for nothing but them to grow and give more job offers to people in this industry that are really deserving it because it’s amazing seeing your buddies out there making money.”

On reports that NXT’s upcoming changes are due to the brand losing to AEW on Wednesdays: “Honestly, I would think they’re just speculation, personally, because the vibe around NXT has always been very good. It’s always been very controlled. When we did move to Tuesday, for example, it was made very clear that, hey, this is a total network thing. This doesn’t have anything to do with the Wednesday night deal. This is just a deal with USA. They want to move us over. They wanted to promote hockey more on a Wednesday night is what it was, and I love hockey, so I was all about it. I’m like, hey, let’s promote the NHL. Everybody really needs to watch more NHL. Personally, I’m all down for it. I know there’s a lot of rumors now as far as Vince wanting to overhaul the NXT product and everything. Sometimes, rumors, maybe they’re right. We’ll see how it is going forward from there, but from my experience there, there wasn’t really many eggshells as far as upper management not being happy.

“Everything they saw whenever they came to the Performance Center and they saw us training, they absolutely loved it. I remember hearing exact words were always like, ‘This is amazing. This is everything that we want to invest in,’ how much they were proud of all the hard work we were doing there at the Performance Center, and they see the way we train, the way that we work. They see how hard we really, really work on this product, and it was always such positive feedback from everybody upstairs, honestly.”