It Could Be Said #19 I Don't See NXT UK Closing Anytime Soon
A look at why the rumours about NXT UK being the next to feel the full force of WWE's current austerity may be mistaken
Throughout the summer there have been constant rumours that NXT UK is about to be closed down. These rumours clearly have a logical base with WWE have undergone several bloody rounds of talent cuts with Triple-H’s vanity empire being downsized and restructured. High-profile and well connected twitter journalists and podcasters say that it’s only a matter of time before a cheering crowd pull down the statue of Shawn Michaels and liberate Enfield.
And yet, whilst I want to believe, whilst I recognise the logic of what they’re saying, I just can’t help but suspect that NXT UK is here to stay for a good while yet.
WWE Austerity – CUT IT!
As we’ve previously wrote about, WWE is seemingly determined to cut costs to the bone. They’ve fired several high-profile headliners such as Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman, dozens of less acclaimed performers and trainees, and even eliminated whole divisions in the back office. NXT hasn’t been spared from these cuts, and worse, Triple-H’s dreams of international expansion have been silently shelved. The holding company that was due to host NXT Japan has been wound up, the push to hire European talent for a possible NXT Europe in Germany seemingly halted, and the new NXT Evolve show cancelled after supposedly taping a pilot.
When you look at what happened to 205 Live, where talent cuts left it with a roster so small they had to pad out a 45minute running time with matches not featuring cruiserweights, NXT UK seems to have gotten away surprisingly lightly by only having a recruitment freeze imposed on it. It seems logical to conclude that its turn to be in the firing line is only a matter of time.
However, it would be worth remembering that this same logic also applied this time last year, where a similar wave of talent cuts form the American brands led people to wonder when the axe would fall on the other side of the Atlantic. Not only did that not happen but NXT UK actually had another round of recruitment with the likes of Rampage Brown, Meiko Satomura, Sha Samuels, Aleah James, Amale, and Lucky Kid all joining NXT UK towards the end of 2020. There’s no reason why the same thing couldn’t happen again. Indeed, whilst nobody was signed from the May tryouts, this year has seen Millie Mckenzie and Bea Priestly both join the brand.
Furthermore, if we view the WWE’s efforts to save costs through the other end of the budgetary prism then maybe NXT UK is in a safer position that we assume. Its running costs have to be a fraction of what they were before the pandemic, with the shows now coming from BT Sports Studios rather than expensively hiring venues that were typically less than a third full for TV tapings. They are also flying fewer performers and production staff over from America than they were previously, nor have they tried to do an expensive live broadcast since January 2020. Therefore, it’s very likely that up the recent anniversary of the first set of tapings at the BT Sport Studios, NXT UK had actually achieved significant year-on-year cost savings without firing anybody. Furthermore, depending on how WWE organises their budgets, it’s quite possible that NXT UK was part of a broader NXT International budget line, therefore the cancellation of the wider expansion plans would create further savings that would shield it from cuts.
Maybe It’s All About Timing?
Some have suggested that the reason why NXT UK might be at risk, is that it had been artificially kept alive through accessing support from the national furlough scheme that the British Government is soon to close down. There were three problems with this. Firstly, it is highly unlikely that NXT UK performers are treated as employees rather than self-employed workers, which means they wouldn’t be eligible for support. Secondly, they’ve been performing their usual duties for the past year, which would open WWE to accusations of abusing the system in a criminally fraudulent way. Thirdly, even during the pandemic WWE was keeping them busy with zoom training seminars and television appearances. It’s therefore not a surprise that WWE is not listed on the list of employers that have taken advantage of the Government’s offer to reimburse up to 80% of their staff’s basic salary.
Another theory is that WWE is waiting for contracts to expire rather than fire people. Whilst it is true that the summer of 2018 was a particularly busy recruitment period as they prepared to launch their weekly television programme, NXT UK has had several other waves of recruitment, including:
The original roster of the WWE UK Title Tournament were signed in late 2016
Zac Gibson was signed in early 2018 after finally escaping his ITV World of Sport contract, with Kay Lee Ray and Piper Niven signing in similar circumstances in early 2019
Walter signed in late 2018, whilst A-Kid signed during the summer of 2019
Pretty Deadly signed in early 2020
The aforementioned late 2020 recruitment wave
Millie Mckenzie signed in February 2021 and Bea Priestly signed in April 2021
So it’s not really credible that there would be such a critical mass of contracts coming due during this summer that it would make sense for WWE to just wait for them to expire before closing the brand down. Likewise, the common suggestion that the UK’s employment laws would deny WWE the freedom to cut performers like they do in the states is somewhat undermined by the fact that according to testimony delivered to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Wrestling, talent are issued with contracts from Connecticut and are paid in US dollars.
The only reason why we would now be approaching a crunch point where cuts have to start being made, is because we’re hitting the point where the savings made last year by not touring and using less Americans are now priced into the year-on-year budgetary comparisons. That’s certainly possible, but it wouldn’t necessitate closing the whole brand down. Indeed, the roster is probably getting to the point where it would benefit from a pruning1. And not for nothing, rumours have started to circulate that the deals that have put content from PROGRESS, ICW and WXW on the WWE Network, could be ended, something that would free up tens of thousands of dollars whilst leaving NXT UK unscathed.
NXT UK May Not Be Closing, But It’s Definitely Dead
The alien superfiend Judge Death is famous for taunting his comicbook adversaries by saying, “You cannot kill, what does not live!”. And that’s how I feel about NXT UK. Of course WWE should close it down; no matter how little they’re spending on it, it’s a waste of money that could be better spent on ivory backscratchers. But that was true in 2017 when they quietly dumped several shows taped in Norwich onto the Network with no fanfare because they realised it was too expensive a proposition to repeat any time soon. It was true in 2018 when they failed to secure any television deal for the programme, let alone a good one. And it was true in 2020 when they kept the show on the air for every single week of the pandemic through creative use of their archive and talking heads.
NXT UK has failed in every objective that Triple-H set himself and his limey army. They failed to prevent World of Sport from getting a full series on ITV, not even running on the same night could stop New Japan drawing almost 6000 people to the Copper Box, and Revolution Pro-Wrestling has somehow become the biggest indie in Britain despite repeated talent raids. It’s done nothing to grow interest in WWE, with NXT UK’s highest ever attendance not even half of what NXT managed to do at Wembley Arena in 2015. And of course, there’s the growing likelihood that at some point Tony Khan will give Britain its first stadium supershow since Wembley 1992.
But here’s the thing. It cannot cost that much money in its current form. It is on BT Sport, and the broadcaster seems to be somewhat fond of the show, using Trent Seven and Jinny for WWE hype shows and even commissioning a several original trailers for NXT UK. Likewise poundshop WWE superstars being present in Britain does help WWE get some mainstream attention, with the BBC creduously hosting Mark Andrews’s soporific podcast whilst several journalists for mainstream outlets falling over themselves to hype NXT UK and the wider WWE product. There’s also the possibility that when Peacock finally launches in the UK the allure of localised content may help earn WWE a route back into the warm embrace of Sky Sports.
And most importantly of all, WWE just doesn’t cancel television shows. Again, look at 205 Live. A programme that was stillborn in 2016 when they couldn’t get Zack Sabre Junior or Kota Ibushi to sign and responded by making everyone wrestle like heavyweights, which today has fewer wrestlers on its roster than I have fingers, is on course to have broadcast more episodes than WCW Nitro sometime next year. Main Event was created due to a lucrative contract with Ion signed in 2012, the contract lasted only two years but that show is still being pumped out in 2021, with no end in sight.
But the best example has to be Vintage Collection. This was a show on Sky Sports that began as reruns of classic WWF programming but morphed into a magazine programme hosted by Gene Okerlund. Sky dropped the programme in 2014, but apparently it was still going strong as recently as 2019, even though it was exclusively produced for foreign markets.
President Ronald Reagan once said that “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth”, but he never lived to see how today’s WWE hordes television shows. Sadly, mine eyes have seen no end to NXT UK’s mediocrity…Enfield keeps limping on.
This would obviously be a negative for the product but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Walter leave when his contract ends. He must be paid more than the average NXT UK roster member as he had already secured international fame before he signed and he doesn’t really fit into the new NXT.