WWE Hall of Famer and NXT executive “The Heart Break Kid” Shawn Michaels appeared on an episode of the Battleground podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including how the N.I.L. program has been a proven success for the company and how NXT North American Champion Oba Femi is a big example of that as he sees Femi on the main roster someday and competing at WrestleMania down the line.
Michaels said, “I’ll tell you what, one of the things that I think that people can see now that’s been a proven success is the N.I.L. program and obviously, reaching out to these young men and women on a college level and Oba (Femi) is a guy that has, one, not just his background but he’s had a great deal of success in his youth and in his college years, which strangely enough has kind of prepared him for this. It’s amazing how incredibly well-spoken and well-mannered and just, I don’t know. He’s so much more experienced than his age you would think lends itself to. As we all say, he’s a very complete young man and I think everybody sees the promise in him as not just an NXT superstar but a future WWE superstar. You can just see it by the way he carries himself… Again, he would obviously know better than me but, I have to attribute that, a lot of times, to, again, some of the success that they had in college and at the collegiate level that has kind of prepared them and look, a lot of these young men and women, they have been successes at a very young age and people have been sort of courting them and coming after them since they were young in high school and so I think that better prepares them for a world, you know, like NXT and the WWE but I think the future’s incredibly bright for him. But obviously, he’s got the former North American Champion Dragon Lee from SmackDown wanting his title back so, I think that’ll be something, again, that’ll be very exciting to watch this Sunday at Vengeance Day but, I can’t lie when I say Oba Femi has got all those tools that I think everybody could easily look at him and go, oh yeah, I see him being on the main roster someday and easily being a part of a WrestleMania not too far down the line.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to PostWrestling for transcribing the above quotes)