Top WWE star Seth Rollins recently appeared on the Outta Pocket podcast, where he discussed various topics, including his concerns about the upcoming generation of WWE NIL talent. He worries that they may not have enough time to gain experience competing in live events.
Rollins said, “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 there being 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.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
