Natalya likes the way Shawn Michaels and his crew are running WWE NXT these days.
After her recent stint in WWE NXT, which included the first-ever Women’s NXT Underground match against Lola Vice at WWE NXT Spring Breakin’, the women’s wrestling legend appeared as a guest on “Casual Conversations With The Classic” for an in-depth interview.
During the discussion, the future WWE Hall of Fame legend offered high praise for Michaels and Matt Bloom for the way they’re running NXT, how so many women are being utilized and some of the talents that stand out to her.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where she touches on these topics with her thoughts.
On how Total Divas brought in new fans and the importance of building characters, as well as Shawn Michaels and Matt Bloom’s work in NXT: “What we did on [Total Divas] that was so important is, we were able to show people what our personalities were like and build characters. That’s what I love about NXT so much. I have to give Shawn Michaels and Matt Bloom and the team there at NXT so much credit. They have a team of writers, coaches and producers and faculty that work together to basically build talent from the ground up and find something special inside people that they may never have known that they had. But they build characters.
On being impressed with the amount of women being utilized in NXT and some of the talents that stand out to her: “I said the other day to Shawn Michaels, I said I can’t believe how many women are used on the show, like 18 women are used on the show every week, and not only are they used on the show, they’re building characters, they’re in storylines, and they’re thriving, they’re excited, they’re challenged, they’re motivated, they’re driven, they’re hungry. You watch them, from week-to-week, grow. Even just the growth that I saw in Lola from the first time that I worked with her until this huge Underground match that we had, it was so cool because that’s what excites me about wrestling is what Shawn Michaels is doing with talent at NXT is helping them grow, he’s helping them evolve, he’s helping them build characters and stories. When you have characters and you have stories, it’s what gets people excited about watching a match. We were able to do promos and we were able to build this match through stories, and I just love it. I really admire what Shawn has done down there, as far as cultivating that and building it. It’s so cool, it’s well-done, and I love it. I can’t say enough about how great the women are doing at NXT. It just makes me so proud to be a part of it because I’m even getting into the characters where I walk up to Santino’s daughter, Bianca [Arianna Grace]. I’ll walk up to her and be like, I just love your character, it’s so fun, it’s so entertaining, and I love what you’re doing with Gigi [Dolin], and I think Gigi has such a fun vibe about her, and I love Jacy Jayne’s heel character and how she’s great on the mic. There’s so many girls here that I want to work with. Just seeing them thrive…another woman that I really want to work with is Lyra. Lyra has been coming down to our dungeon. Months ago, she was coming down and training with us and working with us. She is so talented and so passionate. I want to work with Blair [Davenport]. I know Blair’s on SmackDown. But Kiana [James], I love that she had such great training at Flatbacks and then she really turned it up a notch through all the work at NXT. So I just love seeing the growth. I love seeing how people are developing and evolving and they’re taking their work and they’re building with it. That’s what the business is all about is growing.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
