As we get closer to fall and the possibility of NXT not being quite the same NXT anymore, there are a lot of conversations going on about what makes NXT so different in the first place. It’s more than just being able to put on shows as good as TakeOver: Toronto, or pretty much all the TakeOvers that came before for that matter, it’s about being able to tell long term stories that have payoffs, and even salvage the stories that are interrupted by unforeseen events like worker injuries.
In a video on the WWEPC YouTube channel, Triple H goes into detail about what goes into NXT’s storytelling:
I think — a little of it’s both. I think there’s intention there to run long-term storylines, and to keep those story arcs going when you can. But some of it is, it’s just how it ended up, because we have the luxury of not having to write three hours of live television every week or get through multiple hours of that with multiple PPVs in a short period of time. When you have a monthly PPV and three hours of live TV every week like you do with Raw, that is an exponentially different way of writing that makes you have to go through stuff faster and burn through things. When you can do it on a much more, you know, one-hour, much slower pace and you can tell that story where you’re not bombarded by, at all times, you can make that last a lot longer and draw it over time.
And then some of those storylines are also things that I find, I’m sure a lot of people do that write stuff like this, for us, things happen. Injuries happen, where you have to change your thinking on something. In the middle of a storyline and Ciampa gets injured, you have to go a completely different way. But sometimes the genius comes out of that chaos, where something happens and in the moment where it happens, you think “Oh my god, this has ruined everything about this.” So you make a left and it ends up being better. And when you come back to it, you’re almost like, “Wow, that turned out better than we actually had laid out.” So sometimes that genius comes out of it, you know. The genius moment is something that you didn’t intend on, but kind of fell into your lap.
