Report: SummerSlam Tryouts A ‘Disaster’, WWE Changing Policy

WWE

The latest set of WWE tryouts, held during SummerSlam weekend, have been described as a “disaster” and could be leading to changes.

The tryouts saw, at least according to Jimmy Smith on Raw last night, over 50 athletes from 47 different colleges participate.

There were a number of NXT 2.0 stars on hand to help out, including Brutus Creed, Ivy Nile and Lash Legend, and of course the Performance Center coaching team.

Triple H, Nick Khan, Stephanie McMahon, Big E and Paul Heyman were among the names observing the tryouts and looking for the potential stars of WWE’s future.

However, it sounds like it didn’t exactly go to plan. Speaking on Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez said:

“Apparently this most recent set of WWE tryouts, this was the set out of tryouts where a lot of NIL folks showed up trying to get deals and (there were) no independent wrestlers allowed, the word is this is probably the last time this is going to happen. They’re not getting rid of the NIL program but this idea of no independent wrestlers, all NIL folks like Lash Legend and Ivy Nile and folks like that.

“The point of this is there were a ton of injuries at this set of tryouts: There were several concussions, there were a lot of folks trying out that got hurt – it’s the blind leading the blind. So anyway it looks like the days of, all college athletes attempting to get NIL deals, no independent wrestlers, it appears that’s probably over.

“I heard a lot of injuries, I heard a lot of them, quite frankly, sucked and… I don’t want to put words in anybody’s mouths but from what I heard, it sounded like it was a disaster.”

Dave Meltzer has previously reported that WWE is expected to go back to being open to signing independent wrestlers now Triple H is leading things, but there hasn’t yet been an actual announcement or ‘memo’ about that change internally within the company.

Quote via ITR Wrestling

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• tryouts
• SummerSlam
• nxt
• wwe

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