Former WWE Star Claims Covid Left Brand ‘Behind The Curve’

WWE

WWE’s first international brand went on hiatus in September 2022 with plans to develop a bolder vision and a former star has explained why.

NXT UK, which wasn’t able to continue recording fan-attended shows in the United Kingdom due to lockdown restrictions, would move to a no-fans model and would seemingly never recover from the damage to the product that happened over those months.

Speaking on the Ten Count podcast, Nina Samuels said that:

“I think our brand, more than any, was really, really affected by Covid.

“Just before the pandemic, we had Finn Balor on one of our tapings. They were setting up a match between him and WALTER, which was going to be huge.

“We had a TakeOver coming up. We were about to do tapings at WrestleMania, which was going to be my first WrestleMania week. We were going to be going and doing tapings at Axxess.

“You know, really expanding the brand, getting more eyes on it. I feel like we were on such an upward trajectory, and Covid really slowed it down for us.”

With the stars of NXT UK not being able to leave the country and US-based WWE stars not being able to get to the UK, along with the changing face of WWE PPVs in 2020, all the plans had to be scrapped.

The show would record new episodes in October 2020 from the BT Studios, but a lack of fans, as was seen on many wrestling shows, had an impact on the product.

Samuels would state that it the NXT UK roster were grateful to be able to film content at BT Studios in London but was frustrated that fans weren’t allowed to attend, especially given that, as Samuels says, other independent promotions had been able to welcome back fans, albeit in a limited capacity and socially distanced.

She would conclude by saying that she felt that NXT UK was “behind the curve” when it came to bringing crowds back.

Although an announcement for NXT Europe was made in September, there’s been little news on the development since.

At NXT Worlds Collide on September 4 2022, the NXT UK and WWE NXT Championship were unified in the main event as Bron Breakker defeated the NXT UK Champion Tyler Bate.

Transcript from Wrestling Inc.

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