Former WWE star Nick Dinsmore, also known as Eugene, joined VOC Nation’s In the Room to talk about his time working in WWE Developmental, Triple H creating the Performance Center, the difference between the Performance Center experience and the indys, and more. Here are some highlights:
On the creation of the Performance Center:
“The stories I heard, when Triple H went from being just and on-air talent to (his current title), Vince had sent him around to every department in the company. And WWE has a degree of excellence for every department in the company. So he went to marketing, he went to advertising, he went to payroll, live events, blah blah blah, and when he went to the developmental – which at the time was FCW – he (said) that’s an independent company that WWE has contracted with to produce their stars and it just didn’t have that degree of excellence… That’s when Triple H went to the New York Giants training facility and got to see what some of the other pro athletes were working with and said ‘this is what we need to be.’ There’s no reason that someone going into the Performance Center shouldn’t come out a star.”
On the change from Independently Owned Developmental Territories to company-owned:
“I don’t want to knock FCW or OVW because both of them were phenomenal, but they were independent small indy companies that WWE had contracted with to train their stars. It worked but it’s not that degree of excellence that you’re going to find in WWE.”
On the differences between the Performance Center experience and training on the indys:
“When I was there I think they had six classes… when I was there it would be myself, Robbie Brookside was one, Joey Mercury was there, Terry Taylor was one, Norman Smiley was one, Billy Gunn was one, and everybody had a little different flavor or take on the business. The students would go to each class and learn something different from each coach. So in essence that would be going from territory to territory learning a different application of the art. But a lot of times it got blended together and it was very similar stars coming out of NXT or the Performance Center.”
