As NXT enters its new era of 2.0, Shawn Michaels is in the midst of a bit of a career transition himself.
Instinct Culture by Denise Salcedo recently interviewed two-time WWE Hall of Famer ‘The Heartbreak Kid’ Shawn Michaels about the changes in NXT, the new direction, the new talent and so much more including his recent conversations with Triple H, his goals for NXT and much more.
“I’ve now stepped out of the physical coaching aspect and into the Vice President of Talent Development and focusing more on television, the live show and creative,” mentioned Michaels. “The {talent} pool has gotten very big. To me, the biggest advantage of all of that is the freshness, the newness… When I went from a tag team to a singles competitor, I wasn’t given a cookie-cutter ‘this is your character, this is what you’re gonna do,’ I was able to have some time to find ‘The Heartbreak Kid.’ I didn’t know who he was at the time but I had an opportunity to evolve this character and make it mine. That’s the one thing we’re allowed to do now with these new athletes coming in; is have time to sit down, to talk with them, to find out who they are, to get their insight, it really is a collaboration. It’s all of the stuff that I feel like people loved about NXT is that we’re not forcing things on people, we’re having them find it themselves…
“We really got a nice little system, a nice little organization going on to where we are allowed to go through these different steps. But then it comes to getting them ready, in-ring ready, and sometimes it’s trial by fire, I have to be honest but the fact that they are former athletes that have been challenged before that have to worry about discipline, focus, going in there on game time, pressure situations, that is something that at least they come into the WWE having done a little bit…even at a young age they’ve had opportunities doing that so it’s amazing how disciplined and focused they can be and the athlete in them doesn’t like to fail. People like Hunter and I, we’re sort of the same way {laughs} we love being put in the toughest spot possible and see if we can succeed.”
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