Mike Mansury recalls his time working in NXT.
Mansury joined WWE in 2009, before climbing his way up the corporate ladder to Vice President of Global Television Production. He departed from the company in 2020, but Mansury still holds some fond memories from his earlier days in WWE. In the early 2010s, Mansury served as a production assistant, and then producer, working alongside Paul “Triple H” Levesque towards the development of NXT.
“To this day, probably the most magical time in my career,” Mansury told The Sessions With Renee Paquette. “While so under the WWE umbrella, we were kind of altogether creating the anti-WWE product. It was a combination of just good old-fashioned sports entertainment from like the late 80s. We’re creating all these characters, but also leaning into what wrestling had become in like the early 2010s.”
“You’re hearing all the buzz that Ring of Honor, PWG, like all these promotions have. In essence, a lot of the very best of the best from the Indie scene found themselves at NXT with a nice mix of folks who had converted over from being, you know, from guys like Baron Corbin who were in the NFL, etc. So there was this nice collection of talent down there, and there was a collection of talent behind the scenes that were all hungry and looking to establish themselves.”
“I don’t know that anything in my career is going to replicate what those first few years of NXT were like because it really was just an unbelievably special moment. It felt like a movement,” he said.
This month, Mike Mansury began his work as Senior Vice President and Co-Executive Producer of All Elite Wrestling. When making the jump, he explained what appealed to him about the new opportunity.
“That was such a big part of the allure of AEW — it’s three, four years old at this point. The best part about it is that everyone there knows that this is still being built. I don’t want to call it work in progress, but it’s this amazing thing. It’s like finding this amazing gem hidden somewhere and you know that it’s not even polished and presented to its full potential.”
“That’s what was so enticing about the opportunity at AEW. When I went over to Singapore to work for ONE Championship — getting the opportunity to build something and to play a part in establishing a brand. That’s what we did back in 2012, 2013 with that iteration of NXT.”
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