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WWE President Nick Khan Opens Up About Recent Changes
WWE President Nick Khan recently sat down with Ariel Helwani, speaking on a number of topics, including being a lifelong wrestling fan, as well as joining the company amid the global pandemic.
Khan spoke on not being active on social media, but did admit he observes Twitter. When asked about being blamed for a number of recent changes within WWE, he says it does not affect him personally.
“The people I love and care for, of course I care what they think about me as an individual. The people I don’t know, they are allowed to have their opinions. It does not affect me in any way, I don’t read it, I don’t look at it, it’s not something I derive any pleasure of pain for”
“If I’m blamed by whatever the fans don’t like, that’s good by me.”
Khan also spoke on the number of releases the company has had over the last year, stating it’s a collective of people who make the tough decisions to let talent go.
“There’s a collective of us, keep in mind at WWE their is one boss, that’s Vince as we all know. Between Bruce Prichard who oversees the entire creative process, Kevin Dunn, who oversees all of our production, Stephanie McMahon, Paul Levesque are all involved in these decisions, with ultimately Vince making the final decision on everything”
“I don’t know if there is one explanation for it, ultimately what’s looked at, ‘Is this person for us going move to the needle now or in the imminent future’. ‘We signed a dozen new talent, we’re always looking for what’s next. We live in the present, we live in the future, we don’t live in the past”
He also clarified recent comments about WWE possibly being for sale, stating their is no active discussions in selling the company.
“We’re not trying to sell it, that’s not our intent, there are no internal meetings about selling this company. The internal meetings are about growing it”
Khan also spoke on upcoming changes on the NXT brand, confirming their will be a new look for the show, as well as recruitment of talent. He feels the company will begin to shy away from signing independent talent, and look at other avenues to find their next star.
“We’re doing a complete revamp on NXT, led by Triple H, Paul Levesque, who’s really one of the architects of the original NXT. What we found, it’s probably why we did the tryout yesterday, what we want to make sure is easy for folks who want to be WWE superstars is figuring out how to become WWE superstars. If you think of the life of an elevated athlete throughout their career, the opportunity to go play somewhere has always been easy, being able to play somewhere is not.”
“In terms of an NXT rebrand, look for it in the upcoming weeks, it’s going to have a whole new look, it’s going to have a whole new feel, and we believe because of a lot of the ‘indie wrestlers’ if you will, have come through our system, and are in our system with SmackDown and RAW now. We don’t want to keep doing that same thing, we want to look elsewhere for great young talent”.
When asked about his thoughts on RAW being three hours, he feels it should be longer, as it can secure more television rights fees for the company.
“From my point of view RAW would benefit for being four hours, so we get paid more money, SmackDown would be eight hours, but I understand our creative folks as amazing as they are, their is only so much great content they could do on a weekly basis, so we’re good with the three and two system”.
Check out the full interview below.
(If you use any of the quotes in this report, please credit HeelByNature.com for the transcription)