Who Took Over For Shawn Michaels In NXT UK When He Left To Lead NXT 2.0

Shawn Michaels was called “The voice of God” when it came To NXT UK. The Heartbreak Kid eventually left to take over at NXT 2.0 after being in charge of the UK brand remotely throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. It was recently revealed who his replacement was.

Since HBK began focusing his efforts on the United States developmental brand, talent from PROGRESS has been running the show in the UK. On the latest Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer discussed the change, as well as the direction of the brand.

“The former PROGRESS guys I think were doing it [running creative for NXT UK) the last I heard. There’s so many people who thought with all the budget cuts and everything that NXT UK would have a lot of cuts, and they really haven’t cut many people. There’s here and there guys that I think that have been cut, but very few. It just seems to be going and I don’t know anything new.

There was a point when I just thought that they were going to cut most of those guys and the ones they weren’t going to cut they would just bring to the United States now that you can do that. They’ve got their deals and everything in the UK, maybe because of that they want to keep the thing.

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It’s pretty clear that the old idea of running NXT territories all over the world, Paul Levesque’s idea, you know, NXT Japan, NXT India, Middle East, and all that. That was the idea. That seems like it’s not happening. There’s nothing going on in that direction. That was with the idea of, basically, WWE being the local territory and kind of wiping out the independent scene by having the top independent promotion be WWE in those markets. Even in Mexico and Japan, having a WWE presence there to compete with the existing companies. The pandemic slowed it down and now, it just feels like that that’s just not a direction that they’re going in anymore.”

In 2020, it was reported that PROGRESS co-founder Jim Smallman was promoted to the head writer of NXT UK. With Shawn Michaels working on building NXT 2.0, NXT UK has been a bit of an anomaly. The brand hasn’t seen the wholesale changes that WWE has made stateside, and many fans are happy about that.

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Transcription by Ringside News