WWE SVP Reveals Recruitment & Release Protocols For New Talent

WWE runs a pretty tight ship when it comes to recruitment and release of talent. Even on their developmental brand NXT, only those talents show up who have gone through rigorous training and evaluations.

Reports throughout the last few months detail how the company treats its new recruits. There are a lot of protocols in place to ensure that only the best of the best move on to become a part of WWE programming.

WWE SVP James Kimball recently spoke with Wrestle Rant about the company’s process of recruiting, retaining, and releasing talent. He said that new talent is supposed to survive until 2 years, after which they’re either “up or out.”

It literally is six-month intervals, two-year mark, you’re up or out. Obviously, there’s constant evaluation down the Performance Center in Orlando. Coaching staff, our staff, on-site, all the time constantly evaluating, but formal, deliberate evaluations occur in six-month periods. At that time, and again these all kind of flow in and around the same kind of entry points, we’ll do a tryout and then we’ll do a set of releases.

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Kimball also pointed out that talent that makes it to the 2-year mark isn’t entirely secure either. If they’re not ready for NXT, they’re also shown the door. Their strategy was implemented a year ago, but it yields results.

I would say that it was incorporated around the same time that this entire new strategy was put in place about a year ago. That all kind of dovetails with our NIL program, heavy emphasis on collegiate athletics, heavy emphasis on putting a real system in place that replenishes and drives itself to where we already know where we’re going six months, 12 months from now already.

WWE has done two huge tryouts in recent history. The company did a tryout in WrestleMania week, following which they did another major tryout during SummerSlam week. They brought in a lot of new talent, which shows that their plan is to constantly try as many people as they can.

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