WWE has without question helped to create some of the biggest stars the wrestling industry has ever seen, but it seems that the company has struggled a little more in recent years when it comes to creating new stars. WWE President Nick Khan recently appeared on The Town podcast, and he shared his thoughts on why it’s more difficult for new stars to be created nowadays.
“It’s definitely more difficult. Let’s look at Logan Paul, who is wrestling a match for us this weekend along with The Miz. If you look at Logan Paul, if YouTube and the social media platforms didn’t exist, let’s say its 15 years ago, could he have been the next big WWE Superstar? Sure, but he figured out a way to make a ton of money without having to go do that.
We’ve made a massive pivot. We came to him. It used to be, you’d get boxers on the downside of their career; Joe Lewis, Muhammad Ali, coming to wrestling. Now you’re getting them on the upside; Floyd Mayweather, 15 years ago, Tyson Fury a few years ago. I think the athletes see the benefit of our platform, but in terms of creating new, full-time stars, we’ve completely shifted our recruiting efforts.”
Nick Khan then went on to talk about WWE’s recruiting process, and the approach that the company is currently taking when it comes to signing new talent.
“We have a big tryout this week in Dallas at The Star. What our point of recruiting is, to these Division 1 Double A Athletes, men and women…let’s talk men for a moment. If you’re a football player and not going to make it to the NFL, XFL, USFL or the other options, if you’re a step short or not big enough, come to us and let’s make it easy to you. If you look at a shot putter in college, what is that man or woman going to do next? Are they going to get an office job? Are they going into pharmaceutical sales? Go work at UPS? Or are they going to come take a look at us? We want to make it easy for these athletes. That’s not just limited to Division 1 and 1 Double A. Junior college athletes, if you look at ethnicity. I’m not convinced that a first generation Mexican American kid in Los Angeles is going to the east coast to go to college. They may go to junior college, they may have family responsibilities. We want to go after those kids as well and make it easy for them to come to us.”
H/T Fightful
