Ric Flair Comments On WWE Bringing College Athletes To NXT, Says Very Few Make It

Ric Flair is cautiously optimistic about WWE going on a signing spree of D-1 collegiate athletes, most of whom train at WWE's Performance Center but rarely make the cut for the "WWE NXT" or main roster brands. While on "The Joe Rogan Experience," Flair detailed his time attending a WWE tryout event during WrestleMania 39 weekend, where he tried to explain the importance of delivering a good promo to dozens of superstar hopefuls.

"They had one guy from UCLA do endurance training and go through a seminar on how to do an interview [promo]," Flair began. "It's really hard to explain because it's gotta come from here [the heart] and here [the mind]. The biggest problem is, they have like 100 of them [collegiate athletes] in "NXT" [at the Performance Center] right now, and out of that, maybe 1 percent will make it [to television]." Flair then asserted that "WWE SmackDown" Women's Champion Rhea Ripley and United States Champion Austin Theory were the only two "NXT" graduates from the last three years to make a discernible impact on WWE's main roster.  

"It's been 10 years since Ashley [Charlotte] went there," Flair continued. "The biggest group they had come out, which revolutionized the women's division, was when Sasha [Banks], Charlotte, Bayley and Becky Lynch came up." In fairness to the work done by Shawn Michaels, Matt Bloom, Fit Finlay, Norman Smiley and other coaches working at the WWE Performance Center, current main roster titleholders such as Bianca Belair, Raquel Rodriguez, and Liv Morgan are also all homegrown superstars who recently came up through the ranks after training in Orlando, Florida.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "The Joe Rogan Experience" with a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.