Shawn Michaels explains importance of WWE NXT house shows

Getting out on the road and performing in front of different crowds is an important learning experience for the young prospects of WWE NXT.

NXT recently went outside of Florida for a weekend of house shows in South Carolina and Georgia. Next month, the brand will be in Ohio and Michigan for another slate of live events. Shawn Michaels explained on a new episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet that this is a step WWE is taking to help get the wrestlers in NXT more reps outside of the Performance Center.

“Now we’re back out doing live events in different cities and different towns. This is some of our talent’s first time ever getting out of the state of Florida — with the exception of PLEs — which again, are their own sort of aspect.

“We always talk about this: there’s TV, there’s live events, there’s PLEs. They’re all kind of different. And all those performances have to be different,” Michaels said. “And this feel [of the shows is different], and so many things that we say that they haven’t had the opportunity to really experience, because we’re in the Performance Center on a regular basis. And that audience is an audience that is sort of there playing their part on television and doing their role, which they do in a great way more often than not.”

In his WWE executive position, Michaels is in charge of overseeing NXT. He said the South Carolina and Georgia house shows provided talent with some crowd reactions that threw them off. That can now be used as a tool to help those wrestlers learn and get better at their craft.

“The reception that they get in — I don’t know, Charleston, or, you know, in Augusta, Georgia, and another place, they’re all three different,” Michaels said. “This last time on the road, they all experienced that. And it was something that threw them all off. And they didn’t really understand it because so many of the things that they do all the time didn’t work. So those are aspects that once they experience that, I can now begin to associate with them on a level that we haven’t been able to do it before.”

NXT will be in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for its No Mercy PLE on September 27. The next house show loop outside of Florida will be taking place from October 9-11 with stops in Columbus, Detroit, and Cleveland.