Shawn Michaels leads the creative charge in NXT and fans have been quick to point out him utilizing some of his old stories to advance NXT stories in 2023.
Whether it's Jacy Jayne throwing Gigi Dolin into a door, reminiscent of Shawn Michaels throwing Marty Jannetty through the barbed shop window, or Roxanne Perez collapsing after a match, reminiscent of Michaels collapsing during his match with Owen Hart; Michaels has gone into a familiar playbook for some NXT stories.
Asked at a press conference about using his old stories, Michaels replied, "Some of them, clearly, complete rip-off. We’re using them because we thought they were good. Nothing thrills me more than that, this stuff is 30 years old and people go, ‘oh, it’s the same.’ I’m fortunate that we have a fanbase that remembers that far, but we’re also appealing to a whole new fanbase. They’re still moving, they’re still impactful, they’re still memorable storylines. That’s what we want to do. A lot of this, I would go back to the reference of using action movies. They all have the same sort of diagram, but people do them differently with different actors and other tweaks to make them different. That’s what we’re hoping with all of this. I would argue that kind of everything...every once in a blue moon, we find ourselves venturing into new ground or something original. A lot of what we do in this line of work has been done sort of somewhere down the road. It’s just us sort of mixing it up a little bit. Guilty of doing those storylines that are obviously similar, but you’re always going to have turns in wrestling, you’re always going to have injuries. Some of these are a little more spot on than the others, but they’re all sort of basically derived from the same playbook, which has been around in storytelling from even before I was doing it."
Gigi Dolin and Roxanne Perez are set to compete in the ladder match for the NXT Women's Championship at NXT Stand & Deliver.
Fans can check out the current lineup for the event by clicking here.
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