NXT has grown far beyond what anyone could have imagined.
Triple H knows this as well as anyone. He spoke to Sporting News about NXT's rise and continued success. When asked if its popularity and ascension were surprising to him, he agreed in the affirmative, saying that at the end of the day, he's just a fan:
Look, I'm always surprised. I don't want to say surprised because it's pleasantly surprising. You planning for it to be great and you hope that it is and then you're pleasantly surprised that it is. You want to put on the best product possible. I think, for me, I look at the Performance Center and the talent there and I look at the talent that we have coming in and I just try to say what would I want to see if I'm a kid and if I put myself that way. At the end of the day, I'm just a fan, right? A fan of this industry and the business of what we do and I say I really like that talent. I'd love to see him face this talent. I there would be a really cool way to do it but doing this and that's how we put it together. What's been nice about it is even when we've had setbacks, I think the thing that's been probably, if there's been one thing that's surprising is the ability to continue to just let it evolve organically on its own.
He goes on, listing various people who have been a part of NXT. He says it's becoming more of a legacy where each superstar leaves, then another enters, creating distinct eras as the years pass:
You can look at the short period of time that NXT's existed in that four years or whatever and you can see distinct, almost little eras of the Finn Balor time and then Samoa Joe, then there was (Shinsuke) Nakamura, then Bobby Roode. Before that it was Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn and Neville. You have these sections of time that almost become these eras of NXT. Whether talent gets called up or whatever the situation is, there's kind of that next thing that begins to pocket in there and people latch onto. There are a lot of talented performers available. Yes, they're all learning. Yes, they're all getting better every day but there's a lot of talented performers available. To me, the exciting part about it is if you build it, they will come. We just put it out there in a way that people seem to appreciate and they continue to watch so it's exciting.
NXT's next big show will be during Royal Rumble weekend in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. A tournament is going on right now that will determine the next challenger for Andrade Cien Almas' title.