Starting in October 2019, AEW and NXT went head-to-head almost every Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET with NXT airing on USA Network and AEW Dynamite airing on TNT.
The famed Wednesday Night Wars was a one-sided affair with AEW winning the demo 74-1 and the viewership 63-10-1. NXT eventually moved to Tuesday nights in April 2021.
Speaking to The Athletic, Triple H commented on the competition with AEW.
“As far as the competition aspect goes, it’s great. It makes everybody sharper,” he said. ”You get lazy if you’re all there is and everybody goes about their business. The end of the day, it’ll make us better, and we’ll all be better for it. All those things have forced us to be in a better place right now. Not that we wouldn’t have gotten there anyway, but we had to do it quicker in some manner. That’s an important piece of it, right?”
He continued, “As long as there aren’t things hurting the business overall, I think any of that stuff is good. If you’re a 6-year-old kid, you turn on the TV, wrestling is on and you like it. Now you’re caught up in it. Then you start sampling all of it. You get to where you’re a huge fan. That’s the money. There’s room for everybody to do it. It’s like saying the USFL or XFL is starting up and the NFL is panicking about market share. It’s just going to increase people’s love for football. If you love football that much, you’ll watch all of the football, and it’s great. But the NFL is not sweating that.”
Many who helped build NXT, and those who were part of the Wednesday Night Wars, made their way to AEW over the years including The Undisputed ERA and Keith Lee.
Speaking about the names who went from NXT/WWE to AEW, Triple H said, “I like all those guys. They helped us get where we needed to get, and I’m thankful for it. The truth is there was a period of time where we were trying to build NXT. We built NXT. Then we were trying to build a brand that could get a television show and sustain it. All those names helped us get there. Whether anybody believed or not they fit on “Raw” or “SmackDown,” those aren’t necessarily my decisions solely, and they’re Vince’s (McMahon) decisions and fans’ decisions; and then, can we continue to do business with them?
“If they have great gigs, I’m happy for them. I stay in touch with almost all of them. I like to think they came into us here, we taught them a lot, got them to (a higher level) where they learned how to do television, how to be professionals and all that to be successful there. At some point, they might come back with us, or they might never because they don’t fit our brand as well, but that’s OK. They got us to certain places, and I’m thankful for that, and they’re thankful for that, and they’re off to different things. But that doesn’t stop the train. People leave football teams, move to different teams all the time, and it’s great.”
Triple H founded NXT and has been at the helm of the product since 2012 before having to step away in September 2021 due to a health scare. During that time, NXT was rebranded as NXT 2.0.
You can find Triple H's thoughts on NXT 2.0 by clicking here.
