PJ Black recently spoke with Chuck Carroll for CBS Sports ahead of Ring Of Honor‘s 17th Anniversary event; during the conversation, the topic of a possible return to NXT was brought up.
Black says he had talks with WWE after being in the right place and right time after visiting at Survivor Series, but says he had some concerns about returning to the company.
“Yes. They usually do three to five years, which is also very tough because a lot can happen in a year or two, and nothing’s guaranteed. In NXT, I don’t want to say too much about how they work, but they promise a lot of things, which 90% of the time they can’t keep to.”
Black explained some concerns he had about going back to WWE were that he’d be promised to be called up or see a raise, but it wouldn’t pan out:
“That’s exactly what I was eluding to. They’d be like ‘oh, you’ll be on the main roster in six months or seven months, or whatever it is, and even if you’re not, you’ll still get your pay increase or whatever it is.’ I know for a fact because I speak to guys on a daily basis. All my friends are still in the WWE and in NXT, and I speak to these guys all the time, and I know for a fact none of the stuff that they were promised happened. Obviously, there are exceptions here and there, small exceptions, but those guys are just happy to be around and still be making money and being on TV. While most of them are not happy with where they are, that’s what they wanted to do. That’s still their dream job.”
While he said he was unsure about the exact reason main roster call-ups didn’t work out, he cited the Adam Rose character as one that started off hot and fizzled out on the main roster, something that could have happened for a number of reasons:
“I don’t know. I thought about this long and hard, too, and it’s tough. Let’s take one character, for example, like Adam Rose. The Adam Rose character was so hot in NXT. It was amazing. It was so over with the music and his entrance and everything. But somehow that just didn’t translate over to Smackdown TV. I don’t know if the set has anything to do with it. The set is so much bigger, so when Adam Rose came out on NXT on that stage, it was smaller. It was 10, 20 guys, it felt like a party. It felt like you were inside of a rave. The music was on point. Everyone was fired up. There was energy in the room. I don’t feel like that same energy translated to Smackdown TV because you had five, 10 people and you look at the stage and you’re like oh, wow. That’s a tiny little party when they showed the hard cam. That might be one of the reasons. I’m not sure.
There could be also a bunch of other things. Different visions, different writers. Like I said, WWE TV, there’s an agent, a producer, and a writer to your segment, and you have to follow their outline instead of sometimes I feel like I know better. I know exactly what should be done, but they’re like nope, this is the kind of script and you have to kind of stick to it.
That might be a problem. Who knows? Also then maybe someone else is in charge. Maybe there’s too many people in charge in WWE now. Like I said, you have the agent, the producer, and you have a bunch of writers and then a head writer, and then, ultimately, Vince has the last say and I feel like maybe Vince or Hunter, maybe they went back and forth. No, this is what I created in NXT. Vince is like ‘no, but this is what I want.’ Obviously, everyone’s gonna go with Vince, since he’s the boss. And Vince is a mad genius. I think he’s a mad, crazy genius. Maybe there’s just some conflict there. Who knows? It could be a million different things.”
