Change is in the air in WWE.

It’s all part of WWE Premiere Week that kicks off with the season premiere of “Monday Night Raw” on USA Network and continues via “Friday Night SmackDown” with the brand moving to its new home on FOX broadcast television.

Both shows are getting a fresh look that includes new sets, graphics, and announce teams along with plenty of glitz and glamour with pyro, fire, and lasers.

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The huge week also includes NXT making its two-hour live premiere Wednesday night on the USA Network. It’s a big step for the black and gold brand that has created its own identity focusing on great, in-ring action while developing some of the biggest stars in all of WWE today.

“You're going to get to see a lot of new talent, a lot of opportunities for people to do what they do,” Paul "Triple H" Levesque, WWE Executive Vice President of Talent, Live Events and Creative, told Sporting News.

Three championship matches have been announced for Wednesday’s two-hour live premiere of NXT on the USA Network at 8 p.m. ET: Adam Cole defending the NXT championship against Matt Riddle, Candice LaRae challenging Shayna Baszler for the NXT women’s championship, and the Undisputed Era putting the NXT tag team titles on the line against the Street Profits.

Sporting News spoke with Levesque, the founder and senior producer of NXT, about the new era WWE is about to embark on, NXT’s move to USA, and facing head-to-head competition on Wednesday nights against the upstart All Elite Wrestling promotion.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

SPORTING NEWS: We now have NXT on the USA Network and “SmackDown” is moving to FOX. There are so many different possibilities with WWE on how they can be utilized. Does this feel like a new era for WWE?

PAUL LEVESQUE: I think it does. It's a funny thing. I was thinking about this the other day that over the last year, year-and-a-half, I almost feel like as the FOX deal went through and that shift was waiting to happen in this last year, it almost started to take on this haze of like, this season is coming to an end.

I don't know how to put that the right way, but this era of WWE is kind of rolling to this close and, all of a sudden, there's gonna be this new spark. I think you even saw that in the wild card stuff. You see talent all over the place and different things happening, but it was all sort of on this slow build setup to where we are right now, which is the draft happening.

"RAW" will have its own unique look, feel, setup. Everything about it should feel unique. Its got its own dedicated writing team and crew and talent roster. And "SmackDown" on FOX will have the same. While new partners for us, we have our family of USA that we've been with and are comfortable with and continue to grow with. It's almost like a relaunch there of everybody in that family doubling down on what "RAW" is. And then on FOX, you have this new relationship, this dynamic of broadcast television and a roster that will sit there and its own dedicated team, writing team, and everything else. It will be very separate. And in the middle, you have with our family partners, you have NXT.

Over time, people ask what the goal is. The goal is to have these three, equally important brands where people aren't saying this is the "A" brand or that's the flagship. It's these three, equally important brands and they just have different feels and flavors and a different kind of overall vibe to them that they feel like separate entities. If a talent moves from one to the other over a draft or how ever there's actually a feeling of 'I wonder how that person will work in that environment' — not just, 'Oh, there's different talent there but the environment itself, it's different.'

When I was younger and I would watch WCW and WWE, even before the heyday of the Attitude Era and the Monday Night Wars. Prior to that, when a (Ric) Flair would move to WWE, I wonder how he's going to work out in that environment? There was a different feel and tenor and vibe to what that brand was. And I think you're getting back into that feel, that period of time where across the seven hours of live programming that WWE will have between USA, the number one cable channel, and FOX broadcast, between those seven hours, there's a difference in the product that makes each one its own interesting entity.

SN: NXT has always had its own feel, its own presentation. Now with it be two hours long and live on USA Network, there are expectations that come along with that of making it bigger and better, but also the pressure of keeping to what NXT has always been and what the audience likes about it. What's the challenge like of trying to balance those two things?

PL: It's a funny thing. I haven't had a day or a period go by in NXT over the last five years on Wednesday nights where it sat on the (WWE) Network that I haven't thought about making it better. I always want it to be better. I want the product to be better. You do things for a while, maybe that gets stale. You want to switch to something else. That's constantly about improving the product, but in this moment on USA, you continue down the same path of wanting it to be better but you also want to embrace the thing that it is that makes it different and makes fans engage with it on a different level.

There's a reason why the NXT brand, while we already have a large key demo of 18-34-year-olds, there's a reason why NXT resonates with that so heavily. You want to embrace that. And while the platform changes, I'm looking to run towards that difference, not away from that difference, and make it more of the same or more or something else. Any fears that it's going to become something that it isn't or shift or anything like that are unfounded because if anything, we're going to make it more of that.

SN: You've put importance on making sure NXT stays at Full Sail University. You have a partnership with the school, but there are some who believe that since the building is smaller — it holds about 400 people — that maybe the show doesn't look big enough unless it's in front of a larger live audience. How do you weigh that decision of keeping the show at Full Sail rather than taking it to bigger buildings?

PL: I'm of the opinion that if you are tuning into a live event like what we do and you're counting the people in the crowd, you've missed the plot. The entertainment aspect doesn't change. The in-ring, bell-to-bell product is as good as anything else on the planet, bar none. The crowd there is crazy hot and they built this. And sometimes people say they do their own business, they do their own entertaining things.

I think that's fun and I think that's fun for people watching. But I think even if you looked at it and said it's a little smaller than I would have thought, five seconds later, once that match starts, you forget all about that. It doesn't matter. I almost feel like that is part of the magic of it. It feels more intimate. It feels grittier. It feels more in-your-face. It feels a bit more exclusive to me and I love that difference.

To me, I'm a fan from day one. That's how I got into this and I look at it this way: If I'm a music fan, do I want to see Metallica in a stadium or does it really matter to me if they're playing at the theater down the road? It's the same. And that intensity ... it's almost crazier at the theater. I'd almost rather go to it there. It's intimate and tight. I'd rather it be that.

There's something that spreads it out and it loses that special, underground, sort of vibe, that a little more dangerous vibe. I've had people from outside our business come, even say WrestleMania weekends when we've been in slightly smaller venues with NXT, and say that they went to the stadium show for WrestleMania and it was crazy and epic and everything about it. It's the Super Bowl. The grandeur and the spectacle is unbelievable. And they went to NXT and they came back to me and, not that one is better than the other, but NXT felt like you were sitting on the ground in a riot.

To me, there's a couple of cool things that you can brag around. One is going to the Super Bowl and seeing that there was 100,000 people there. It was sold out. I couldn't hear. Oh my god, the spectacle, the stadium, that's grandiose and all those things. And then there's also the feeling of being in that riot environment that puts your adrenaline through the roof. They're both incredible, but they're different. I want to embrace that difference. I'm not trying to be the 100,000 people spectacle; I'm trying to be that intense feeling of sitting on the ground in a riot.

For who you are, what you do, and how much you care. Thank you for being an @WWENXT family! #WeAreNXT ... and apparently very hungry after a show @FullSail! https://t.co/Y7hVsN6Q62 — Triple H (@TripleH) September 26, 2019

SN: Obviously, there's a lot of talk about what's coming up on Wednesday nights because NXT is on that night and there is competition that same night. The question of 'Is this a war?' is being thrown out there a lot. The other side seems to think so with some of the recent comments they've made. How do you look at that?

PL: It's a funny thing. I don't hear anybody going the Tuesday night sitcom wars are off the chart. It's just a genre of entertainment in a way and to say there's this war, first of all, for me, it comes down to putting on the best show and I've been saying this over and over. Since day one, we've been on Wednesdays on the network. Since day one, I have thought about trying to make each show better than the one before, trying to raise talent to another level, trying to make this product the best product it can be while embracing its difference from "RAW" and from "SmackDown" and everything else that's out there.

We have the opportunity five years, in or whatever it is, to stay in our time slot, go to the No. 1 cable channel on television and expand it so there's more opportunity for everybody, but the goal is the same. It doesn't matter to me if there's another show on that night. It doesn't matter to me if there's somebody else in the space. I'm not concerned with that, especially not yet given the fact that so far, they've held four, five shows. And they've been great. But they're one-off shows.

Fifty-two weeks a year, two hours live every week is a different animal. Totally different animal. So, until that's started happening and happened for a while, because an immediate splash ... People have asked me right now, we had tremendous success last week (the Wednesday, Sept. 18 edition) with the rating for NXT, over a million people watching. The rating was great. A 200 percent increase in the 18-34 demo. On every level. I'm happy with that, but to me, this is a marathon. It's not a sprint.

When we got this opportunity on USA, it was an opportunity to stand at the starting line of a marathon. I'm interested in the long haul. I'm interested in what this company has done for 50 years, with that they've done for 30 (years) with "RAW, what they've done for 20 (years) with "SmackDown" which is what this company does better than anybody else on the planet: week in, week out, live sports entertainment and doing what we do. And it doesn't matter what's out there.

There's competition that we've dealt with for years. You can look back and say a brief period with WCW, but the competition we've dealt with for years is the NFL, is Major League Baseball. It's large scale sporting events. It's political debates. It's everything that is out there and that's what we deal with. So, my goal is to put on the best show possible every single week and we'll see what the future brings because right now, it's just a bunch of speculation over two-week programming that hasn't even started yet and there's no track record of success long-term of a two-hour, weekly live event in any way, shape, or form.

SN: Do you get irked by comments from people working with the other company? The only reason I bring it up is because some of these were comments made by somebody who is an executive there.

PL: It doesn't matter to me. I'm not sure if you're aware of social media and that landscape. It's a fairly negative place (laughs). If you're going to get thin-skinned and read into stuff and get angry about stuff that people say, it's gonna be a rough life.

There's a statement about opinions over the years I've heard. Everybody it entitled to their opinion. Everybody is entitled to put an executive tag on the front of their name and think that's a cool thing. Whatever. It's all good. Bring your best show. If that's how you want to look at it, bring your best show. I'll bring my best show. We're all good and the winners are the fans and they'll choose what they want to watch and how. It doesn't matter to me. It really doesn't and it's not my interest and my interest is the best show possible.

I'm going to take the talent roster that we have, I'm going to take the in-ring product that NXT has that I would put up against anything in the world, bar none, and I'm going to put on the best show possible every single week for two hours. My competition is everything else out, but the truth is for our fans, I just want to deliver the best product that I can to them. That's as far as it goes.

SN: There's competition everywhere and we don't know what this is going to look like, especially from their standpoint. You've been through this is in the past with WWE and WCW. What did you take from that experience that you can bring to the table now?

PL: I have learned something every single day that I have been in this business since the day that I got in it. It's a funny thing; sometimes people use the developmental comment. Everybody that's in this business is developmental because if you don't believe that this business changes on a day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year basis, you've already failed. It changes.

Fans’ opinions change, their thoughts change, what they're willing to accept changes. The way people view things, the way they talk about it through social media and everything else, the way they consume the product and the in-betweens of the product changes. That, in and of itself, means it's all developmental because you're trying it all on every single day and seeing what works and what doesn't. Anybody that thinks differently, they've already lost because it changes.

I've picked up things along the way and, you're right, we've been through this before. We've been through this with WCW. We've also been through it with TNA. I haven't heard that brought up a lot, but that's a fact. What is the level of what it is right now? I don't know. I don't know until we see, but I hope they bring the best product that they can for fans. I hope that they do and we'll bring ours and then we'll go from there. But until I see what the product is, it's hard for me to even comment on it because there is no product right now, not on a two-hour live basis every week.

If you were with us since the beginning, thank you. If you are new to the show, hold on to your ass. @WWENXT #WeAreNXT pic.twitter.com/8KHM4gtXeS — Triple H (@TripleH) September 19, 2019

SN: You've talked before about how much talent there is at NXT and how they are chomping to get on the show. Now it has expanded to two hours and it is live on cable TV. There has to be a process of who deserves time based on where they are right now, especially when it comes to some younger, less experienced talent. What's the process like, especially now with the higher stakes of the show than ever before?

PL: I think it's the same as always. There is a lot of talent in NXT that have been doing this for a long time and then there are a lot of talent in NXT that are what people would put a label on of homegrown. There are a lot of people that when they're talking about it in the discussion on "RAW" and "SmackDown" that are homegrown that I never really hear talked about as being homegrown. Braun Strowman had never stepped in a ring before. Alexa Bliss, Charlotte (Flair), there's so many talent that do what we do that are homegrown.

You do the same with everybody. You give them little bits and pieces. When you say 'Hey, I think they're ready for this,' that might be smaller events in Florida and you try them out. And when they do good at that and they handle that responsibility, you give them the next step. Maybe they make some larger events. Maybe I give them a dark match at TV where they go out and you do in that arena now and even if weren't not using it live, cameras are on you.

That's a whole different world of experience. It's a whole different world of pressure when you think the whole world is watching you. Trust me, even for talent that are experienced, it's one thing to say 'This is a pay-per-view and there's these people watching. That's a big deal.' It's another thing to say 'Live weekly television on a cable channel and there's millions of people watching me now.'

No matter what, the pay-per-view will do less people and eyeballs than television will do. Television, all of a sudden, comes to a different place. Now there's another component in that and now you're talking about USA. Now, who's ready to not only perform in the ring, perform out of the ring verbally, but also hit time cues for commercial breaks and everything else that comes with it because live television, 9:59:57 or whatever that number is, you're going off the air whether the finish has happened or not.

And if it happened five minutes ago, it's even worse. What are those levels of trust and how do they get there? You give them little bits and pieces of things and you try something and you see how they do and if it doesn't go well, you back burn them a little bit, you train them a little harder, you put them in something else. No different than you would in any other sport.

You have people sitting on the bench in the roles that you need them in and you put them in now and then you see how they do and how they handle the pressure. Through that pressure and through those opportunities, they move up along the pipeline to get what they're ready for. One of the frustrations of NXT over the last couple of years is that one-hour format on the network of us having to bend with, to have to debut talent that are ready to go that can handle the spot and we just don't have the place to put them yet because of limited space. This opens up a lot of that. So, you're going to get to see a lot of new talent, a lot of opportunities for people to do what they do.

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SN: I think the other thing when it comes to NXT is this is something you've been building towards the five years or so, to get to this point for the live TV show. At the same time, there is always the factor of what’s next. How do you continue to look at the now and make this the best product it can be, but also looking toward the future?

PL: There's always going to be that, but the day that stops in the business, we're all in trouble. That was the whole point of doing NXT in the first place and the Performance Center and everything else. But when you see talent start to grow, you see them start to accept those responsibilities and those challenges and succeed at them, then you begin to put them in different places.

UK is an option for us and the top UK guys and girls, you're seeing them have opportunities on USA already. Places in which we can put them, I think over the next few years, you'll see even more growth in that from an underneath standpoint so that more and more talent have the opportunity to do this at a big level and know that they are on the path already.

When we first did the Performance Center and when we talked about the UK and creating a path for people around the globe or talent around the globe that were just kind of doing what we do with no real end in sight or promise of something bigger ... now they're on that path, so if they're doing it with us in these international markets, if they're doing it with us here, they're on that path of success longterm.

And then having "RAW," "SmackDown," and NXT as three distinct brands with three huge opportunities, man, that just opens up that pipeline to give opportunities for the athletes themselves to have that platform to do what they do on a worldwide level.