Triple H and Shawn Michaels were the latest guests on WWE After The Bell with Corey Graves and the two DX members turned NXT figureheads had plenty to share regarding the growth of the black and gold brand both in the United States and across the pond in the United Kingdom.

Hunter specifically addressed the fact that many of the U.K. independent promotions will fade out due to the presence of NXT UK scooping up so much talent and why WWE decided to work with particular promotions such as PROGRESS as they move forward with the brand.

“Yes, some of these indies are going to go away. The ones that are going to go away, the ones that are paying you $25 when they promised you $75, the ones that have a ring that didn’t hold up, the ones that didn’t have medical there, the ones that didn’t care about you, they were just booking you because they were hoping to sell some tickets and you had a little bit of buzz so they were hoping to sell some tickets and they could care less what you do when you do it. We wanted to work with the ones that were cultivating talent. The ones that were encouraging them to become better, working with them on promos or giving them guidance, right or wrong, on their matches that had equipment that was functioning, that had medical care if you did get injured while you were there that at least you weren’t laying there for 45 minutes while they were trying to figure out if they could get an ambulance to come or call you an Uber. All those things were important to us and those were the people that we started to partner with and let people work for and I think it’s done just that. From what my understanding of what I hear the system has changed a lot and there’s a lot more of them sort of policing it and the talent being able to police cause they’re not allowed to go work for the ones that can’t do it and those ones eventually don’t last and the others do last and for all the right reasons and the others aren’t.”

(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)

Promotions such as Defiant has since closed it’s doors and talent signed under the NXT UK brand are allowed to wrestle for certain independent promotions, just not on on-demand or streaming services. You can listen to all of Triple H’s & HBK’s “DX-Mas” chat with Graves below.

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