In September 2021, WWE moved away from recruiting and signing indie wrestlers as they rebranded NXT to NXT 2.0. Along with the NXT product and presentation changes, they shifted their focus to recruiting younger and bigger athletes instead of established independent wrestlers.
There was a lot of concern with this new strategy in signing new talent, although there have been success stories such as NXT Champion Bron Breakker, the son of Hall Of Famer Rick Steiner. WWE might be signing indie wrestlers again instead of only scouting college athletes and training them as pro wrestlers.
In the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reported that WWE has contacted a number of independent wrestlers to see if they’re interested in attending the next set of tryouts.
Meltzer wrote, “while the idea is still to recruit good looking college or other athletes and train them to be wrestlers, they have contacted some indie talent for tryouts in Nashville over SummerSlam week.”
As recently as their Las Vegas tryouts, WWE focused solely on younger talent from different sports.
