An interesting moment from inside WWE’s booking room shows just how cautiously the company viewed two of its brightest young stars.
On the second season of WWE Unreal, the Netflix docuseries that pulls back the curtain on WWE’s creative process, veteran producer Bruce Prichard weighed in during a meeting about the plan to promote Trick Williams and Oba Femi from NXT to the main roster. His read was blunt.
We have to be patient too, as far as when they come up. They’re not going to be ready when they come up.
It’s a striking thing to hear from one of the company’s top creative voices, given that preparing talent for exactly that jump is NXT’s entire reason for existing. And the footage plays even funnier in hindsight, because both men came up and immediately proved they were plenty ready.
Williams arrived on SmackDown in January and won the United States Championship from Sami Zayn at WrestleMania 42, a title he still holds. Femi debuted by going wire-to-wire from the No. 1 spot in the Royal Rumble and has since been elevated into a marquee program with Brock Lesnar, with the two set to settle things inside Hell in a Cell at SummerSlam.
