Finn Balor thinks NXT is the reason he still has a career.
Speaking to Off The Ball, Balor said the developmental stint he resented at the time is what stopped him from burning out on the main roster.
I always go back and think if I hadn’t have went to NXT, I probably would have burnt up like a meteorite in WWE in the first two years. The stuff I learned in NXT I’m still applying to my craft now.
It did not feel that way in 2014. Balor arrived from New Japan as the founding leader of Bullet Club, having just worked the Tokyo Dome, and was sent to a warehouse in Florida to run drills.
I remember being in NXT about 3 months, and a couple months previous I just done the Tokyo Dome in front of 50, 60 thousand people, then all of a sudden I’m doing bumps and rolls in a warehouse in Florida, preparing me for what? I feel like I am prepared.
He took it to his coach.
I remember having a conversation with my coach at the time Terry Taylor. ‘Terry, I’m 34, I’m wasting my career here, these are my prime years, I need to be in the ring.’ He said ‘Finn, the style of wrestling you’ve been wrestling the last 16 years, if you continue that, you have like 2 or 3 more years left in the tank. I’m trying to teach you a style that’s going to extend your career and get you another 10 years,’ and here we are 12 years later and I feel better than ever.
Taylor is not the only name he mentions.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Terry Taylor and a lot of the coaches at the Performance Center. Norman Smiley, Matt Bloom, all those guys really helped me kinda adapt to the different style WWE is because it is different.
It’s still a wrestling show, it’s still in a ring with four sides, but it’s a very different style, the cadence of the matches are different, how the crowds react to things.
The maths supports Taylor. Balor signed in the spring of 2014, which makes this his twelfth year with the company. He won the first Universal Championship at SummerSlam 2016, has held the Intercontinental and tag team titles since, and is a Grand Slam and Triple Crown Champion.
He is also still in the world title picture. Balor lost the No. 1 Contender’s match at SummerSlam last weekend, in a bout that turned into a four-way when Nick Aldis added Gunther and a returning Kevin Owens.
