This morning I woke up to an inbox full of emails and my Google Reader had several mentions of NXT Wrestling. I was shocked, surprised… and somewhat confused.

I’ve worked with SWA for several years now and as such, I’ve crossed over to working with NXT Wrestling when the project was first announced in 2006. Heading up the online team, I’ve done a lot of PR work and am the first line of contact when it comes to online inquiries and other such things. I get a lot of emails on both companies, so that was no surprise…

…the real surprise came when I read them. In hindsight, I should have been reading WWE news and rumours more often.

After long and careful planning, SWA:NXT made it’s debut in January 2007 as a promotion designed to showcase up and coming talent within Scotland in conjunction with SWA’s Area 52 wrestling school. In 2009 NXTWrestling.com was registered when NXT began to grow into it’s own identity as a feeder promotion alongside SWA.

The goal within NXT is to give younger talent an opportunity to showcase their abilities and get noticed. Several of our NXT talents over the years have gone on to work across the UK, gain international interest and win NWA Heavyweight championships. We’ve promoted shows across the West of Scotland with our next event scheduled this weekend, February 6th in Rutherglen featuring some fresh young talent who have risen through the ranks of our training facility and earned their place on the event with Rutherglen’s own Sean Sweeney headlining against Glasgow’s former NWA Scottish Heayweight Champion Jack Jester.

I recently wrote a blog here about my last match on NXT where I was involved in a ten-man tag team in which I was pinned by Ricky Gibson to close the match, and lost my T-Division Championship. I stepped out of NXT after that, hung up my boots and was ready to watch it excel to new heights.

In an email this morning I was informed that WWE was rebranding their ECW on SyFy show to NXT. The NXT Generation. A show featuring developmental talent.

Before I go on, I’m not speaking on NXT’s behalf here. I seem to switch roles more often than the WWE Hardcore division switched champions. I’m not a promoter and I haven’t booked anything for over a year now. My connection to NXT is one part business, one part loyalty and doing what I can to ensure they are successful. It means a lot to it, both as someone who’s been and will continue to be involved with the company, and as a fan of the guys I’ve trained with and watched grow into good talents with a lot greater potential than me. But I do have to wonder…

…does WWE have Google in their offices? I did a quick search on NXT Wrestling to find a site I built on the top of all search results. A good few new sites, both wrestling and non-wrestling, are reporting the conflict of branding so they know just as well as I do that it doesn’t take a Bart Simpson to figure out we’ve been promoting under the name for a while now.

I’m doing my part to research NXT’s position here and have been in touch with management. Quite frankly, I have no idea whats going to happen next. But I do know that with all the time, money, passion and effort put into the NXT product, no matter what happens you can expect to see it in one form or another continuing to shine the spotlight on the new, fresh, young and innovative talent who have earned the right to be in that ring.

I’m sure the originator of the NXT brand name in SWA is flattered. Great minds think alike and all that. But I do have to wonder, did they come up with the NXT Generation all by themselves? Or with all the vast similarities between the two company outlines, is this another Mordecai?

Anyway, the original NXT Wrestling is in Rutherglen this weekend and the card is already packed with some grand talents that have grown and developed at Area 52. Headlining the event will be the recently debuted Sean Sweeney of Rutherglen who will get his moment in the spotlight when he challenges former NWA Scottish Heavyweight Champion and possibly the most traveled pro wrestler in Scotland, Jester.

Full details can be found at NXTWrestling.com.

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