Shawn Michaels discussed his thoughts on the Iron Survivor Challenge matches that took place during the 2022 WWE NXT Deadline PLE during a media call that took place after the event.
He said, “First of all, I thought it was executed phenomenally and one of the challenges with matches like this is making them different, and we did that. I will say that I had one person come up to me that was in the match and said, ‘Man, that is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been a part of. Don’t ever put me in one of those again.’ So look, it’s a lot mentally on the talent. There’s a lot that is required in those types of matches. From a developmental standpoint, one of the things back when I was coaching, one thing I would always try and tell talent is when you get up to the main roster, you’re in WrestleMania moments, you have a number of different things you have to remember out there. There’s the match that you got, there’s also the huge entrance for you that’s also probably going to be very overwhelming, you’re going to be dealing with the crowd, you got camera angles, and commercial breaks. I used to tell people that it’s like spinning plates and you have to keep all these things in your head while keeping in character and keeping the psychology of what you’re doing in the match. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to challenge them with this match because that’s sort of a developmental tool you could say that we can use this match for.”
“I’ll say this, I think it has legs. I guess that’s one of those things that after this we’ll gauge and see if we feel it’s a success. I feel it went really well. I think there were a lot of people that weren’t sure about it. There were a lot of people that expected it to flop and we didn’t know either. That’s what I love about here. We’re allowed to try a lot of stuff and we’re going to continue to do that. This is one of those things we did, and the talent really delivered on it, but we have to look at this concept and go, ‘Okay, are there ways we can still continue to mess with it, and can we make it good and exciting on a regular basis,’ and I think once we sort of figure that out, then you can make the better-educated decision as to if its something we want to do annually or something we pull out every now and then. At first blush tonight, I think it was a real success and so that bodes well for it being something regular or something more consistent in the future of NXT.”
You can listen to the complete press conference below:
(h/t to Fightful for the transcription)
