{"id":215094,"date":"2026-04-17T12:15:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=215094"},"modified":"2026-04-17T12:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:23:13","slug":"khan-says-he-decided-to-focus-on-future-after-wrestlemania-last-year-taking-nxt-on-the-road-accelerated-the-growth-of-femi-evans-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2026\/04\/17\/khan-says-he-decided-to-focus-on-future-after-wrestlemania-last-year-taking-nxt-on-the-road-accelerated-the-growth-of-femi-evans-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Khan says he decided to focus on future after WrestleMania last year, taking NXT on the road accelerated the growth of Femi, Evans, Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-3257277807\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><p>WWE president Nick Khan said he conferred with &#8220;Paul Triple H&#8221; Levesque about the age of their top stars after WrestleMania last year and decided to focus on the future of the company. \u00a0\u201cSo here\u2019s the good thing \u2014 a year ago, so right after WrestleMania last year, Triple H and I got together and we said, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s take a look at the future,'&#8221; said Khan during an appearance on <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/an-nba-playoff-preview-with-doc-rivers-plus-nick-khan\/id1043699613?i=1000761940959\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Bill Simmons Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Let\u2019s look at our top male superstars. [John] Cena was obviously his retirement year. We have, and you tell me if you categorize these as our top men in some order, Roman [Reigns], Cody [Rhodes], [CM] Punk, Seth [Rollins], Brock [Lesnar]. Put Drew [McIntyre] in there, yeah. And he adds to the narrative. They\u2019re all 40 years or older.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Khan and Levesque went to the Performance Center to see why talent wasn&#8217;t breaking out at a younger age on the main roster.\u00a0\u201cSo we said, \u2018All right, we got to make sure we\u2019re preparing for the future here,'&#8221; said Khan. &#8220;We went down to our Performance Center to see Shawn Michaels and Matt Bloom who run that on a day-to-day basis and run NXT with us. And we said, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s take a look at the talent here.\u2019 How come D-X, for example, when it was first starting to pop, Triple H I think was like 26. Why is it taking longer?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Khan and Levesque spoke to Michaels when they went to NXT and he told them that the talent would break out faster if they took NXT on the road in front of different crowds. &#8220;Shawn said there is one thing we could really use the company\u2019s help on: we need to be able to tour NXT,&#8221; said Khan.<\/p>\n<p>Khan said once they took NXT on the road, they saw Oba Femi, Trick Williams, and Je&#8221;von Evans all accelerate their improvement. &#8220;Doing it from the studio every week, we don\u2019t get the authentic fan response that young wrestlers need to know if their work is working well enough,&#8221; said Khan. &#8220;\u2018We need to be able to take NXT on the road.\u2019 No problem, give us a week. We came back to Shawn and took NXT on the road in a month. Then you saw the quick acceleration of Oba Femi, Trick Williams, Je\u2019Von Evans, soon to be others coming up from NXT.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-372167794\"><div id=\"pwtor-2823179228\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>WWE president Nick Khan said he conferred with &#8220;Paul Triple H&#8221; Levesque about the age of their top stars after WrestleMania last year and decided to focus on the future of the company. \u00a0\u201cSo here\u2019s <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2026\/04\/17\/khan-says-he-decided-to-focus-on-future-after-wrestlemania-last-year-taking-nxt-on-the-road-accelerated-the-growth-of-femi-evans-williams\/\" title=\"Khan says he decided to focus on future after WrestleMania last year, taking NXT on the road accelerated the growth of Femi, Evans, Williams\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":102001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prowrestlingnews","category-news_wwe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/post\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-05-at-12.57.22-PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215094"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215099,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215094\/revisions\/215099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}