Jimmy Korderas, former WWE referee of over 20 years, has a new blog on CSRWrestling.com where he talks about how WWE is preparing talent for the future. You can read a new blog each week from Korderas on CSRWrestling.com. Here’s a sample:
I find it fascinating how much the wrestling industry has evolved over the years. It seems that every aspect of the business has been affected is some form or fashion by these changes. The one thing that has significantly altered how the WWE will move forward is the creation of their state of the art developmental training facility in Orlando, Florida known to most as The Performance Center. Recently, my long time, close, personal friend Justin LaBar (yes that was a Mean Gene-ism) was granted exclusive access to the PC which included a personal tour by head trainer Matt Bloom aka, A-Train/Albert/Tensi. Here is the link to Justin’s tour of the facility: http://triblive.com/sports/prowrestling/9245031-74/center-performance-wwe#axzz3oMNsupI5
As great as the Performance Center is and as positive as their training methods are, even those in charge of developmental are finding ways to further improve how to teach the future superstars of the WWE. Back in the day, wrestlers would learn and hone their craft by working in various territories. Young talent would work with established veterans on a nightly basis. As with all sports or even entertainment, the best way to improve oneself is to work with others better than you in front of an audience. This holds especially true in the wrestling business. Talk to any current superstar and they will invariably mention at least one veteran that helped, taught and in many cases mentored them as they learned the ropes.
I will continue that thought in a moment but first I want to take you back to September 2011. The site was the Air Canada Center in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. On this night, the ACC would host Friday Night Smackdown. The WWE was nice enough to allow me to visit and hang out. That afternoon, I was sitting at ringside catching up with some old friends and one of those just happened to be former 6 time World Heavyweight Champion Booker T. Booker was sitting at the announcers table and we began chatting about pretty much everything.
One of the topics touched upon was the WWE’s development facility FCW then located in Tampa. We discussed how much young talent benefited from the old territory days having the opportunity to get in the ring with some of the best workers in our industry and how with demise of the territory system, that valuable learning tool had been lost. FCW was running spot shows in Florida but I pointed out to Booker that these young up and coming talents were working with other young up and coming talents. Everyone was pretty much on the same level so how much can they improve?
CLICK HERE for more of the conversation with Booker T and Jimmy’s interpretation of NXT.
