Shawn Michaels Addresses WWE NXT And AEW Going Head-To-Head

This Sunday night, WWE NXT will present its latest premium live event, Battleground, from the Tsongas Center in Lowell, MA. The big show will feature duel main events, as Bron Breakker looks to reclaim his WWE NXT Championship from Carmelo Hayes, and a new WWE NXT Women’s Champion will be crowned when Lyra Valkyrie takes on Tiffany Stratton for the vacant belt.

Pro wrestling fans will have to make a decision, however, when it comes to what premium live event they’ll be watching this Sunday night, as AEW will be hosting its annual Double or Nothing show at the same time. So, unless you’ve got dual monitors set up, you’re going to have to make a choice.

On today’s WWE NXT media call with WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels, I asked The Heartbreak Kid if WWE intentionally put this show up against AEW’s, and if this is a tactic they’ll be using going forward.

“Not to the best of my knowledge, no,” he said. “Look, for me, and for us, I think the WWE as a whole. Again, as I’m always honest with you guys, clearly there are people far more important than me that make decisions all the time that they don’t tell me about. But no, for us, this was about a big Memorial Day weekend for WWE, obviously.

“And even though it’s a little bit switched around, and, for us, it’s a little bit of a throwback to, obviously, we used to have joint weekends. You know I mean? With NXT on Saturday, and Raw and Smackdown pay-per-views on Sunday. This is just sort of flip-flopped with Jeddah happening on Saturday, Night of Champions.

“Again, especially coming in the afternoon, everybody just felt that it was a good combination to have NXT on Sunday night, and just create a big WWE weekend for WWE fans. Look, I will say this, for me, personally, I would love to be able to have as many standalone weekends on us as we can get, you know what I mean?

“It’s always better, no different than against the playoffs. You know, for the last several weeks, as much as I’m a basketball fan or an NHL fan, it thrills me when the playoffs are done. So, the less competition we can get the better.”

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