WWE Executive Details The Company's Long Term Plans For India
In advance of the WWE's first tryouts in Mumbai, India in March, the Times Now interviewed WWE's Director of Talent Development, Canyon Ceman. Ceman considers 2019 as a "really important" year for the company's long term plans in India, a year in which a TV deal will be negotiated and renewed.
Although the company has 4 Indian talents in development, who are described as "progressing well" by Ceman, they would like to put more talent in the pipeline. There will be 70 people invited to the tryouts in March with between 2-5 expected to be hired but possibly up to 10-15 people accepted. There is the possibility of an Indian performance center one day.
Ceman declined to prognosticate on which Indian wrestler would make the main roster sooner than the others. He sees Saurav Gurjar and Rinku Singh as having the highest potential, describes Jeet Rama as having the most "sophisticated skill-set" and Kavita Devi as having a good chance because of being an Indian woman in the WWE and having a good performance at WrestleMania and the Mae Young Classic.
The WWE would like to produce more localized content for an audience that according to Ceman has "89 million Indians who watched WrestleMania" and "50 million watch RAW and Smackdown every week". Ceman has noted that interest in the grassroots level in India has increased since 2012, which Ceman attributes to WWE. He has noticed that there are local wrestling shows in India on a weekly or monthly basis.
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