Former college track and field star Alivia Ash made her NXT Live Event debut this past Saturday night in Gainesville, Florida.
The former Rutgers University athlete has been training at the WWE Performance Center since signing for the company in August 2022 and made her live event bow by accompanying Quincy Elliott to the ring.
Using the moniker of ‘Alivia’, the promising star was unable to prevent Elliott from falling to defeat to Dante Chen. Ash took to Twitter after the event to announce that fans were ‘welcome’.
#NXTGainsville You’re welcome 💋 pic.twitter.com/ZZ3dbwgofj
— Big Liv🧚🏽♀️ (@AliviaKristen) July 23, 2023
Alivia Ash Makes NXT Live Event Debut
Ash was one of 14 new signings for WWE following tryouts during SummerSlam week in Nashville, Tennessee.
The prospective Superstars were all amongst the third batch of signings from the NIL (Next In Line) initiative that sees WWE looking for talent that he previously excelled in other sports.
At the tryouts a host of non-wrestling athletes – including NBA legend Dwight Howard – were put to the test in front of Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque, Paul Heyman, and others.
Other names signed alongside Ash included Chukwusom Enekwechi, Kevin Ventura-Cortes, Rickssen Opont and Breanna Ruggiero.
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Many current WWE Superstars made their name outside of the wrestling world first, including former Olympian Chad Gable and former NFL Offensive Lineman Baron Corbin.
WWE Hall Of Fame legends Kurt Angle, Goldberg and Mark Henry are amongst many that found fame with the company after success elsewhere and it is their stories that inspire WWE to continue the search for similar new talent.
During an appearance Logan Paul’s ‘Impaulsive‘ podcast last year, Triple H spoke about the NIL program and why he felt collegiate athletes were a good place for WWE to begin their search for new talent:
“The biggest pool of people to do that is collegiate athletes. It’s why the NFL can let go of 500 players a year, because they have this ocean of talent coming into them at any point in time. For any person in college football that’s waiting to get in the NFL, there’s hundreds in other sports that no one looks at and there’s no professional avenue for them. When you get done being a hammer thrower, [they] either coach or get a gig doing something else that they got their degree in.
“But, we couldn’t engage with those collegiate athletes because of the NCAA rules and all of that. Even though we’re an entertainment company, we risked their eligibility.
“Once NIL hit, it was a game changer because I could immediately talk to all of these athletes and offer them this opportunity, which for a vast majority of them are like ‘Oh my god, I grew up watching this like this is the opportunity of a lifetime and I’m 21 years old. Man, I’m gonna take this shot for a couple of years and be an athlete’.
“To now have that opportunity for these kids to go like wait a minute, I’m not going to go to the Olympics or whatever and I’m not gonna be a pro hammer thrower and I’m not gonna do all of these other things. What can I do? WWE throws an opportunity at you, which many of them probably had thought about. Now we’re getting right out to them and saying come with us.”
H/T: WrestlingInc for the above transcription