CW President Praises NXT Women's Division

Brad Schwartz, president of The CW Network, has praised the WWE NXT women's division as superior to the men's, calling it the strongest in all of professional wrestling. Speaking at the Sports Business Journal Media Innovators conference in New York this week, Schwartz highlighted the division's talent during a discussion on the network's recent partnership with WWE.

The comments came as NXT marked nearly a year on The CW, having debuted on the network in October 2024 under a five-year agreement. This deal brought weekly live wrestling programming to the Tuesday night schedule at 8 p.m. ET, filling a gap in The CW's lineup that previously lacked consistent live events outside of weekends. "What NXT offered us was the opportunity to have live-event programming 52 weeks a year on a Tuesday night," Schwartz said. "And so that was a really, really big move for us."

Schwartz emphasized the strategic value of the partnership, noting how it allows The CW, owned by Nexstar Media Group, to invest in building stars from the NXT roster. "We can try and turn these wrestlers into stars. We can market it, we can promote it. We can put the whole machine of Nexstar behind getting people to...