The following are highlights from a recent Grantland.com interview with WWE’s Triple H:
On his role as head of talent relations for WWE:
“Everything that has to do with talent, from the legends to the developmental system, to the live events and all of its operations and the towns we book, to where the pay-per-views are, all of it. Obviously I have a massive team that does all that, but they report to me.
“I started in the office full-time a few years ago. Vince had been bugging me for a while, saying ‘When are you going to stop messing around in the ring and come get a real job?’ So one time when I was injured, I shadowed him in the office for three months. I did everything he did. When I finally started full-time, he was like, ‘Take a few months. I want you to dig into everything. Have meetings with finance, dig into every part of this company and see what you think needs work."
“And the thing I came back to him with was we have this huge global marketing juggernaut, but we’re a victim of our own success. We’ve shut down all the other territories. There’s almost no place for guys to go learn, and when they do, they’re learning how to work in a junior high in front of 50 people. It’s a completely different thing than working in front of 10,000 or a million on TV with a camera in your face."
“So I started this little division called talent development. It was basically to build a bridge between creative and the developmental wrestlers. Now, other than Vince saying, “OK, you can have that amount of money,” he doesn’t have anything to do with it. Honest to god, he hasn’t even seen the Performance Center yet. He’s supposed to go next week."
On Stephanie McMahon’s role in WWE:
“Technically, creative reports to Steph, but Steph is kind of the aggregator. Her office does everything from the magazine to digital to the shows, so it’s funny when people will say, ‘Oh, Steph and the creatives.’ She really doesn’t have anything to do with the day-to-day. I mean, she’ll weigh in on something if Vince asks or if the writers ask her what she thinks before they bring something to Vince.”
On a physical WWE Hall Of Fame building:
“Halls of fame are not a lucrative business. But here’s the bigger reason: If and when the time is right to do a Hall of Fame, it’s not just going to be a place where you walk in and say, “Oh, look, there’s a pair of trunks.” If we do it, it’ll be an immersive experience. With technology the way it is, a 4-D experience, whether it’s a ride, or, picture this: You walk into a locker room, lights go down, smoke comes out, and Andre the Giant walks out in a hologram and stands there and talks to you. That’s what it has to be. But is the Hall of Fame the priority? Absolutely not. It’s out there someplace in the stratosphere. But if we do it, it takes a lot of research because we want to do it right.”
On what is written about him on the internet:
“I wish I had the brainpower and the wherewithal and the drive to be as maniacal and devious as people f—-ing think I am. I’d be f—ing Darth Vader. I’d run the Empire, and I guess maybe that’s how some people see it, right? They’d say ‘Oh, he went in there and he buried this guy,’ and it’s like, f—, I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t even know he was coming in until I saw him that day.”
WWE Superstar John Cena spoke with WWE.com after undergoing surgery on Wednesday to repair a torn triceps.
“I plan on using the next couple months to rehab and get healthy as I can, as quickly as I can, Cena said. “My goal is to return to WWE healthy and strong, and since my expected time away is only six months, this shouldn’t affect WrestleMania.”
Cena talked about this being an exciting time in WWE.
“WWE has never been and never will be dependent on one man, with the exception of Mr. McMahon,” he said. “In the coming weeks, WWE will be filled with exciting programming as always, and I’ll have the best seat in the house! Let’s see who captivates the WWE Universe.”
The following are highlights from a recent Maxim interview with former WWE Superstar Chris Jericho:
You’ve always been fond of bringing comedy into the wrestling ring. If you had to choose between comedy, wrestling, and your band, Fozzy, how tough is that call to make?
If I had to drop one of them, I don’t know if I could do the other two, because they’re all kind of intertwined. It’s all show business, it’s all part of being a showman in the year 2013. You’re always going to have the sticklers and the haters that are like, “Yo, you’re a wrestler, you can’t do anything else.” And those are the people that, if that’s the way you feel, then fine, go f*ck yourself – if you don’t like it, step aside and let the people that do like it get a better seat.
As far as your wrestling career goes, who is the best opponent you’ve ever worked with?
Probably Shawn Michaels. I think he’s probably the best total package wrestler of all time – he could do it all, and was a big influence of mine when I was first starting. That storyline, the feud I had with him in 2008, that was one of the best programs not just in my career, but in the entire history in of the WWE. It’s always cool when you start out as a fan and then become an ally where you’re working together. It’s the same with music – Fozzy toured with Metallica, and it was like, “Here I am with the band that influenced me to get into music.”
Some WWE fans have complained in recent years that the company seems to really push huge guys that can’t actually wrestle all that well, at the expense of experienced all-rounders, like yourself. What’s your take on that?
I don’t see it that way. Wrestling is all about new talent and new turnaround of the stars. I could be the main event guy there for 20 years, but there’s going to have to be other guys that come into that picture or else it’s pretty boring and business will go really bad. There’s only so much Jericho or so much HHH or so much Rock people can take. So you try different guys – some of them are bigger and don’t really have the talent, they have more of the look. Some guys are small and go against the traditional WWE superstar, but yet are so damn good they make it to the top – I’m talking about guys like Eddie Guerrero, or even Shawn Michaels or Daniel Bryan right now. You have guys who would never be the typical WWE superstar, but because they were so damn good, they would rise to the top of the mountain. You have to realize that if you have 60 guys on the roster, the WWE is going to try and get every one of those 60 guys to world championship level. Some of them will make it, the majority won’t, but until you try, you just never know. Everyone’s got to get a full chance, if not, why are they even there on the payroll?
