During an interview on TMZ Inside The Ring, former WWE superstar Matt Riddle offered a fascinating comparison between the booking philosophies of Vince McMahon and his successor, Triple H. Riddle stated that he preferred McMahon’s approach of using firm creative control and not always giving fans immediate gratification.
“The one thing I loved about Vince is Vince was like, ‘This is my company. I run it. It’s my company.’ It didn’t matter. The fans were like, ‘Oh, we don’t like this.’ The storyline was gonna go as long as Vince wanted it,” Riddle said.
He explained his theory on long-term storytelling using an analogy. “It’s like a plant or anything else. If you give it everything you think it wants, just like a kid, they get slow, they don’t appreciate what they have. But just like a plant, if you let it starve a little bit, then you feed it, it gets stronger,” he explained. “And I feel like fans are like that too. You have to, if you give them everything that they want, you give them that dream match tomorrow, what are they going to tune into next week?”
Riddle concluded by directly comparing the two creative visions. “I felt like Vince did a very good job with that a lot of the time, because he wouldn’t just give people what they wanted,” he said. “I feel like Triple H bends a little more. Tony [Khan] definitely bends a lot.”
Matt Riddle worked under Vince McMahon’s creative direction for the majority of his WWE main roster run, from 2020 to mid-2022. He then spent just over a year working under Triple H’s creative leadership before his release from the company in September 2023.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit TMZ Inside The Ring with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
