Triple H shared an extended Arn Anderson story on the latest episode of Cody Rhodes’s What Do You Wanna Talk About? podcast, using it to explain what he says is his biggest pet peeve about working with wrestling talent: watching performers create their own bitterness over things that do not actually matter.
The WWE Chief Content Officer told Rhodes that the problem he sees most often is talent getting caught up in the minutia of their position on the card instead of appreciating what they have.
“It’s the sometimes there’s frustration of being able to have the perspective of looking back over a long career and so many people’s careers and so many different talents and all different levels of success, and then wanting to say to a talent like, dude, this is meaningless, and you are arguing and wearing yourself out mentally and wearing yourself out emotionally over this point that is meaningless, like literally by next Monday’s show, no one is going to think about this again. And it’s so many people, they get so caught up in the minutia of the little, tiny things that don’t really make the difference.”
Triple H said the same mindset follows some performers to the end of what should be celebrated careers, and compared it to the guy who makes the NBA, plays in the NBA, becomes a top player in the NBA, but lets it eat him alive that his name never gets mentioned next to Michael Jordan’s. And that is where he brought up Arn Anderson.
“I think you might have even been there at the time. I heard Arn one time talking. You know, these guys were putting them over, and there was this conversation about mid-card guys, and he’s never gonna be champ, and all this stuff. And Arn went off on this huge promo about, like, I don’t understand all of you. He said, you guys all see me as a big deal, right? And everybody’s like, yeah, you’re f–king Arn Anderson, one of the greatest of all time, blah, blah, blah. He said, I got a Hall of Fame worthy career. I’ve got all this stuff, right? He said, mid-carder. Nothing more ever. I never main evented a thing unless I was in the ring with Flair. If I was tagging with Flair, I was in the main event. If I wasn’t, nothing. I was a mid-carder. I was a guy there to get guys over on the way to getting up to the Dusties and the Flairs and the people like that. I was a mid-card guy.”
Triple H said that was the setup for the actual point Arn was making to the locker room.
“You guys see me as this unbelievable legend that you all listen to and all this stuff. But when it comes to your own careers, and many of you have already surpassed the position I was ever in, you’re miserable about it because you think that you haven’t reached the success of other things. But yet I see myself as having this amazing career, fed my family, I got to do things I would have never done. Incredibly successful. Like, man, what a journey I’ve had. But if I used your metrics to measure it, mid-card. I’m nothing. I never amounted to anything. They wasted my talents. They wasted my ability. They never did anything with me. You create your own bitterness.”
Triple H said that last line is the one that has stuck with him, and that Arn’s speech frames how he tries to talk to young talent today when he sees them spiraling out over things that will not matter in a week.
“That is the thing that is a pet peeve to me. Not because it bothers me, because it bothers me for them. There’s so many talent that I go like, dude, you have so much going on. You’re in a position that there’s a small handful of people on the planet are in that spot, and millions behind you that would cut off a limb to have that. And you’re miserable every day because you’re not considered the next guy.”
Triple H was careful to add that he was not telling anyone to stop being ambitious.
“Now that’s not me saying you shouldn’t be ambitious to want to get to the next level. That’s not what I’m saying. But I don’t believe the misery of ‘I didn’t get that’ makes you miserable for this. Be thrilled and excited about the stuff that you have and proud of the accomplishments and proud of the things you’ve done. Always strive for more. I’ll never tell a talent you’re never going to get past the point you’re at ever, because I don’t know. Things can flip on a dime.”
Triple H closed the thought by tying Arn’s speech back to the concept of the good old days.
“The journey and the people and the moments and the time, you don’t realize it until it’s done. No one tells you it’s the f–king good old days until later, when you look back at it. We didn’t know the Attitude Era, I mean, we kind of felt like something special was going on, but at the same point in time, you just, Thursday and I gotta be in Toledo, or whatever. I wish people could have that perspective, because I think it leads you to bitterness and angry over things that don’t matter. You should just be thrilled with what you accomplished in the career that you had.”
The full interview is available now on the What Do You Wanna Talk About? with Cody Rhodes YouTube channel and podcast feed.
If you use quotes from this article, please credit the source and include a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
