Triple H recently spoke with ESPN.com to promote the upcoming WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view event in Brooklyn, New York. Here are the highlights
On 50/50 booking: “It’s just a term somebody came up with,” Levesque said. “It’s just terms that people throw out there. When somebody goes, ‘Well, you just can’t get people over with 50/50 booking,’ [I’ll always say] ‘Oh, I’m sorry, how’s your territory coming? Because this one seems to be doing pretty good over here.’ We just had the largest WrestleMania in history. People talk a lot of smack about ratings and things, but they don’t understand all of the dynamics of everything we do. They don’t. They sit on the internet, and they read one thing, and they give their point of view. Do I keep track of the exact wins and losses of talent? No,” Levesque said. “To me, all of this stuff is a feel. All of it is a feel. Sometimes you’re beating a talent because you want to beat them, and that’s the sympathetic reaction you’re trying to elicit. There are some talents that, when you beat them, they get more popular, but as soon as they start on a winning path, their popularity begins to wane. … People want that underdog to strive to succeed and then get a little bit of success and then get knocked back off that perch and be the underdog again.”
On WWE’s tag team division: “I think you go back five or six years ago when the tag teams were on the decline. Part of that was a thinner talent roster,” he said. “NXT has been able to beef up the ranks enough for us to split rosters, and you see this resurgence. … I’m really proud of them — of the entire developmental system. It has allowed for the resurgence of tag-team wrestling and resurgence of women’s wrestling by giving them the platform to be able to do what they do. Sometimes when you’re a talent, there’s safety in numbers. You gotta go out on a limb when you’re a performer. And it’s uncomfortable,” Levesque said. “And people that don’t do it for a living don’t understand it, but being a performer and going out there and just letting it all hang out there, when it’s just on you, and you’re the only one — man, it’s hard to do that. When you’ve got somebody else to blame, somebody else sharing in the success and somebody standing next to you, supporting you on the team, it’s liberating. The challenge is then getting past the liberation when it’s time to move out on your own. Can you then make that transition? Does that lead to them being singles wrestlers? Who knows.”
Triple H also talked about character development and more. You can read the entire interview here.
