WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque appeared on Logan Pauls’s IMPAULSIVE podcast to talk about everything related to WrestleMania XL.
Triple H on the creative decisions that went into WrestleMania XL:
“We had plans very early. So if you would have asked me in October, I could have told you probably 90% of what I thought WrestleMania was going to be in my mind with some pretty good accuracy, but then you end up where you lose guys. CM Punk goes away and all this other stuff. It changes your dynamic, and then all of a sudden, there was talk about maybe Rock might try to do something this year. We’re not really sure. I’ve heard that a lot. Like, even me personally, he and I shot an angle before and then his schedule changed and he just couldn’t. We were locked in, WrestleMania, here’s what we’re doing and here’s where we’re going. Then his schedule changed and he just couldn’t make it happen. I get it, but as that becomes a reality, you have to shift thinking. Then there’s a lot of different thoughts and what the camps are. Then we’re gonna do this. We think that’ll be good or like some people thought, Rock coming in and challenging Roman and Cody moving over would be a great thing and other people thought it’s not going to work and be really tough.”
“At a certain point in time, you just have to pick it. You can make the argument that Cody-Roman in the story where we were, was massive. Then you can also make an argument that the biggest star in the world comes into your product to face the biggest guy that you have in the product in Roman Reigns like, that’s huge. This is like a win-win, right? So we do it and some people are like, this is gonna be the reaction and some people are like, this is going to be the reaction and be the exact opposite. The beauty of our businesses is they tell us. There’s 10, 20, 30,000 people in an arena every night going, this is what I like, this what I don’t like and you have to filter all the other crap out because there’s a lot of noise in there and all that and get to the heart of it. Once you get to the heart of it, they’re sort of telling you where to go.”
Triple H on if Rock is doing whatever he wants to do on TV:
“He’s a pro. So all that stuff is amazing and it’s amazing content and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, he’s a pro. We sit in a room. We talk this all out. We go through it. It’s great. If we came to him and said, ‘This is a problem for us and we gotta change this’, maybe he would argue back, maybe he would have a different point of view, but at the end of the day, if Nick or myself still went to him and said, ‘Hey, here’s where we got to get to, he would be like, ‘Okay.’ When he says he’s taking you on a ride, and that the genius is blurring the lines between fiction and reality to a place that even people that are close to it are going like, ‘I think he’s taking a piss on us right here.’ Like, calm down. He’s not. You’re on the ride right now You pulled the handle and you’re on the roller coaster, like calm down. We’re driving, he’s driving, but we’re all driving together. We’re all following the same GPS.”
If WWE is moving away from PG as they get ready to go to Netflix:
“There’s been times when we as a company say we’re PG and we’ve been G, like way G rated. I believe there’s a time for things to work. There’s a time for everything, but it’s got to be done in moderation. It’s got to be done when it’s right because if everything you say is just cussing, who cares? You would tune that out and it doesn’t matter. But right now, we were so clean on it, that Rock says something, given his position and the disruptor and the guy coming in from the outside, it’s believable that he has that leeway, doesn’t care, and he can do those things and it’s shocking, because it’s not been that way. Cody gets busted open the other day. It’s shocking, especially in the right scenario. It was powerful. It meant a lot. If that happens all the time, who cares? So it’s not it’s not a shift of philosophy. It’s just when it’s needed, pull the trigger but the discipline is only pulling the trigger when it really means something and when it’s shocking, not just use a bunch of profanity today and because then it doesn’t matter.”
Triple H On Prime logo being on the WWE canvas:
“We’ve done little things here and there with logos. WCW did some a long time ago with logos. You see them in boxing. It’s tough in what we do. There’s there’s a safety factor of the slipperiness of the ring. As you know, we’ve been going through this process and trying to get on the other side of that and we were finally able to make it work, but it took a long time to get there. It’s a different shift in philosophy. This is not the WWE that it was before. This is a WWE under TKO. How they look at it and how they sell things are different. That center mat logo is obviously sort of like holy ground in a way and the fact that you’re here and such a big star and yet also your company, your Prime brand is taking that real estate up, that’s a massive feather in your cap.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit IMPAULSIVE with Logan Paul with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Quotes were transcribed by Jim for WrestlingNews.co.
