Triple H has recalled working under Vince McMahon and how there were times that he became increasingly frustrated with his former boss.
Beginning his career as a wrestler, The Game eventually made the transition to a behind-the-scenes role in the company. First being put in charge of NXT, the Chief Content Officer was later given full creative control of the main roster following the Endeavor takeover and Vince McMahon’s resignation in early 2024.
Appearing on the High Performance podcast, the Chief Content Officer first stated that he wouldn’t be where he is today without McMahon and that he got involved in creative early on. When addressing the mentorship from McMahon, Triple H noted that they both had a different way of running things, with McMahon questioning his methods:
“From when you learn, especially from mentors, you learn what to do and what not to do. There were things that bothered me about the way he did things. Certain things with his personality. He would run things totally different than I would, and we’ve talked about that before. Even when I was running NXT he would be like, ‘Why do you do it like that?’ I’d be like ‘Because it’s working for me.'”
Triple H Recalls Frustrations Over Being Handed A Script By Vince McMahon
When asked for an example, Triple H brought up McMahon wanting performers to recite promos from scripts, including himself and Shawn Michaels:
“He was much more controlling, especially as he got older, much more controlling. When I first came in, when we started DX, it was funny, we were just doing our own thing. Nobody was scripting anything, we were doing our own thing. Most times we were coming back and he was mad at us and screaming at us, ‘You’re gonna get us thrown off the air, God damn it, don’t do that again.’ We were just like, ‘Whatever,’ and we’d go do it again the following week.
Then there was a point where that started to work and we started to really get over and it started to do big business, ratings changed for us all that stuff. Now all of a sudden we show up to TV one week and they hand us a script, ‘What is this?’ ‘It’s what Vince wants you to say tonight.’ ‘What? He doesn’t tell us what to say.’ Well now he wants to start. We’d go into his office, ‘What is this?’ ‘It’s a script. It’s what I want you to say.’ ‘This is terrible. It’s not funny. It’s not us.’
I was much newer at the time. Shawn was Shawn at the time, way different now. We’re sitting in the meeting, we read it a couple of times, we had the argument with him and he said, ‘That’s what I want you guys to do. Just go do it.’ Shawn crumpled up the piece of paper and said, ‘I ain’t saying any of this sh*t.’ He threw it at Vince and we walked out of the office. I was like, Wow, we’re getting fired.
There were various points of time where he would become very controlling of things. Very specific to how he wanted it to be. It’s his prerogative, he’s the boss.
We would all talk about it and would all be like it would be better if we did this. Even Pat Patterson would come to me, ‘Vince wants to do this thing and it’s so stupid. Let’s do this instead. It would be better, we should talk him into this…’ I’m like, ‘Pat, I talked to him until I was blue in the face. You go talk to him.
I would see how he dealt with talents and there are some things he would do way better than I do and some ways he handled talent where I think I wish I could handle talent that way but it’s not just how I am.”
Additionally, Triple H detailed the origin of his water spit entrance.
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