Triple H believes the internet is not real life.
Rightfully so, wrestling fans on the internet have often shown their displeasure regarding storylines or never backed away from trolling stars. Recently, online, there has been a surge of fan dissent regarding Jey Uso’s WrestleMania match with Gunther. Although Triple H believes their live crowd is the actual focus group, and not the internet.
Speaking to Andrew Schulz on Flagrant, the promotion’s Chief Content Officer shared his honest thoughts about the internet wrestling fans.
“The internet is not real life. The bitching and complaining that is on there is not real life. You can read the internet and it will sound like this thing is dead. I’ll use Cody as the example. ‘Cody has already jumped the shark. He’s dead as a babyface.’ Really? I’m in an arena with 10,000 people every night going apeshit for him. He’s selling the most merchandise. Sure, whatever you want to say on the internet.
The beautiful thing for our business, unlike a movie or TV show or even a book, we have a focus group (every night). As we begin to tell these stories, you know, ‘This is working. This is not working.’ Whether people are bitching online, the reaction of people live. ‘Jey Uso is terrible.’ What are they doing? (Yeeting). Merch, reaction of the crowd, everything he does. It’s just the opinion of a few people.”
H/t Fightful
In less than a week, Cody Rhodes is scheduled to face John Cena, while Uso will take on Gunther at WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas.
Triple H Opens Up On Frustrations During Vince McMahon’s WWE Leadership
Appearing on the High Performance podcast, Triple H opened up on the leadership differences between him and Vince McMahon.
“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.’
“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.”
In other news: Triple H has revealed how his relationship with CM Punk has changed over the years.