During a recent appearance on Sam Roberts’ “NotSam Wrestling” podcast, Triple H commented on being a “boss” to WWE Superstars, how tough it is to tell them bad news, and more. You can check out some highlights and a video of the interview below:
On if he enjoys being ‘the boss’: “So one, I don’t necessarily try to look at anyone as anybody’s boss. I try to look at myself in the role of, ‘This is a business that everyone has to work together to get common stuff done.’ That’s how I see it, so it’s a giant team. The point is though, at some point in time somebody has to make the final decision on things. So you debate a lot of things, you talk about a lot of things, and somebody has to make the final decision. Whether popular or unpopular you have to make the final decision, and it’s to be solid and [you] stick to it. The truth is, nobody understands that role until they have that role. You can think when you are in the #2 spot, ‘Well, this is so obvious, I would do this.’ But when the pressure is on you to have that decision being yours, and live and die by it or whatever? The dynamic absolutely changes in the moment it becomes your responsibility, and then to not second guess and do all of those things. Just the difference of even just one show where you are in the position of going along with things or presenting your ideas and thinking like, ‘This is dumb, we should do this! I’d be so much better,’ or whatever. But when that becomes your decision to make, it’s a different ballgame.”
On if he’s had moments where he had the decision to make and it didn’t work: “Absolutely. Anybody that’s in that position [does], absolutely. The truth is, you don’t know if the other one would have worked better, right? A lot of times you’ll hear said in this business, ‘Things are chocolate and vanilla,’ right? So it’s all ice cream, it’s all pretty good, but do you want chocolate or do you want vanilla? You eat the chocolate, you go ‘Yeah, that wasn’t really what I wanted today. But I don’t know, the vanilla might have been any better.’”
On if he’s comfortable delivering news that people may not want to hear: “I think so. Because I think as long as you have [a] logical and reasonable explanation. Now, somebody may totally disagree with you, but as long as I feel as I can defend my position of ‘Here’s what I am telling you and here’s why I am telling it you. This is what I feel should have happened.’ Whatever the reason is, but as long as you have that logical reasoning behind you, somebody might say, ‘Well, I disagree with the outcome’ or whatever. But okay, here’s how I got there. It’s not like I just made this stuff up and I don’t like you so I’m going to do this. You know, there is a logical reason to it. And as long as you’re there then yeah, you have to make your decision and stick by it.”
On how talent generally reacts to bad news: “Our business is very professional. So, you see the craziness that you see on camera and on screen and everything, but behind the scenes — obviously, there is a lot of emotion to anything you do. And passion of what we do and all that stuff. But for the most part, everyone’s pretty professional and you’re just having discussions about things. And sometimes you have to tell people something they don’t like, other times you tell them news that they love. So it just depends on the day, but everyone is reasonable.”
(h/t 411 Wrestling)
