Tag: Triple H

Triple H Reportedly Had No Say In Last Week’s NXT Releases

Apparently neither Triple H now Shawn Michaels were consulted on who from NXT should be released last week.

Triple H was reportedly not consulted about which NXT Superstars were going to get released at the end of last week.

WWE continued to add to what is already a list of more than 50 released Superstars and employees last week by letting go of 12 more NXT talents. Perhaps one of the most shocking batches so far as Bronson Reed, Mercedes Martinez, and Bobby Fish were among the names to be shown the door. This all comes amid reports that NXT will be undergoing some major changes in the near future.

Triple H is the man credited with responsibility for turning NXT into what it is today. However, Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer has been led to believe neither he nor his Hall of Fame right-hand man Shawn Michaels had any say in who was cut last week. The decisions were made by Vince McMahon, Bruce Prichard, and John Laurinaitis.

Apparently, the reasoning behind the latest releases was that the trio responsible for them foresaw no future for the stars on the main roster. Interesting, as that suggests NXT is still seen as developmental in the eyes of McMahon rather than its own brand. That’s despite the likes of Johnny Gargano and Dakota Kai seemingly staying there for good without a potential call-up looming.

The 12 names let go and the reports that have followed suggest McMahon is reacting to the past two years of NXT. The black and gold brand failing to compete with AEW Dynamite before it moved nights, and whatever problem the boss has with the likes of Karrion Kross and Keith Lee. A message that has also surfaced which some have claimed is a mandate from the boss hints that the goal is to leave smaller wrestlers in the past and only focus on talent under the age of 30.

If Triple H really was kept in the dark about what happened last week, this could be the start of a very different, potentially incredibly bleak era in NXT’s still quite short history. It also suggests McMahon’s recent trip to the Performance Center wasn’t just to scout people he could use on Raw and SmackDown, it was also to rid NXT of stars he doesn’t have any use for elsewhere. This week’s episode of NXT will be incredibly interesting, although any changes being implemented probably won’t take hold right away.

Source: TheSportster

Triple H And Stephanie McMahon To Host WWE Memorabilia Show For A&E

Triple H and Stephanie McMahon are (kinda) getting into the collectibles business!

According to Deadline, the two execs will host a new show for A&E called “The Quest For Lost WWE Treasures.” The show will feature Hunter and Stephanie leading a team of collectors and wrestlers around the country in an attempt to find “iconic and lost WWE memorabilia.”

No word yet on who might be joining them.

The show is produced by WWE Studios, continuing the working relationship between the studio and the network. Last year, it was announced A&E would produce original two-hour documentaries of their award-winning “Biography” series about five wrestling legends: “Macho Man” Randy Savage, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Booker T, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels.

No premiere date has been set for “The Quest For Lost WWE Treasures.”

Source: Pro Wrestling Sheet

Triple H Says WrestleMania Should Move To Two Nights Permanently

Corey Graves interviewed Triple H on After The Bell to talk about WrestleMania and his experience watching it as it was the first time it was held in the Performance Center with no fans. Graves asked Triple H if he ever imagined that the Performance Center would one day be used to host a WrestleMania.

“After the first two shows and the live Smackdown, the first one, it seems like this barrage of just events happening,” Triple H said. “The moment in time when I walked in there and they had now transferred it from the kind of Raw and SmackDown set to repositioning everything, and I got in there in the giant WrestleMania sign that Kevin Owens would end up jumping off of was in the Performance Center. It was surreal and just, I don’t know, a crazy experience.

“I called Canyon, who runs development for me, and we were talking. I remember the moment walking into that building for the first time when we were scouting locations, and it was like a knickknack store from like a importer from Korea or something. It was all these like shelves to the ceiling of these knickknacks as far as you could see, and I remember walking in there and just rows and rows and rows and rows of all this stuff. If you would have said to me, in that moment in time, it’s a nice building right? We’ll have WrestleMania in here in a few years. You’re out of your mind, but here we are. I can’t recall anything crazier.”

Graves asked Triple H about things that he liked from WrestleMania this year. Triple H gave credit to Rhea Ripley for putting on a great match with no crowd at such a young age as she was getting more comfortable working in front of a crowd.

“It’s hard for me, at this point in my career, to imagine going out there in front of nobody and trying to pull that energy and that level of performance. Imagine if you’re Kevin Owens, just climb up that thing 30 feet, just fall off there and land on that table, just do it. That takes something special to go out there and have that performance. You here Rock talk about that and you know it. The the electricity and the connection between our fans and what we do, there’s nothing like it,” Triple H said. “I thought Charlotte and Rhea Ripley had an amazing match, and to me, I think Rhea Ripley, 22 years old, you’re just kind of getting to where you’re starting to feel comfortable with crowds. Then they take the crowd away and go like do it again.”

Along with the Boneyard Match, the Firefly Fun House Match created a lot of buzz at WrestleMania. Triple H called the match an acid trip and gave credit to John Cena and Bray Wyatt for taking it as far as they did.

“Man, my hats off to everybody that was a part of it from a cinematic scope as well. The Fun House, I just knew conceptually what the thought was. Everybody that I would ask like, ‘hey, how’d that go?’ I’d get the same response, ‘people are either gonna love it or hate it.’ I was like really? And most of the people that shot it were like, ‘I have no idea what we shot,’ because it’s it all goes together. Like if it all goes together well, it might be awesome, might be the worst thing anybody’s ever seen. I kept getting that. I was like, oh my God. I didn’t know what to expect. It’s like this crazy acid trip,” Triple H admitted. “You talk about reinventing and getting outside the box, my hats off to Cena on that. To get outside the box of your own character and everything that you’ve done and be that self aware and be okay with putting that out there for everybody and Bray as well, it was a crazy trip, and it just delivered something completely unique and business changing.”

Triple H has talked about the idea of a holding WrestleMania for more than one day before, and he elaborated more on the idea. He compared WrestleMania to a festival with all of the events that happen around WrestleMania.

“Well, I mean my opinion is my opinion, but I think it was much more enjoyable than the eight-hour extravaganza,” Triple H admitted. “I think at some point that is probably what it should be. It’s just become so big. When you think about it, in a way, it started out as a concert that ended up being a festival, and it’s this week-long thing. When you think about it in that manner now, you know, the Thursday would have been Hall of Fame, Friday was SmackDown, Saturday was going to be Takeover, Sunday would have been WrestleMania [and] Monday would have been RAW. It’s a week-long festival, and I think that big main-stage attraction needs to be those two nights and it’d be this weekend of events.

“I do think that’s probably a change that that out of chaos comes the genius and maybe that is the genius of it. And I know there’s been people saying that for a period of time, but that’s a major shift, and it doesn’t come easy. I think people in the world look at stuff like that. They go, ‘why don’t they just make it two nights?’ Yeah, because that’s really easy. There you go two nights.”

Source: After The Bell podcast via Wrestling Inc.

Triple H Announces Special WWE NXT Episode From The WWE Performance Center, Tickets Quickly Go

The March 11 WWE NXT episode on the USA Network will air live from the WWE Performance Center in Orlando.

Triple H appeared after this week’s NXT episode at Full Sail University and announced the special Fan Appreciation Night event for March 11.

WWE is unable to run at Full Sail on March 11 because the school will be hosting their annual Hall of Fame Week from March 8-13, with an event being held that Wednesday at the NXT Arena.

Tickets to the Fan Appreciation Night at the Performance Center were given out for free, and are already gone. The pre-sale for the free tickets began tonight after NXT on the USA Network went off the air, but all tickets were gone in less than 10 seconds, according to a correspondent in attendance. The event is already told out, unless they released another set of tickets at 12:15am ET later tonight, but it’s not likely.

This will be the second time NXT has ran at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando as the Halftime Heat 2019 event also took place at the facility. That match saw Ricochet, The Velveteen Dream and Aleister Black defeat NXT Champion Adam Cole, Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano.

Source: Wrestling Inc.

Triple H Reveals WWE Draft Trade On Backstage, Talks Bruce Prichard Replacing Eric Bischoff

Triple H appeared on last night’s WWE Backstage preview show on FS1 to reveal the big “blockbuster trade” that has been teased since Monday’s RAW.

Speaking with hosts Renee Young and WWE Hall of Famer Booker T, Triple H revealed that Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross will be moving to SmackDown from RAW.

There had been a lot of talk about Cross and Bliss being drafted to RAW as singles competitors on last Friday’s SmackDown. They are now officially back together as a tag team on the roster.

There’s no word yet on if RAW will receive picks from the trade, but it seems like they should.

Triple H credited the draft trade to Bruce Prichard, the new SmackDown Executive Director.

As noted, WWE announced earlier today that Prichard is replacing Eric Bischoff as the blue brand Executive Director. Bischoff is no longer with WWE. Triple H spoke about Prichard’s new WWE role and said he doesn’t know all the details, but he is excited for it. He praised Prichard for his experience, and said he thinks with Prichard at the helm of SmackDown, he can bring the show into the realm that it needs to be, to be worthy of being on FOX and everything that comes along with it. Triple H called the Executive Director change a great move and said he believes Prichard will do amazing things in the role. He also said the way he understands it, Prichard is already making big moves for the blue brand behind-the-scenes. That’s when he revealed the trade with Cross and Bliss.

https://twitter.com/WWEonFOX/status/1184265973207048192

The WWE Backstage show will officially premiere on Tuesday, November 5 at 11pm ET on FS1. Tonight’s broadcast is a special preview show.

Below is a current look at the WWE rosters from the 2019 Draft picks, not including Superstars who are currently inactive. Stay tuned for updates on the free agents.

RAW: WWE Universal Champion Seth Rollins, Charlotte Flair, Andrade and Zelina Vega, EC3, Eric Young, Sin Cara, WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Asuka and Kairi Sane, Rusev, Aleister Black, Cedric Alexander, Humberto Carrillo, Erick Rowan, Buddy Murphy, Jinder Mahal, WWE 24/7 Champion R-Truth, Samoa Joe, Akira Tozawa, Shelton Benjamin, Rey Mysterio, Titus O’Neil, Liv Morgan, RAW Women’s Champion Becky Lynch, The OC, Drew McIntyre, Randy Orton, Ricochet, Bobby Lashley, Kevin Owens, Natalya, RAW Tag Team Champions The Viking Raiders, The Street Profits

SmackDown: WWE Champion Brock Lesnar, The New Day, Apollo Crews, Drew Gulak, Heath Slater, Tamina Snuka, The B Team, Daniel Bryan, Bayley, WWE Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura and Sami Zayn, Ali, Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode, Carmella, The Miz, King Baron Corbin, Chad Gable, Elias, Roman Reigns, “The Fiend Bray Wyatt, Sasha Banks, Braun Strowman, Lacey Evans, SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Revival, Lucha House Party, Heavy Machinery, Nikki Cross and Alexa Bliss

Free Agents: Cesaro, AOP, Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder, Dana Brooke, Drake Maverick, Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville, Luke Harper, Mojo Rawley, No Way Jose, Sarah Logan, The IIconics

Backstage News On WWE Establishing Permanent RAW And SmackDown Rosters, Triple H’s WWE NXT Vision

WWE officials have been discussing a new Draft concept to build permanent RAW and SmackDown rosters, according to Dave Meltzer in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

It was previously reported that there would be no major changes to the rosters ahead of the SmackDown Fox premiere on October 4, just some minor changes. This new directive was made by Vince McMahon.

Meltzer noted that plans are being kept quiet as USA Network and Fox representatives will be the first ones to know when the new concept is decided on.

There’s no concrete word yet on WWE NXT Superstars being used on RAW to build their names ahead of the NXT USA premiere on September 18, but there have been arguments for and against this idea. Some feel that this will give the NXT talents the exposure they need to help build the USA Network launch, but the other argument is that any kind of “cross-pollination” on RAW would establish the NXT stars as secondary level talents, which they would want to avoid right now.

Bringing the NXT Superstars to RAW ahead of the big premiere could also lead to more interference from the vision that NXT higher-ups have. It was described to the Observer that Triple H’s dream of creating a legitimate third brand of his own just came true, but now he’s faced with the task of “playing defense” to keep Vince and Kevin Dunn’s influence away from NXT.

Source: Wrestling Inc.

Triple H Says WWE NXT Will Only Get Better On USA Network

Below is new video of Triple H talking about WWE NXT moving to the USA Network.

As noted, the brand will premiere on USA on Wednesday, September 18 and will air live each week from 8-10pm ET, at Full Sail Live. WWE is reportedly making around $1 million per episode for NXT on the USA Network. The show will still air on the WWE Network, on Thursdays at 8pm ET, and Takeover specials will remain exclusive to the WWE Network.

Triple H was asked to describe the last 7 years and what it took to get to this point. He talked about how NXT went from needing main roster Superstars to create a show each week, to the brand becoming white hot on its own, selling out arenas and tours across the world. Triple H ended the interview by saying this is just the start for NXT, and the show will only get better with the move to the USA Network.

“Yeah, I mean it’s been a crazy journey, something that I don’t think most people thought would ever happen,” he said. “But this was kind of the vision of it. You know, from starting out with a partnership with Full Sail University and having to bring in main roster stars to get us to be able to have enough people to put the show on each week, to where they got to the point where they didn’t want to see those main roster stars anymore, to where we stopped calling it the main roster because NXT was just becoming white hot when we didn’t even have a distribution home for it. It was seen internationally but here in the US it was just clips.

“We were the first live show on the WWE Network. NXT Arrival was the very first sort of Takeover that we did. … So, the very first live product seen on the WWE Network. A year after that we were selling out, not just Full Sail University, but selling out the Barclays Center for Takeovers. Over that journey, selling out all over the globe, selling out live events all over the globe, Takeover after Takeover after Takeover, and now the opportunity to go on the #1 network in television, the USA Network, our partners, and I couldn’t be happier, I couldn’t be more proud.”

He continued, “I said it in the beginning, this was going to be their brand [the fans], that’s why we hashtag ‘#WeAreNXT’. As good as NXT is now, it’s only going to get better. This is going to expose a new side of NXT that people haven’t been able to see yet. I can tell you this about it – as excited as everybody is about this moment, this is the start. This isn’t the destination, this is the start. This brand is just getting started. So, I look forward to that day, I look forward to going live, and I look forward to showing the world that we are NXT.”

Source: Wrestling Inc.

Triple H Teams With The Club In Japan (PHOTOS)

Triple H was an honorary member of The Club last night in Tokyo during a tag match, and the WWE exec said it was “too sweet.”

The WWE live event match in Japan featured Triple H teaming with AJ Styles, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson against Baron Corbin, Drew McIntyre, Bobby Lashley and Samoa Joe.

Hunter picked up the win for his team after hitting the Pedigree on Corbin.

After the show was over, Triple H tweeted: “An amazing night in . A city I’ve performed in countless times with an incredible roster of [WWE] Superstars. An honor to give Mr. Shinma his  Legacy Award and team with The Club. …and if this was one of my last times to perform in Tokyo… it was .”

Check out some of the photos and a video below.

https://twitter.com/AnnetteReid24/status/1144616481348567041

Below are results from the show:

WWE presented Hisashi Shinma with a Legacy Award for being inducted as a Legacy member of their Hall of Fame.

– United States Champion Ricochet defeated Cesaro to retain his title

Ricochet retained with a flying headscissors into a pin.

– Braun Strowman defeated Robert Roode

Strowman won with a powerslam. Roode ended up being put through a table after the match.

– The Kabuki Warriors (Asuka & Kairi Sane) defeated Women’s Tag Team Champions The IIconics (Peyton Royce & Billie Kay) in a non-title match

Asuka took out Kay with a hip attack, then Sane hit the InSane Elbow on Royce to win. As a stipulation of their win, Asuka & Sane will get a Women’s Tag Team title shot in the future.

– Triple H, AJ Styles, Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson defeated Baron Corbin, Bobby Lashley, Drew McIntyre & Samoa Joe

Triple H got the pin on Corbin after hitting a Pedigree.

– Raw Tag Team Champions The Revival (Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder) defeated Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins to retain their titles

Gallows & Anderson came out after, building to tomorrow’s show.

– Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch defeated Alexa Bliss to retain her title

Lynch submitted her with the Dis-Arm-Her.

– Universal Champion Seth Rollins defeated Shinsuke Nakamura to retain his title

Rollins retained after hitting two superkicks and a Curb Stomp. He tweeted after the match: “Pro wrestling is so f’n cool. Thank you @ShinsukeN. Thank you #WWETokyo.”

Sources: Pro Wrestling Sheet and Wrestling Observer

Triple H Fires Shots At AEW During WWE Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony (Video)

Triple H used the DX WWE Hall of Fame speech to fire shots at All Elite Wrestling.

While joking around about being corporate these days, Triple H said apparently these days if you put the “EVP” title in front of someone, it makes them feel important. AEW’s Executive Vice Presidents include Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks.

Triple H then called AEW a “piss-ant” company after DX joked around about not being able to name Vince McMahon during their speech. Billy Gunn said Vince couldn’t fire him anymore, a reference to Gunn working for AEW.

The Gunn joke led to fans in the audience doing an “AEW” chant. Triple H responded, “Billy, let’s be honest. He would buy that piss-ant company just to fire you again.”

Everyone laughed at that reference and another line from WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels. When joking about always counting on Gunn to under-deliver, Michaels said, “You can always count on ‘ol Billy Gunn to over-promise and under-deliver. We thank you for being out here and being ‘All In’.”

You can hear Triple H’s “piss-ant” line below:

https://twitter.com/coupdebanks/status/1114715221111631872

Source: Wrestling Inc.

Triple H Announces New “Can’t Miss” WWE Studio Show For FS1 To Premiere Later This Year

Triple H appeared on Fox Sports this morning to announce that WWE will premiere a new studio show on FS1 this fall. The discussion show will air on Tuesday nights.

It was noted that more details on the studio show will be announced soon, including the premiere date and the weekly timeslot. It was noted that there will be familiar faces on the show, from the past and present.

WWE SmackDown will jump to Fox beginning Friday, October 4. It’s been rumored that more WWE programming could be included in the new deal with Fox and WWE has wanted to do a studio show for some time now.

Triple H said this studio show is something he’s wanted to do for a long time.

“This is something I’ve wanted to happen for a long time,” Triple H revealed. “I think this is the perfect opportunity for it. A studio show, for us, it kind of, because of the sports entertainment aspect of it, it’s an endless show where you’re talking about the athletic component of it, it’s also an entertainment… where you’re talking about where things are going, the storylines and the characters all of it. This is going to be one of those shows, that if you’re a WWE fan, across the board, this is the show that will be ‘can’t miss’ because it’s going to talk about everything you love, in a way you can’t get anywhere else.”

Triple H continued, “To take people deeper into the personal lives and the day-to-days of what goes on behind-the-scenes to being a WWE Superstar, and anything that goes with it. That success, that failure, that heartbreak, that sorrow, that elation of WrestleMania moments, all of it. To see that all take place here, but in a way that’s never been shown before. I can’t wait for this.”

Source: Wrestling Inc.