Triple H On AEW Competing With WWE, Most Important Thing For WWE In The Next 5 Years, Building New Stars

In a recent edition of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Triple H discussed AEW competing with WWE, building new stars, WWE’s five-year plan, considering retirement, and more. You can read his comments below.

On having new competition with AEW: “It keeps you fresh and strong. When you look back over this, and I’m not gonna belittle anybody’s anything because that’s not the intent. But when you look back at a track record of a company that can shift pivot and move. It might take time, and it doesn’t happen on a Thursday. It just takes time effort and there’s a lot of pieces to move. But a company that historically, over and over again that has recreated itself, reinvented itself, stayed relevant to the next wave as it was coming in, and shifting with that and being able to ebb and flow. It is the strength of this company. People will talk about hard work, and anybody that can outwork Vince McMahon, god bless them. He’s worn out more people than I can count, trust me. It’s what we do. I would put my money on this. People ask me a lot of times did I ever contemplate leaving in the Monday Night Wars to go someplace else. I said I’ve been there and I’ve been here. Once I met Vince and saw that level of passion, dedication, and everything else. There was no way this guy was losing. Absolutely no way. It’s awe-inspiring. He will pivot, shift, and put the people around him he needs to pivot and shift, and it will work.”

On the importance of building the next generation of stars: “You continue to put talent out there, you continue to build the stars the way we always have. But again, it doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen on a dime. Sometimes it’s not the person that you think. You mention the late 90s and the plethora of talent here, but if you had gone back a few years prior to that and taken a couple of the stars that were on top then and moved them to the side – which happened – you would have said ‘Oh my god, this company has nothing.’ And then you flip forward, when Stone Cold Steve Austin was brought into the company, he wasn’t brought in as the guy who was gonna save the company. Right up until that happened, people were going “Ehh, I don’t know.’ With The Rock, certainly when he came in the door, a lot of potential and hope. But that first run wasn’t what he or anyone else thought it was going to be. And there were a lot of people who were like ‘Well, he’s done.’ And Foley and you can go on and on. If you had gone shortly before that when Nash and Hall and Bret were leaving and if you would’ve said ‘Who’s the next one?’ I don’t think you would’ve picked that group of people.”

On the most important thing for WWE in the next five years: “Obviously, we have to continue to put out the best product possible. Again, in this moment when you look at arenas that are empty and talk about how important the crowd is – it’s the most important thing we have. Making sure there’s a wealth of talent coming in the door and that we are delivering something that our fans are enjoying. And that’s an ebb and a flow, but we have to stay on top of that for sure. After that, I think it’s the growth potential of what this company can be and become as a media company. When you look at the rest of the world – to expand into those markets. Because of geography in the past, we’ve only been able to go in there for a one-off or something and come back to do television. So localizing in those places becomes very big. Sometimes especially in the US, you tend to think about just the US. But when you look outside at India, just the potential alone. There are 1.5 billion people there and we’re the second biggest sport in India outside of cricket, and cricket is like a religion. There are opportunities for us there, we’re firmly planted there and everything else. We have a long 25-plus year track record in that market, but we can get in there much deeper and create opportunities in ways that we never have before because of technology and everything else.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit The Bill Simmons Podcast with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.