William Regal Recalls How Triple H’s “Vision” Changed The Face Of NXT

In a recent appearance with Distraction Pieces Podcast, William Regal reminisced about being involved in Triple H’s first efforts to rebrand WWE NXT and how the show took inspiration from other successful media series (via Wrestling Inc). Regal stated he was one of the first individuals to be privy to Triple H’s intentions in changing the impetus for and the themes within NXT. You can read a highlight and listen to the complete episode below.

On how and why NXT shifted away from its first roots: “As far as I know, I was the first person that knew anything about [the changes] apart from obviously his wife or Mr. McMahon. ‘What’s your vision?’ ‘This is my vision.’ ‘Well, let’s go and do it.’ And with this incredible team that we had around us to help — it was a small team. ‘Right, so, there’s the vision. Let’s go.’ I could say the vision; the vision was we were both watching, at the time, Boardwalk Empire. And he said, ‘You know when you see wrestling that people have whatever their ideas of wrestling are. … You can have funny stuff, obviously, the stories are going on and there can be all kinds of violence. Just well-told stories. You will never see anybody in any of those shows like Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire, from the smallest to the biggest of roles, that looks out of place. That’s the vision.'”