MR. TITO: In Defense of Triple H and His WWE Creative Decisions Against the Online Cynical Wrestling Fanbase
So, everyone is complaining about the January 5, 2026 edition of WWE RAW on Netflix. Given that this was the 1 year anniversary of RAW launching on Netflix and also the 1 year anniversary of both the Rock and Roman Reigns appearing on that first episode of Netflix RAW, WWE fans unfortunately had their expectations set too high for the 1/5/26 episode. Afterward, all I heard was complaints about the Stranger Things tie-ins, too many women’s matches, Bron Breakker not defeating CM Punk for the WWE Title, too many commercials, etc.
Much of the complaints about the 1/5/26 RAW were reflective of many nitpicks that wrestling fans had about 2025, most of which is placing blame on Chief Content Officer Triple H who oversees the Creative Team and Talent Relations departments. Triple H has gone from being hailed as the “savior” for his 2022-2024 creative work to now the scapegoat for how corporate WWE has become and its impact on both creative and talent.
Thus, I’m coming out of hiding to add some perspective to highly cynical WWE fans right now who are (a) too spoiled with the quality of the WWE product we’ve had since mid-2022 and (b) those too quick to place blame on Triple H rather than the TKO corporate overlords.
And let’s get one thing straight before I dare discuss Triple H… I have been a longtime critic of his both as a wrestler and as an Executive Vice President of the WWE. I’ve been a columnist since October 1998 which means that my written opinions pre-date Triple H’s 1999 main event push and also pre-date his relationship, both on and off screen, with Stephanie McMahon. Yes, I’m THAT OLD. It was my opinion that during mid-2000 through 2005 that Triple H leaned into his relationship with Stephanie and used that to cement his position in the main event. Those 2002-2003 years, especially, were dreadful with the way he buried Kane, Booker T, Rob Van Dam, Scott Steiner, and others. I didn’t like how he always got the better of Randy Orton, too.
Then, when Triple H became a backstage executive, first as an advisor to Vince and then overseeing Talent from mid-2012 through early 2020 and Creative from late 2013 through the Fall of 2019, I thought that he had a major “conflict of interest” when trying to act as a part-time wrestler and as everyone’s boss. He ruined CM Punk’s career during 2011 and I was THAT guy who called Triple H with the famous “I Told You So – CM Punk was Buried by Triple H” column written after that Night of Champions 2011 PPV. I then felt that Triple H meddled in Daniel Bryan’s 2013-2014 momentum and I feel that HHH’s antics caused Punk to leave the WWE. I also didn’t like that Triple H got the better of Brock Lesnar in their match at Wrestlemania and then made himself WWE Champion heading into another Wrestlemania against Roman Reigns. His conflict of interest, I felt, didn’t allow him to focus more strongly on Creative, which he let Vince McMahon micro-manage, and did a poor job managing the talent.
Read ANY of my columns during the 2010s and you’ll see that I was HEAVILY critical of HHH’s work on talent and on creative. In particular with talent, I felt that his scouting department did a poor job finding good MALE wrestling talents and that his head trainer, Matt Bloom (Prince Albert aka A-Train aka Lord Tensai), was not training wrestlers properly. Bloom didn’t have charisma, lacked psychology, and couldn’t cut promos, so why on earth is he teaching that to younger wrestler trainees? He’s STILL THERE and continues to hamper up & coming WWE talents.
That said, Triple H as EVP of Talent and Creative was heavily micro-managed by Vince McMahon… Vince McMahon was TOO INVOLVED with the WWE during the 2010s and Triple H, like an obedient son-in-law who has been inside of Vince’s daughter, rolled over not to upset family. Thus, the overpushing of Roman Reigns as a green, inexperienced babyface main eventer was allowed to happen along with Brock Lesnar dominating the roster. Any NXT call-ups after 2012 were mowed over by Vince McMahon and given terrible gimmicks or introductions to fail almost instantly. While Triple H promoted many great female talents to the WWE roster, Vince McMahon only cared about pushing Charlotte Flair and the rest of the female roster bored him and Kevin Dunn unless they had other “assets” that they liked such as the Bella Twins, Lacey Evans, Carmella, or even Alexa Bliss.
And many of you SHARED this criticism of Vince McMahon micro-managing the talent and creative from his executives, often calling Vince “senile”, “out of touch”, or “bad for wrestling” while also calling for him to go. In fact, it’s my belief that All Elite Wrestling (AEW) had a great start from 2019-2021 because they were the anti-WWE promotion because of the way Vince McMahon ran his company with an obsolete business model of using and pushing talent. Those Roman Reigns years during the 2010s were HARD to get through…
But then during mid-2022, WWE had a major shocking change… Vince McMahon gets exposed for his Non-Disclosure Agreements signed with WWE employees and talents, up to a tune of $20 million, and Triple H returns to manage creative and talent. Without any Vince McMahon interference for a FULL latter half of the year during 2022, Triple H made various tweaks to the roster such as improving Seth Rollins as a character and main eventer, improving Cody Rhodes’s climb up the ladder (incorporating the Dusty Rhodes legacy, for example), and taking Sami Zayn from being humiliated by the Jackass crew at Wrestlemania 38 to injecting him into the Bloodline angle. Zayn made the Bloodline a thousand times better and placed legitimate emotion and conflict into the group that was absent before. Then, at Royal Rumble 2023, things blew up at the end when Zayn turned on his Bloodline buddies after they beatdown Kevin Owens. It was magic and the WWE grew exponentially towards Wrestlemania 39 for Zayn/Owens vs. Usos headlining Night 1 and Roman vs Cody headlining Night 2.
A few changes happened during 2023, however… Vince McMahon forced himself back into the WWE by using his # of WWE shares, along with influence on other shareholders, to force himself back onto the Board as Chairman again and to also change the make-up of the WWE Board of Directors as well. This forced co-CEO Stephanie McMahon, who stepped up during 2022 to help run the company, to leave the WWE and created a permanent family rift that remains to this day. On top of that, Vince put the WWE up for sale as Chairman and just in a few months, WWE sold itself to the Endeavor corporation who also owns Ultimate Fighting Championship. Endeavor, upon the completion of the sale, formed a corporation called “TKO” to manage and oversee both WWE and UFC.
With Vince back in the WWE during 2023 and also becoming Chairman of the TKO board, he meddled in WWE’s creative. As shown by unsealed lawsuit documents, Vince McMahon had a major hand in the creative decisions made for Wrestlemania 39. Always protective of Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar, Vince forced Roman to win at Wresltemania 39 and then on the RAW after Wresltemania, Cody was shoehorned into a feud immediately with Brock Lesnar. Lucky for Cody, the new Endeavor and TKO overlords for Vince pulled him out of WWE’s creative process in the months following Wrestlemania 39 which allowed Triple H to step-in and make improvements to his feud with Lesnar. Hence why SummerSlam 2023 was magical because the storyline got better between Cody and Brock and it made for a highly entertaining match. Brock Lesnar had such a great time with that feud and then that match that he shook Cody’s hand in a legitimate shoot afterward. After SummerSlam 2023, Triple H continued to push Cody Rhodes and the stage was set for a rematch at Wrestlemania 40.
So think about that… Triple H gets handed creative without any preparation or succession plans during mid-2022 and makes the Bloodline way better than it ever was with Sami Zayn. End of Royal Rumble was a major success and helps fuel Wrestlemania 39. Vince meddled with Wrestlemania 39 and the post-Wrestlemania 39 plans, but once Endeavor pushed Vince out of the picture, Triple H righted the ship by SummerSlam 2023 and we’re rolling again heading into 2024.
Then, Vince McMahon has to screw things up again. Throughout 2023, Vince and Endeavor are having ongoing discussions with The Rock. Rock has friends within Endeavor, whose employees managed athletes and actors in the past, while of course being close with the WWE family. Endeavor and Vince know that Rock vs. Roman would be money if they could convince Rock to return. The Rock, who has kind of become power hungry at this point (see DC Comics takeover attempt with Black Adam), begins negotiations to join the TKO Board of Directors during late 2023. During early 2024, however, it just so happens that Vince McMahon NDA settlement owner, Janel Grant, filed a public lawsuit against Vince McMahon for non-payment. Janel’s gruesome details of their affair turns heads and TKO forces Vince out as Board Chairman and pushes him to sell his converted TKO shares.
To counter bad publicity, Endeavor and TKO perform their first WWE creative takeover attempt… To offset Vince’s bad news, the Rock is announced that he joined the TKO Board of Directors and will officially make his in-ring return to wrestle Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania 40. There’s a problem because Triple H’s creative team already set a path in motion to have Cody Rhodes win the 2024 Royal Rumble and challenge Roman Reigns for the title. Because Triple H drew in fan emotions over Cody Rhodes overcoming the odds with Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam 2023 following the heartbreaking loss at Wrestlemania 39, online fans were outraged at the creative plans suddenly getting rejected and rebelled. This reaction forced WWE Creative to make a pivot to instead turn Rock into a heel, joining the Bloodline, and creating a tag match between Rock/Roman vs. Cody/Seth to headline night #1 and Roman Reigns vs. Cody Rhodes to headline night #2. While we were denied Rock vs. Roman, we were given 2 great matches that headlined both nights of arguably the best Wrestlemania ever in #40.
But after Wrestlemania 40, it gets tricky…
Between Wrestlemania 40 and SummerSlam 2024, we didn’t see Roman Reigns. He disappeared and took an extended summer vacation. One would think that he’d either want revenge on Cody and use his “rematch clause”, but also want to rejoin the roster to attack the “new” Bloodline of Jacob Fatu, Solo Sikoa, and the Haku brothers for attacking Paul Heyman at Madison Square Garden. He didn’t… Instead, he remained home until SummerSlam 2024. Then, he tried to feud with the “new” Bloodline which initially seemed as if they had someone pulling strings behind them. In fact, the very first Netflix RAW seemed to lean into the Rock revealing himself to be behind the “new” Bloodline and set up Rock vs. Roman at Wrestlemania 41, but that didn’t happen… Rock acted like a good guy on that early January 2025 episode of RAW and again disappeared to film more movie projects.
Wrestlemania 41 was in limbo… Suddenly, the WWE couldn’t rely on the Rock to appear. So, they did the best with what they had. They had Roman vs. CM Punk vs. Seth Rollins headline night #1 and a newly turned heel in John Cena vs. Cody Rhodes headline night #2. They were able to get the Endeavor warlords to convince the Rock to appear at Elimination Chamber 2025 to be in the angle with John Cena and that really sparked interest in John Cena’s career again as a well-executed heel turn. That heel turn sold about 10,000 to 15,000 more tickets at the EXPENSIVE Wrestlemania 41 event in Las Vegas… Excuse me, La$ Vega$.
Sure, the Cena heel turn fizzled out because as it turns out through 2025, wrestling fans actually appreciated John Cena. Many closeted Cena fans came out after years of claiming to hate “super Cena” only to appreciate him and then get highly emotional for his final match during December 2025’s Saturday Night’s Main Event show against Gunther.
As I mentioned before, the TKO Board changed as did the leadership of TKO. With Vince McMahon gone, the Endeavor folks now had a bigger say with WWE’s direction. Hence why through 2024 and especially 2025 you saw MORE sponsors plastered on WWE rings and all over WWE events. Bigger deals were made, such as the one with Fanatics for merchandise and then the Premium Live Events with ESPN+. Endeavor and TKO are balls-deep in corporate relationships, hence why Netflix’s RAW has tons of commercial breaks now and why PLE events are littered with commercials too. Furthermore, TKO’s corporate influence is also controlling how the WWE is operated. Many longtime WWE employee have been let go and much of WWE’s storylines are analytics driven with some testing of the use of artificial intelligence as reported and openly admitted by WWE officials.
However, there is a LONGTIME problem that remains and continues to impact the WWE to this day… They have TOO MUCH TELEVISION.
Sorry, but what helped KILL the Attitude Era was TOO MUCH EXPOSURE. Once WWE Smackdown arrived during late 1999, suddenly, you had 2 nights of 2-hour WWE shows to watch in addition to monthly 3-hour Pay Per Views to purchase. As the 2010s rolled, RAW became a 3-hour show… Now, soon, Smackdown will become a 3-hour show.
If you go back and watch WWE during the year 2000, you’ll start to notice a drop off in quality by mid-2000 and things began to cool down for the WWE. The Brand Split of 2002 made things briefly interested, especially when Paul Heyman made Smackdown interesting through early 2024. Then, WWE demoted Paul Heyman off of Smackdown’s creative team and following Wrestlemania 21 in 2005, John Cena was moved to RAW. Smackdown was treated as a secondary show and pretty much remained that way until 2019 when Smackdown was suddenly ON in over 100 million households with FOX. With Smackdown’s quality high again, as that’s where the Bloodline played, RAW’s quality dipped… Through early 2025, however, RAW received more attention because it was Netflix and Smackdown went to USA Network while remaining on Fridays.
You can go ahead and bash Triple H for RAW and especially Smackdown sucking, but this problem has existed for 25 years and I’ve covered it the entire time. Basically, RAW and Smackdown are INFOMERCIALS for you to PAY MONEY to see the REAL EVENTS that were called Pay Per Views (PPV) but are now called Premium Live Events (PLE) on streaming services. You’re a FOOL if you watch those shows weekly and waste 4-6 hours of your time for stuff that is recapped on YouTube, Social Media, or before these very PLE events. Why are you wasting your time with empty calorie programming? Having to fill 4-6 hours of RAW and Smackdown weekly + monthly PLEs + 4 quarterly Saturday Night’s Main Event shows is the system that he inherited and with the TV contracts in place, that system is LOCKED DOWN and is impossible to change.
Y’all started bashing Triple H during 2025, though… I cannot help but feel if Triple H just kept out of the political spotlight, he’d have less heat. Those photo ops with WWE Hall of Famer and 2-time President of the United States, Donald Trump, have created cause to bash Triple H. That and the increased corporate injections into the WWE product by TKO are also being blamed on Triple H, even though he has ZERO control over that aspect of the show. With the sponsorships everywhere and those companies expecting certain things to happen, it affects Triple H’s creative and takes the shows out of his control.
I then hear someone like former WWE, WCW, and TNA creative writer Vince Russo suggest that Triple H is “not qualified when it comes to creative”. Vince, of all people, should understand what Triple H is going through when dealing with corporate interests that are hamstringing creative decisions. While Russo had freedom in the WWE (at a price of being severely overworked), the executives at Time Warner and then AOL/Time Warner meddled and created phony standards and practices to limit what any creative person could do in WCW from 1998-2000. Thus, Russo should feel sympathetic and be able to relate to Triple H feeling the corporate TKO pressure just as Russo felt the corporate AOL/Time Warner corporate pressure. Sorry Vince, as I loved your 1997-1999 work in the WWE, but I’ll take Triple H’s 2022-2025 stuff over your 1999-2000 stuff any day of the week. I think he’s very qualified to do creative and he handles personal relationships far better than you did.
Now, where I agree with Vince Russo is maybe that Triple H is doing TOO MUCH for the WWE. Vince suggested demoting him to an agent or a producer, but I think that Triple H should remain overseeing the Live Event management and Creative Team while I believe Talent Relations should be given to someone else. I still struggle to see any long-term Main Eventers groomed by Triple H since he took over Talent Relations during mid-2012. He just doesn’t have a good eye for scouting talent and I really think that supporting Matt Bloom as lead trainer has failed him and many wrestlers. Hence, why I was sad that Jim Ross kept re-signing with AEW, as Ross could be brought in as a consultant to help re-construct developmental and scouting along with putting better trainers in place.
In other words, look at the NFL… Most teams have a General Manager, who assembles the talent, and a Head Coach who coaches up the players and calls plays on the field. They can work together, but they specialize in what they do. One finds players and the other strategizes with them. It’s rare in the NFL that a guy wearing both hat succeeds, as they often get burnt out from doing both tasks. I think that Triple H is wearing himself too thin by overseeing Creative and Talent.
However – WWE Creative will NEVER improve if they have both RAW and Smackdown weekly shows to fill.
Go back to late 1999… Getting back to Vince Russo, what was a driving factor on leaving the WWE? Having to write an extra 2-hour show with WWE Smackdown that was considered an equal to RAW. Vince McMahon coldly advised Vince Russo to “hire a nanny” so that Russo could write for both RAW and Smackdown shows. If handling RAW and Smackdown was too much during 1999-2000 for loaded WWE rosters for 2-hour shows, how is it any easier as 3-hour shows?
Sorry, folks, but WWE and wrestling in general will NEVER improve until it stops overexposing itself. There is TOO MUCH content on right now, as RAW and Smackdown are EMPTY CALORIE infomercial shows. Don’t watch them… Most of your sources of aggravation is how bad both RAW and Smackdown have become. So stop watching them, as only the PLEs matter.
When you have 4-6 hours of television plus 1 monthly PLE + 4 quarterly Saturday Night’s Main Event, you run out of “special match-ups” because in order to fill so many hours of shows, everybody eventually wrestles each other. Hell, CM Punk vs. Bron Breakker was given away on RAW and Breakker lost that match. That match-up is no longer special for any rematches due to the outcome and where it aired.
The EASY Button is to blame Triple H. I get it… He’s played the backstage politics game for many years and is now playing the real-life politics with his recent trips to the White House. BUT, he took over a very complex situation during June 2022 when Vince McMahon became a legal liability to the WWE Corporation with his disgusting NDA settlements being finally exposed. Rejoining the WWE unexpectedly, Triple H has done a fantastic job with creative especially when TKO and its board members aren’t meddling.
Has he been perfect? Of course not, but who can when trying to fulfill 4-6 hours of weekly RAW and Smackdown shows that are tied to TV contracts worth billions for the next 5-10 years?
Filling content for RAW and Smackdown IS THE PROBLEM, not Triple H.
I would take WWE’s PLEs from 2022 through 2025 versus WWE’s PPVs and PLEs from 2010 through 2021 any day of the week. Again, I remember how much you complained about those Vince McMahon micro-managed 2010-2021 years. Tito never forgets.
I know, I’m sounding like a broken record defending Triple H and the WWE… But I’ve covered both the WWE and Triple H since October 1998. I have past history to reflect on and I realize that WWE used to suck a lot more years ago and Triple H is better at creative than OLDER Vince McMahon. Plus, there aren’t any stacks of NDA agreements for Triple H.
But damn, many of you have selective memories… 2010-2021 were NOT fun years for the WWE and had tons of talent and creative problems that were micro-managed and made worse by Vince McMahon.
WWE is better without Vince and could be worse if Triple H wasn’t there.
WWE will only improve from LESS TKO corporate intervention and reducing the number of shows or hours of content per week. It’s impossible to make RAW, Smackdown, and PLEs fresh and exciting each month.
Given the TKO meddling and having to manage content for RAW/Smackdown/PLEs, Triple H is doing a fantastic job and should be appreciated by WWE fans.
Online fans need to grow balls and begin to hold the TKO corporation accountable for HIGHER ticket prices for WWE events, price gouging on WWE merchandise, forcing fans into expensive streaming subscriptions, and shoving advertisements and sponsorships down their throats. On the price gouging for tickets and merch, why do you need to do that to your fans with the massive TV contracts in place and the bags of money that Saudi Arabia gives you? Christ…
And Triple H has nothing to do with these TKO decisions, other than delivering a QUALITY WWE product since June 2022 that has legitimately increased to WWE fanbase to exploit with higher prices. Netflix assessed and reviewed WWE’s 2022-2023 years before signing their big deal during early 2024, FACT, and those were Triple H’s booming years with creative.
Many of you watching the WWE have ZERO idea how hard it is to run a wrestling operation, let alone have corporate executives with high expectations breathing down the back of your neck. Try dealing with that following Vince McMahon’s footsteps and damage control while also being fresh off of heart surgery. Time for y’all to wake up, smell the roses, and appreciate HHH for his 2022-2026 tenure and be grateful because WWE SUCKED before he took over during mid-2022.
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