Paul “Triple H” Levesque confirms that Vince McMahon was “still directing traffic from the side” prior to WrestleMania 40
While appearing on Cody Rhodes’ podcast, Paul “Triple H” Levesque was asked whether he considers WrestleMania 40 to be the first WrestleMania fully under his control as WWE’s Chief Content Officer. Here was Triple H’s response…
“I think so. Though, you know, there was—and again, this is where I’m terrible with times—but it’s not like one day, ‘here, it’s yours,’ and everything else went away, right? There were so many aspects to that of, you know, ‘Hey, Vince [McMahon] is stepping away, you’re going to take this spot,’ but he’s still chiming in, he’s still meeting with me all the time, and he’s still directing traffic from the side. There’s no real clear moment. It’s a weird situation. There’s no real clear moment for me, but I would consider it that, yes.’
The only thing that is difficult in that transition—you’re trying to, at the end of the day, when people are like, ‘Yeah, but it’s your decision, right?’ You have to defend your position, and you have to be able to sell that to people and explain it to people.
If it’s a little bit not your position, or a little bit like, ‘Well, why did this happen?’ you don’t want to say, ‘Well, because it wasn’t totally my decision.’ Not because you don’t want to seem like you don’t have that power, but you have to position it that way.
It’s just such a complex situation. There are so many aspects to what we do, even just on a regular, general, daily basis, where you’re putting something out there and, in some manner, you’re like, ‘If, in an ideal world, I would do this.’ But we don’t live in an ideal world—we live in a realistic world where I can’t do that because of this, and I can’t do that because of that.
It can be something as simple as two people not getting along, or knowing someone has an injury that you can’t put out there. Whatever the moment, the sequence, the scenario is, there are so many factors to all of it.
I wish it was as simple as people think when they say, ‘Why don’t they just do this?’ I really wish it was that simple.”