Triple H on having to pivot in WWE: “If you lose your quarterback… there is no backup Cody Rhodes”

Sometimes it’s, you know, when you’re putting stuff together in your mind—Dusty Rhodes used to say this all the time to me—that in your mind you see things 100%. If you can get 70% of that to come out on the screen, that’s a grand slam.

In your mind, you picture it perfectly. In execution, it’s different. There are a million variables that can change it, that bring it down a notch or two or three or twenty—whatever it is. So things turn out differently. Fans begin to react to things differently. What you thought you had locked in four months ago is not the path anymore—the path has changed.

The other thing about our business is, unlike a sport, as bad as it is—if you lose your quarterback, if you lose your first-string offensive lineman, if you lose your star center or guard in the NBA—you have a second-string guy to back them up. And you hope those second-string guys are pretty good.

There is no backup Cody Rhodes. There is no backup Randy Orton. There’s no backup Roman Reigns. There’s no backup CM Punk.

It’s different because it’s the individual attraction. Unlike a television show, even if you put the sports and entertainment side together, there’s always the factor of the human being.

So you can write the greatest script in the world to get you to the ultimate battle scene, and then right before that scene, the star of the show gets injured.

There’s no waiting until he’s uninjured to shoot the final scene. It’s live, and it’s going to happen one way or the other. Whether you want to do it or not on that particular date, the variables are so many—and they’re so varied—that you have to, at any given time, be ready for anything and be able to move on from anything.

It doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean it’s not the most frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced. But it’s just part of what we do.”