Triple H Comments on WWE NXT Takeover WarGames, Undisputed Era, Pat McAfee, Pat Patterson’s Influence, More
Here are some interview highlights of WWE’s NXT boss Triple H talking to Fox Sports this week. The focus of the discussion was on the NXT Takeover WarGames event on Sunday night.
Triple H spoke about what it’s like seeing The Undisputed Era foursome as a face group now instead of being heels:
“It’s been great. It’s interesting to see when you shift people from one side, so to speak, to the other. And it’s funny that you say they’re in there as babyfaces this time. I don’t know, like even as bad guys sometimes they were getting cheered as much as the good guys, right?”
“Darth Vader was a bad guy, but they loved the character and I think that always resonates within our business. But, how you handle that transition of, ‘Yeah, but now I’m supposed to be a good guy.’ Or, ‘Yeah, but now I’m supposed to be a bad guy,’ so you wholesale shift. That’s why it’s bad to tell somebody, ‘Hey, we’re going to turn you here.’ Because then they get it in their heads, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be a bad guy,’ and now they just start doing different stuff and you’re like, ‘None of this is working now.’ There’s that shift.”
“But, they’re all so talented. Roddy, Bobby, Kyle and Adam are just so talented and the thing that works for me with them, whether they’re good guys or bad guys, is the authenticity of it. The realness of it. That unit is that unit. They get along.”
Triple H on the great work that Pat McAfee has done with the NXT brand leading into WarGames:
“It’s a funny thing. Everybody’s busy and stuff, but even this week Pat’s down there prepping for everything and we have to find him studio space and everything else so he can continue to do all his other lines of things because those are all of the things he’s doing on the front side of this and this is sort of the additional thing. But it’s a cool, I don’t want to say cross-promotional thing, because in some mind Pat just is a WWE superstar. But, he has that crossover appeal and whether it’s the FanDuel stuff or his college game day stuff or his show or all of it. He brings a lot across the board.”
“He’s a busy dude, but he makes it all work. When it comes to being on the microphone and being a little heat seeking missile, Pat, he doesn’t have to go out and put on a performance, cause that’s just him. But it’s magic.”
“He’s the kind of guy, again, I think you just want to be around him if you’re friends with him and if you’re not friends with him you wanna kill him. And that’s kind of the magic, right?”
Triple H also had a lot of praise for Shotzi Blackheart, who is the captain of the women’s babyface take at Takeover WarGames:
“She’s amazing, as an in-ring performer, as all those things. But, there are certain people that their personalities that resonate in a different way. When you see them, you go like, ‘Eh,’ then you take a picture and you’re like, ‘Holy cow.’ On-screen it just changes, right? She just has an it-factor and I think that shines through when you just allow her to go out there and do her things.”
“You go back to pre-Halloween Havoc, Shotzi’s a different performer on a different level from where she is right now. She’s worked a few times in that period of time, it’s mostly been based on her just on-screen presence and personality. And that’s awesome, because you don’t find very many talent that can deliver it like that, with that skill set, you know?”
Lastly, here are some comments Triple H made about the late, great WWE Hall of Famer Pat Patterson:
“There isn’t a day that goes by, for me, at the Performance Center whether I’m talking to talent or producing television or that we’re writing something, or that I’m doing anything that has to do with WWE, that there isn’t some piece of Pat that is attached to it. A learning that I got from him. Something. It’s always there.”
“I said it Wednesday as we were all lining up to get onto the stage for the tribute to him. I said, ‘Everybody that wants to be a part of this, from crew to across the board, should come up here,’ and they all ran up there. I said, ‘I know there’s a lot of you that maybe never even met him, but trust me, this could be the most influential guy to your career that you will have an opportunity to make a tribute for.’”
“Because even if you never met him and you believe that, ‘Oh, I never really met Pat, he didn’t have anything to do with me,’ he does. ‘Cause everybody that came before you that’s teaching on any level, something that they had came from Pat’s learning tree. That’s not an exaggerated statement in any way.”
“I was lucky enough to get to work with him day in, day out whether as a talent and then as I was coming up and being in production meetings. There was a lot of times when Vince would look at Pat and I and go like, ‘Can you guys try to go to make this better?’ And where it wasn’t my stuff, it’d be a show I wasn’t even on or whatever, and Pat and I would go off in the stands and sit for a long time and try to think of different ways to do it. “
“Man, those times for me were so valuable. I can’t state it enough. I think so many of us wouldn’t be anywhere without his help and our success in the business.”
The interview also featured Triple H talking about WWE signing new talents, an injury update on Karrion Kross and more. Watch the full interview below.