During a recent appearance on “The Press Box” podcast, WWE Chief Content Officer Triple H revealed that numerous talents have contacted him about appearing on the premiere episode of WWE RAW on Netflix. He said,
“Yeah, that’s every day. That has nothing to do with Netflix. It has to do with everything we do. So if there’s something big coming up, ‘I just don’t understand why I’m not on that PLE. Why wouldn’t I be on that PLE?’ It’s like, well, the story that you have doesn’t get there. Not everybody’s going to be on everything, not everybody’s going to be…I’ve had that conversation with every single talent about everything we do. Rightfully so. If you want to be in this business, you want to be big, you want to have opportunities, you want to be on all the biggest stuff. I’ve had the same conversation with 100 people about this first episode of Netflix, like guys, it’s one show. It’s one show. We’re gonna try to touch on a lot of people, but there’s only so much real estate within the show. If you’re not gonna be on that show, maybe you’ll be on the second one. Maybe you’ll be on the third one. You’re gonna be on these shows, but we can’t put all 200 talent or whatever we have on one show. It’s just not gonna work.”
When asked about scheduling matches for major events with limited time and whether he was concerned about overstretching himself, “The Game” responded with,
“We’ve sort of been working through this for a long time. Look, is there worry? There’s worry about everything for me on where this goes and what it does. But I can not recall a time in the business, least on my end, where we sort of, if you look at the last few months, you did Survivor Series, you came right off of that with Saturday Night’s Main Event, you did the holidays. Once you got on the other side of the holidays, well, you have Netflix on the sixth. Great, but you also don’t want SmackDown to feel like less than, so I wanted that first episode of SmackDown of the new year to feel big as well. So you’ve got [Netflix on] the sixth. Well, yeah, but I still have another show on Friday this week. Then when talent are talking about it, or the writers are talking about it, it’s like, well, geez, I really should be on the episode, I should be on that first episode on the sixth. Well, we have an episode on the 13th too. You’re going to be on the second episode, and you’re going to main event the second episode instead of being a piece of the first episode. So it’s trying to space that stuff all out, and how do you get ahead of the storytelling to try to make sure that there’s enough storytelling to blend across things. When fans look at it, and they’re like, ‘I don’t understand why this match, it’s right there, why didn’t they put that on that card? It’s ridiculous.’ Yeah, it’s also a three-hour show, and there’s one seven days later. So just that one we’ll hold a week, and you’ll get to this one. I think it’s also okay like we’re doing things now. You see us promoting Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens for the Rumble, and we’re not even past January 6th yet. We also have all the episodes in between and another Saturday Night’s Main Event before we even get to the Rumble. Those are the puzzles to try to put together. So when you start thinking about that, all these episodes leading up to, or leading up to and beyond Netflix, all the SmackDown episodes, it can’t feel like it becomes the B show with all the buzz around Netflix.”
Triple H was also asked to comment on how much of WWE WrestleMania 41 was “pinned down,” and he responded with the following,
“If the last 30 years of my life have taught me anything, it’s nothing is pinned down. There used to be a saying here all the time, show me the stone it’s written on. All of this stuff, I like to do a lot of creative in whiteboards. So when we get together for long-term creative, there might be ten whiteboards down a row in a long room, and we’re all sitting at a table because at any point in time, you’re looking, does that make sense? It’s like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle. You have to keep going back to the box to look at the picture you’re trying to put the pieces in. You write something, like I said, you can have it written out, and Bronson Reed breaks his ankle. I’ll give it to you this way. This Friday night, we had the show written up, and it was really good, and it moved a lot of stories forward, and then we get word talent are injured, and it’s, went in for an MRI and it’s worse than we thought, and he’s out. Okay, alright. So we got to rewrite that whole storyline. Then we’re literally finishing the production meeting, and we just said, all right guys, have a great day, and my phone buzzes, and I look down, and it’s medical, and I get the, ‘So-and-so has flu really bad. We’re telling them don’t come to the building and sending them home. Cannot work.’ Okay [laughs]. Everybody, don’t go anywhere, sit back down because we gotta rewrite that aspect of the show. That’s constant. So do I have in my mind an idea of…do we have WrestleMania written out? Yes. Do I think it will change? 100%. Do I have a plan B? Yes. Do I have a plan C? Yes. Do I think those are completely relevant? No. There could be changes where all of that stuff at any given moment, we just do like, all right, erase all the whiteboards, and let’s start over. It’s just the nature of the beast. It’s what we do. You can never just say, this is it, and this is what we’re doing. We talked about talking to talent about things earlier. It’s one of the risks you take of, you tell talent something. No matter how much you say to them, ‘Hey, this is what we’re thinking. This could change, but here’s what we’re thinking.’ If they like that, whatever changes is now catastrophic to them. No matter whether the end result ends up being better it not, they’re just devastated because in their mind, that is locked in stone, that is where they’re headed, and now no matter how that is, somewhere in their minds, they’re feeling, ‘Why am I always getting screwed over? I don’t understand.’ It’s nothing. It’s just what it is.”
