Triple H recently spoke to the New York Post to promote the Undertaker: Last Ride documentary, which is airing on the WWE Network. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
On his relationship with The Undertaker:
We have a close relationship that I think was built on mutual respect for each other, but also I think we have a lot in common from a human being standpoint, the way we look at things, the way we approach things. I think there is also an understanding of, we were, it sounds cliche, a slightly different generation of performer. I think that we just had that same mentality of stuff at kind of a moment in time over the past five years, or so it feels like, we have been going through the same, to a degree, some of the same doubts and fears and anxiousness and nervousness around our careers and how do you get to the end. We’ve shared a lot of that. We’ve shared a lot of time in the ring. We shared a lot of time together outside the ring and I just think there’s a lot of respect there.
Whether they’ve talked about retiring together:
We haven’t talked as much about how mine ends. When you’re at the level The Undertaker was at, that Mark was at, the business is so all-consuming. And it becomes so much a part of everything that you are. I’m not saying that it’s all that you are, because I think Mark would say he’s a lot of things. He’s a dad. He’s a husband. But, everything else that you are the business is so all-consuming that it’s your passion. He talks about it. It’s your mistress in someways. It’s chasing those dragons in those moments because there is no feeling like it in the world. But for him, when it goes away, when he’s not in the business he’s on the outside of the business. He goes home with his family. He does his stuff. He’ll come around and he’ll do things and we’ll talk about it and he’ll be involved slightly but he’s not day-to-day. For me, it’s still day-to-day in that obsession with it, if you want to call it that, is still there at all times. I’ve just channeled it in a different manner. So it’s a little bit of a different scenario, we’ve certainly discussed it for sure, but there’s moments for me when I first began to realize … To me, he’s The Undertaker, he’s Mark Calaway. There is nobody bigger, more respected in the business. When I first started to see that he had the doubts and the fears and all those things it was mind-boggling to me. I was like, how can he doubt himself? But it’s like, oh my God, he’s going through the same stuff I am. It’s like holy cow I had no idea. But then it humanized. In a lot of ways I always … like Mark and I over the years would talk a lot of family, not just the wrestling business. But to me as much as I knew him and saw it, the rest of his life was the same as everybody else’s there was the moments when I thought, Well he’s The Undertaker. He has no doubts. He’s the friggin’ Undertaker. What would he have to possibly doubt that he’s going to go out there at WrestleMania .. why would he even for a second think, ‘Boy I hope this goes well’ (Laughs). That was mind-boggling to me, but it was the same things I was going through and having those same anxieties and fears. And to hear him say it almost made me go, “OK, I’m not out of my mind.” Because in some ways he’s that inhuman character and it never dawned on me that he had that. Once I saw it, then I could see it in him. I just would see him trying to get inside his own head so we would talk about it more and more.
On Vince McMahon forgetting to initially book them for WrestleMania 17:
There were a lot of things brought up for me for that year, but things weren’t panning out. We weren’t in the right spot for this, this ended up changing, this guy gets injured. Things move. You’re into your stuff and you see it (WrestleMania) coming. One day Mark and I just happened to be talking and I’m like, “What are you doing for ‘Mania?” And he was like, “Man, I got nothing. They were supposed to do this, it fell apart. I was supposed to do that, it fell apart.” We were in the same boat and the two of us at like the same time we’re like, ”Ah, hey you want to work ‘Mania?” We went to Vince and if I remember correctly we went to him together, I could be wrong. For me the moment I was like, “Oh my God I could work with Taker at ‘Mania. This would be phenomenal.” It’s nobody’s fault because now I can see it from the other side. But when you’re on the other side, you’re like, “How the frick can they have nothing for me at WrestleMania?” And how could they have nothing for The Undertaker, which actually made me feel better. We both went in with a chip on our shoulder, like we’re taking this show and we’re gonna do everything we can to steal the show on this one and make sure they don’t ever think twice about not booking us, again. I remember having this conversation with Mark going into it a little bit, just God, man this is so short. I wish we had more time to build this up and somewhere Mark looked at me and saying, “Dude, I usually get like Giant Gonzalez or something like that. You know how excited I am right now?” Which made me feel good.
How special WrestleMania 27 and 28 were:
It was incredible. I don’t think it was until after they had the first that we all kind of got together and started saying like, hey, what if we booked an almost yearly comeback thing and it was sequential if Shawn does it and then I take up for Shawn and I want to finish what ended up putting Shawn away. Now I get there and I can’t get it done but I do what hasn’t been done before which was him in that third one getting carted out for the first time ever. He beat me, but he couldn’t walk out of the match and all that, legitimately I think. And then we get to the other side of it and get to the hell in a cell and for us … it’s hard to look at anything and go here’s a four-year story in the business. That first match between Taker and Shawn is, this gets thrown around a lot especially right now, the greatest match ever, but it arguably was.There’s a lot of pressure [at WrestleMania 28] but I’m out there with Taker, I’m out there with Shawn. For us, and our relationships and our respect and everything that we had for each other, man, it was like this whole storybook series. I talk about it a lot about the moment of us all standing at the top stage is one of the biggest moments of my career. I’ll never forget that feeling in that moment.