Great interview. He makes a great point with the comparison to KFC and Apple. Looking at it from that business prospective I think it is a good move.

That is kind of sad that Triple H is describing himself as "in case of emergency break glass" as far as in ring goes. His presence, especially NOW in WWE is about as much of the "big time Raw" feeling as it gets now.

I'm also curious if the product will start to change soon. I find it hard to believe that Triple H is working on creating new stars just because the evidence, so far, has not been coming across on TV. I'd expect these young guys to be doing less of the completely scripted promos, because its painfully obvious in most cases & I think the case of guys like Morrison I get the feeling he'd have a much easier time getting over on the mic if they let him do his own thing. His segment with R-Truth in London I think was the best example, he was clearly just hitting everything they told him to, like bullet points for a kid giving an oral report in school and trying not to look at his index cards.

I'd just think Triple H would know better than anyone how important it is to find your own voice, and just how terrible going by the script goes.

Very interesting, thanks for posting!

KFC still calls their chicken "chicken". They don't call it "poultry nourishment."

Yeah, but KFC chicken is not always fried. Or from Kentucky.

Triple H sounds a lot more business-savvy than people give him credit for. And keep in mind, he and Steph just had 3 kids over the last several years. There's something to be said where they want to settle down with the family.

I guess we're so used to train wrecks like Hogan and Flair staying too long in the business, ruining their families, and tarnishing their legacies that when guys like Stone Cold, The Rock, Triple H, and Edge have stepped back while they could still go and focus on other things, it's a surprise. Most of them attribute it to managing their money well, something Hogan and Flair haven't done either.

Why didn't you ask him why WWE chose not to mention WM 17 HHH vs Undertaker?

RESPONSE FROM KE: Only had time for about three questions.

Good work, Kev. Real good interview; Trips answered well, too.

It's too bad that JBL couldn't appear at the anti-bullying rally. The irony would have been beautiful.

Okay...Levesque has always been articulate---but here's where I have a problem, which I see as what makes WWE not entertaining for me anymore----If you focus on wrestling in a wrestling company---giving fans what they want and paying attention to how wrestling works and should work---you tend to attract people to watch. People like wrestling if it's well done. Simple, right?
These people tend to buy merchandise if you offer it-because they like the wrestling---You tend to fill up live events at a profit, and can afford to make those events bigger and flashier and better---because they like the wrestling. The point is---the only thing you really have to do is provide good wrestling. Everything else, merchandising and live events, et al--follow subsequent to your wrestling. Some folks may be better with managing their success at it--but that's irrelevant to the matter at hand.
HHH's exposition doesn't seem to follow that model. He is speaking the Orwellian "newspeak" of modern business---which is basically empty rhetoric. "Offering our core competencies". In what, staging WRESTLING events?
HHH doesn't say this, but mentions "live events" generically----yet this isn't really something in and of itself.
There are plenty of subsidiary businesses already in existence to provide equipment and technical know-how for live events---but they are subsidiary for a reason---First you need an EVENT. People don't come to an arena for the hell of it. They're coming to see something. It can be music, or wrestling or other sports--it can even be Charlie Sheen---the point is that you'd better damned well not get away from the fact that without any of these, there IS no live event--That seems somewhat elementary--but HHH's convoluted gibberish doesn't recognize it.
Can you have a Super Bowl without a competition between two football teams?---From the million dollar commercials to the Chex Party-mix---it is all subsequent to the competition between the two teams--Do you see the NFL offering staging advice to Bob Dylan? And why would they? The NFL has the context to stage their events--Bob Dylan has the know how to stage his---they are all specific to the audience---which you tend to know better if they are YOUR audience. In this vein---witness the NFL's recent attempts in the past few years to stage a "concert"-like half-time show---the only people that really buy it are the football fans who already buy the halftime show as part of their spectacle---the rest of the world tends to skewer things like the Black Eyed Peas malfunctioning "Love" sign---or Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction". Concert-goers, as an audience, do not look seriously at the NFL's halftime debacles.
"Other entertainment"---as I've mentioned before---WWE Studios is putting out movies of questionable quality that have only one main drawing point---they feature as their stars WWE wrestlers---and they can't claim the Rock. Dwayne Johnson got over in Hollywood independently, on his own talent. The audience for the WWE movies are...WWE fans---why not just keep giving them wrestling--and expanding the understanding and development of that? I don't know, but one more--You can't "create" talent as HHH suggests.
I would imagine that this misconception is why WWE has featured no new significant stars in years---As Ken Anderson has pointed out in interviews--"They tell you how to walk and talk"---If a John Morrison is talented--and then you tell him HOW to be talented---well---I think we see how that turns out.
Let's condense HHH' ego-gratifying rambling--it's called "Spreading Your Butter Too Thin".
The butter is wrestling, or "sports entertainment, if you will--the name doesn't matter if it's the same thing---witness KFC---yes, HHH is completely right, NOBODY associates KFC with JUST chicken anymore, and it's amazing how they have branched out beyind greasy fast food...oh wait---they haven't have they? No, they are just another victim of corporate newspeak, doublespeak and idiotic semantics. It's not that they're doing bad--but they aren't exactly, after years following the attempted move--really enjoying the fruits of some cross-marketed expansion. They serve f#$king chicken, they're not pumping out iron girders---
WWE should be serving wrestling. Nobody watches the movies but WWE fans--so how is that anything other than spreading the butter too thin?
And let's just not get into the fact the HHH has been accused by so many disparate people with no connection to each other of screwing over young guys that any claim that he is helping anyone is ridiculous. There are too many claims against him to successfully defend him as innocent.
He's talking out of his a@@. Let me know when WWE rivals Dreamworks or signs Johnny Depp to one of their movies---or when the Rolling Stones pull out their wheelchairs and go on the road under a WWE produced show--and I will sincerely apologize and admit I'm wrong.