During a recent interview with CBS Sports, Triple H commented on WWE continuing to run events during the pandemic, bring bacl In You House for NXT Takeover, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On bringing back In Your House for NXT Takeover: “First of all, the timing was right on it. It just seemed right because right now everybody is home and locked in their house, and now we’re doing TakeOvers selling out Barclays Center and selling out Chicago and all these different places and now we’re coming back home to Orlando. It just seemed In Your House was very apropos to the moment. When we decided to do it, all of a sudden somebody told me, ‘Oh, that’s really cool, Tuesday is the 25th anniversary.’ I had no idea about the anniversary of the event and it worked out great.”
On his history with In Your House events: “Those were fun events. If you’ve been a fan for a long time, you remember those events. If you have WWE Network, you can go back and watch a lot of big, historic matches on In Your House pay-per-views. They’re fun. In this moment right now, with everything going on, everyone needs some fun, nostalgia and comfort foods, I think. Hopefully, that’s what we can bring with this. A little bit of fun and entertainment. A blast from the past where you sit at home and have some comfort food and just enjoy a night of NXT. The one thing NXT prides itself on is always these TakeOvers. We always deliver, and hopefully this will be nothing different.”
On the pandemic-era shows: “Look, I’m very proud of the product we’ve continued to put out. The one thing with NXT, we sort of had to drift along on the tail of Raw and SmackDown, so as things were moving, we were kind of the last in the movement. A lot of times we were kind of scrambling to pick up the chains last and move with it. That was difficult to do. I think talent has done a remarkable job. I read a quote the other day where a talent said everybody hates doing these empty-arena shows. Of course they do. No one wants to wrestle in an empty arena. No one wants to get COVID either. These empty-arena shows are what they are. We feel like it’s really important right now in the world for people to be entertained. We’ve done everything we can from a safety standpoint and from following guidelines to continue putting on a product. It’s a different product and it’s hard for talent, especially in NXT where some of the talent are younger and newer. I can’t even imagine if I’d only been in the business for a couple of years and I’m just starting to get used to having a lot of fans at the shows and now they take all the fans away and I’m expected to do the matches still and put 100% into everything else. It’d be really hard. It’s a tough thing. Everything we’re taught to do is in reaction to where fans are going and being reactive to that. You guide them and be reactive to that. There’s nothing there now to guide you and react to. It’s really tough. This isn’t going to last forever, and I’m just a big believer the talent will rise to the top, the cream will rise to the top. If we continue to put out great shows, people will continue to watch. That’s truly what I believe.”
