WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque participated in the post-Royal Rumble media scrum to discuss various topics, including how his WWE Hall of Fame induction came about.
Triple H said, “Nick and I talked about the Hall of Fame many times, and he would always bring up the fact that, when are we gonna put you in, and I would say, not now, because no matter how I do it, it looks like I’m putting myself in the Hall of Fame, and I’m just not gonna do that, so he said we have to do it eventually, and I was like, OK, if we have to do it eventually, let’s wait three, four, five years and then we’ll talk about it, and he said OK. We had an entirely different plan for Hall of Fame and we got to the end of the town hall and Shawn’s music hit, I thought, honestly, being lazy, I didn’t read the end of the town hall run sheet and there was more after the Q&A that I just didn’t see, and I was like, oh, Shawn’s gonna come out here and talk about the new show we’re doing, LFG, and put that over, so I was confused when Shawn came out, when Taker came out it doubled, then I saw Nick walk to the other side of the room, and I realized, that somehow this is gonna effect me. I wasn’t sure positively, negatively, humorously, until Taker said WrestleMania.”
On how hard the induction hit him emotionally:
“I’ll be honest, we did it with DX, it was a lot of fun, it’s different when it’s you. And while I’ve been a part of all of these, and I’ve seen some talent see it as the biggest honor, I’ve seen other talent be like, eh, whatever, but for the most part, our talent all see it as sort of the ultimate pay of respect to you and your career, and I’ve had the honor of calling a lot of people to tell them we’re going to induct you into the Hall of Fame, or be there in person to say to them we’re going to induct you into the Hall of Fame, and watch them cry, and watch them get emotional, because of our passion for what we do, it hit me way harder than I thought it would. So, when we left there, it was a kind of oddly comical and surreal moment and then Taker was there, and Shawn was there, and we went straight upstairs and went into a meeting and everything else and as it slowly started to dawn on me, I thought like, here we go, the same moment that I watched everybody else have, the emotions flooding over you, your career, the people you’ve worked with, what it meant to you, the fans, the moments that you’ve been able to create and share, fortunately for me, I’m not out of the business. I have maybe a more enjoyable point of my life in being able to watch these guys do it now and help them get there and put it all together, but it was emotional.”
You can check out Triple H’s comments in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
