Triple H discussed his first meeting with Vince McMahon on the latest edition of The Bump. Here is what he had to say:
“The very first time I met Vince was when I was still at WCW, my contract was coming to an end, and I was trying to gauge interest, I guess you could say, so they took a meeting with me. JJ Dillon, at the time, was running talent relations and was kind of in charge of that, and I spoke to JJ. He brought me in for a meeting with Vince. I remember coming in and meeting with Vince and thinking, one, obviously it’s Vince McMahon, so he has a larger than life presence, and of course it is the ultimate, probably, meeting that you could take in the business, especially at that time, maybe even more so today I guess. But going in to the meeting, obviously very nervous and expecting a great outcome and then getting in there and realizing, this guy has no idea who I am. I’m sure he was asked, knowing the situation now, he was asked to take a meeting with a talent, and here’s a kid that’s new, up and coming, they believe, and his contract is coming up, we’ll take a meeting with him and see if he’s somebody you want to bring in, and I don’t believe he was aware, necessarily, of me as a performer or of my work, nor should he have been, I guess, probably at that time.”
“So we had a very cordial meeting. He just asked me what my plans were and what I was thinking about doing and why I wanted to go there as oppose to staying where I was and all that kind of stuff, but I guess the biggest takeaway for me was just the larger than life impression of Vince McMahon that you get. He has a presence and when you’re in a room with him, that presence carries over and I’ve seen it in meetings with the biggest, so to speak, heavy hitters in industry and in business, and he’s in the room and he carries the room. So it was quite a meeting, it would be a little bit later that, maybe like a month later, that he would then call me, I think now he was aware of what I was doing, had seen me work, it was after I had performed at Starrcade against Alex Wright, kind of at the very end of my contract, and he called me right after that to say, ‘Look, if you’re still interested in coming here, I saw what you did at Starrcade and I’d like you to come here.’”
