When Paul Michael Levesque aka Triple H picks up a microphone in the ring, and begins to speak, you’d do well to listen.
The one-time wrestling champion, now a business executive and an actor, is back on the circuit, doing what he does best – raising eyebrows, goading youngsters, and drumming up some die-hard spirit for a new season of spine-bending, crowd-rousing wrestling.
We caught up with the man for a quick chat about his plans with NXT, of which he’s the founder and senior producer.
Tell us about NXT’s expansion. How’s it going to benefit WWE in a way that it becomes more global quickly?
To me, the long-term goal of this is to expand the NXT brand globally, like we did before in the US, and then branched into the UK. We learned a lot in that process. The next movement is to go to more and more places – like India that is a key place that I would like to be in.
It obviously comes with a lot of challenges, but it’s a completely different place to do business. In India, it would be creating an NFP brand on the ground with Indian talent and also talent from around the globe that can really resonate within, in the country itself. That the goal, long-term.
As for new talent, you’ve gotten some great use out of them for fresh match-ups, and cross-promotion. When these talents come over, is there a long-term plan in place?
Well, it’s a little of both. Because they get to a point where, to grow more, they need to be in a different location.
There’s a bit more of being full hands-on, and we can get deeper into the learning experience with them here, and kind of, finish putting that polish on them. So it’s a work in progress. We’re going to evaluate talent, one by one.
Not only for the brand of NXT, the brand of advocacy, and where they fit, but also for them – what’s the best learning curve for them?
There’s a certain point in time, where you reach a certain place, where the best thing for you to do is go someplace else and continue that learning curve, and learn something new.
Survivor’s Series, obviously, is a specialised show. But what is the play, if any, for getting NXT to challenge future WWE pay-per-views?
I don’t think that’s the intent. Not that it won’t happen! But the incentive for NXT is to be a standalone brand. This is a moment-in-time survivor series.
I think, it’s becoming about that one time in the year, where these brands can get in the same place and go against each other.
It’s a great opportunity for everybody on the NXT side to show things that some of the fan base hasn’t checked out yet.