It was known to many within WWE for years that Vince McMahon did not follow any sort of entertainment, media, or culture outside WWE, and booked the shows around his own interests and entertainment. WWE programming quality noticeably increased in 2022 following McMahon’s retirement, saw a small decline with McMahon’s short return in 2023, but leveled out full steam ahead when reports surfaced that TKO relieved McMahon of his creative control powers, bestowing them upon Paul “Triple H” Levesque. With “The Game” now firmly in charge of creative for “WWE Raw,” “WWE SmackDown,” and the main roster PLEs, a sense of relief has been felt by fans, but there has been some doubt brewing about Levesque that he could unintentionally fall into the ways of his father-in-law, running the shows on only his knowledge and interests.
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While joining “WGIR-FM (Rock 101),” Levesque was asked if he receives any feedback or criticism from any of his elders in the industry. “Nobody actually texts me during the show ’cause they know I’m not going to answer ’em for the most part. But it’s afterwards and it’s interesting, the different points of view, because I know guys across so many different generations. I think there are some older performers that look at the way kids perform today, and they say, ‘Well, they’re just not doing it right. It’s all this other stuff. They don’t need to do all this, they don’t need to do all that,’ and I get that.”
Levesque acknowledged the wariness of how modern youth consumes content today. Content viewers have shorter attention spans today than in the past, and are more interested in instant gratification rather than slow-build viewing.
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Triple H Knows the WWE product will die if it is not for the fans
Levesque has noted in the past that he had his fair share of disagreements with Vince McMahon regarding his booking and company decisions, and may have learned from experience what can happen when the one leading is set in their own ways.
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The fourteen-time world champion continued, “There’s sayings about when things start to leave you in life; the first thing to go is music. So, how many people as you see them get older, ‘Music today sucks,’ and, ‘Back in my day that’s when they made real music. People put their heart and their soul into it and there was real emotion there and it was great.’ No, you’re just old, dude. And that’s one of the first things to go right because, yeah that stuff was great in your generation and you learned it a certain way, but the kids today learned it a different way and what they see and what they think is cool, then that’s what you need to give them.”
“I can’t control that. It’s not in no way, and I learned this thirty years the hard way, it in no way shape or form is about what I want. It’s about what they want,” Levesque said. “If it becomes about what I want, the show will die. If it’s what they want, if it’s that overall big picture, and I think that’s in the music industry, if you try to force these bands to make the music you like, they’re gonna go out of business. If you’re making what hundreds of thousands or millions of kids like, and they’re going to come and see these concerts in droves and all that stuff, that’s what you’re trying to get to.”
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If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit “WGIR-FM (Rock 101)” with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
