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Triple H appeared on Busted Open this morning as part of SiriusXM rebranding their pro wrestling channel as "WWE Radio." While speaking with Dave LaGreca and Nic Nemeth, Levesque commented on WWE house shows:
"You know, it's... it's a tough mix of... The... the live events are so important for getting the reps and... and moving things forward, right? It's why we're making a concerted effort to um, especially in NXT, even to just to get them more reps. There comes a time when the physicality has increased so much in our business that you're trying to draw this line between, "Well, are... are guys being on the road all the time, is that beneficial to their development? Or is that just putting mileage on them?" You know, uh I think it's the argument in football, right? Like... "Uh, do we practice full contact? Do we put pads on in... in practice and... and play the game? Or do we walk through it and do the movements, and is that really teaching them..." Right. "...the footb- you know, football?" It's... it's... it's such a... Man, it's a dilemma, and I don't know the answer.
I think they shouldn't go away totally. I'm old-school. I believe that you learn this craft not only um... being in the ring, but du- dude, the... the... I look back at my career, and appreciate what you said, you know, the kind words about me and Shawn passing that on. I learned it from a series of guys before me. That's how the business works. But I felt like a lot of times, yeah, you learned a lot of things in the ring, and then it was the car afterwards. [Laughter] Right? Town to town. Th- those long drives where that's all you talked about was the business. People think the Kliq was this weird group of... that had all this political... The truth is, it was just five guys that wanted to get in a car in... and at night, and just talk about wrestling until no one wanted to talk about, you know, like until you got to the next town.
And there was a lot of guys that didn't want to do that. I can remember jumping in cars with guys when I first got here and started to talk about wrestling, and five minutes in realizing, "This guy doesn't want to talk about wrestling at all," like, and so I just stopped talking, 'cause I don't know what the... what else to talk about, right? He wants to... He wants to talk about everything else under the sun, but I have nothing in... It's all I think about! (Laughs) You know?
So, man, it's a... it's a dilemma, and I do feel like that's a part of the learning process. One of the things that I think is cool is you have a generation now... You have a generation behind the scenes that... that wants to give back: me, Taker, Shawn... You have guys like Bobby Roode, Michael Hayes, right, that are looking to pass on that knowledge to others, and I think that's amazing. And I'm hoping that over time, as guys get to the end of their careers—and I get it, it's hard to put down—but that guys are going to step up and say like, "Hey, I... I don't want to take bumps anymore, but I don't want to leave this business. And how do you do that?" right? And, you know, even for people like you, and, right, like...
How can you continue to be in this, so it doesn't just end one day, that you can stay in it? It's as meaningful to me now to sit backstage and watch two guys go out there and tear it up and think like, you know, during the day you had a little bit of a hand in that, and helped guide those guys, and you've seen them grow over the years, and now they're out there doing that... You know what that feels like? I say it a lot: it's... it's like uh the pride in your kids watching them go succeed, right? Yeah. There is another level past the in-ring that can be just as meaningful, if not more so, for guys moving forward. And that's where guys will learn, and we're fortunate now to have a generation also of Cody, and Punk, and Roman, and Seth, and all of these guys, and Brock, right?
Brock is... you know, he'd probably uh suplex me for saying this, but like Brock is hands-on with Oba Femi. He sees something special there and he's like, "Okay, kid, come with me, and I'm gonna teach you... Here's all the thing you gotta learn." He... he brings him in his room in the afternoon, he sits for hours and talk about this stuff, right? It's that level of stuff that brings this next generation up, and I think will take it to the next level. And I'm... I'm excited to see it, and, you know, for every star that we have now sitting at the top, there's a guy underneath them—an Oba, a Trick, a Carmelo, uh there's Je'Von, of of all these people that are sitting underneath them just soaking up this knowledge, and... and I think that's gonna to... to make the next generation thrive, you know?"
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