Triple H Speaks On Why WWE Pushed Jinder Mahal, Wrestlers Leaving & Returning

On a recent conference call to promote Saturday’s NXT Takeover: Brooklyn III event, Triple H discussed Jinder Mahal’s success story. Triple H says that they always thought Mahal had the potential to be the WWE Champion.

“He was one of the last two guys in the finals for me at the first, to determine the first NXT Champion,” Triple H recalled. “People forget that. I thought he had that ability. He came right up to main roster, things didn’t pan out the way we wanted them to pan out. You can talk to him about that, he’ll kind of give you his take on it too as well. Part of that’s him, part of that’s us, part of that being not ready for it.”

Triple H says that Jinder’s time away from the company helped him grow as a performer, and he feels that sometimes talent leaving to work other places ends up helping them for future runs in WWE. As for wrestlers currently on the roster who need freshening up, he says NXT or the WWE Network’s UK shows may be options for them to “rebuild.”

“Rather than them not being here, it’s like, okay, we’re gonna bring you over to UK for a little while or we’re gonna bring you down to NXT and you’re gonna do a little run there, freshen you up a little bit, bring you back,” Triple H explained.

“I think those opportunities are there in some way, for everybody on the roster, to be able to move around and be able to do the things that are meaningful,” he continued. “Whether main roster, whether NXT, whether localized some place else where they can go teach other people, learn themselves and sometimes taking a step back out of it makes you realize things that you had forgotten or that make you think, ‘I don’t do that anymore at all. I gotta get myself back in gear.’ It’s real easy in this industry where you do things every single day over and over — sometimes stepping out of it is the best way to realize you need to reinvigorate your passion and get back in there and dig in.”