Triple H Disputes “Very Inaccurate” Report About WWE NXT Talent Meeting

Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Shawn Michaels were part of the post-game NXT “Takeover: Stand and Deliver” media call. Triple H was asked about a report about a NXT team meeting about NXT’s upcoming move to Tuesday nights.

The original report stated that AEW was mentioned and how AEW came in and tried to bully them. However, a follow-up report retracted that, noting that the word “bully” was not mentioned at all. Triple H gave some details of the team meeting with NXT talent.

“If I wanted everybody to know what was in the meeting, I would have put out a memo, and you guys could have just got it from one of your sources firsthand and printed it,” Triple H said. “It was a conversation with our talent. That was exactly that. It was informational to tell them where we’re going. Meetings that we have all the time. Given COVID restrictions, we had a lot less than we normally would.

“As far as the content of the meeting that was reported by a lot of people and elsewhere, completely inaccurate. Never said. Never brought up. Nobody else was ever brought up. Wasn’t about other people. Wasn’t about other brands, or companies or anything else. It was a factual meeting to tell people where we’re going, where we’re headed and to motivate them going into the future. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“I talk as little as possible in those things,” Michaels added.

Michaels has been working as a producer on NXT for an extended period of time now. Triple H explained what Michaels brings to NXT.

“From my standpoint of Shawn, somebody that I sat next to for the last 25 plus years of us working together and me just looking at him from a mental standpoint of the business, the understanding of it, the psychology of it — there’s a lot of guys that can do what we do. There’s not a lot of guys that understand what we do,” Triple H pointed out. “Shawn has that and then some. If you had said to me a few years ago, who’s the guy that I think could be the biggest game changer here if they were to come here and be able to participate with people, it would be Shawn because of that level of knowledge, and I’m short of struggling to say it because he’s sitting right next to me and usually I just make fun of him at this point in time.

“I’m almost ruining my whole schtick here, but he really does, and it’s just one of those things. When somebody has that much experience, that much knowledge, that much passion and then explains it to you where you go, oh yeah, right. I get that, and I never saw it that way. And I know because look, as a young guy coming in in 1995, I was sitting under the learning tree of guys like Shawn Michaels. Absolutely every night.. Whether I was in the ring with him or not, I sat under that learning tree, and then I got to sit under so many of them and then Vince McMahon after that.

“So what he brings to the table from an in-ring, from a psychology — I worked with him for 25 years. He and I think so much alike, and once we start riffing together, I don’t know. I’ve seen a lot of people work together. I don’t know that there’s a better combo when he and start gelling and working on things together and just start riffing off of each other. It goes to a whole other level. So to me, he’s the best asset we could possibly have here.”

Michaels reacted to Triple H’s praise. He then explained how his experience in NXT has been like so far.

“For me, I got to be honest, to sit with my best friend and doing creative, and enjoying that time together like we used to in the car and getting to do it on a whole other level, and I did it tonight and I do it darn near every Wednesday, I do every Takeover where I lean over and I say, hey, thanks for letting me continue to call this my job,” Michaels expressed. “Getting to do this with you every night, to help be a part of these shows, and these unbelievable performances and honestly, now learning from him from a production standpoint has been one of the greatest learning aspects of my life.

“I’m learning an entire new genre to the wrestling business that I didn’t know before, and it is, I make fun of him by calling Scorsese all the time because if the level at which he goes to production and I’m taking notes and stuff like that and understanding these different camera shots. Just some of the unbelievable shots, and camera angles and stuff like that and that all come from Hunter. And that’s something that I don’t have that much experience in.

“And over the last several years, him teaching me that and trying to glean as much as I can from that, it grows from there. Both of us just continue to build on this, obviously, friendship that we’ve had, but then being able to extend that to the NXT brand has been an awesome process. Like I said, every now and then, I do have to lean over and go, dude, this is my job. This is freaking awesome!”