Triple H Opens Up About WWE Creative Surprises & Criticism Ahead Of WrestleMania 42

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WWE Chief Content Officer Triple H has opened up about the pressure and difficulties of overseeing Creative for WrestleMania 42.

With just days to go until the biggest event of WWE’s calendar year, we’re essentially at the season finale, and will soon see the culmination of storylines which were set up or continued following WrestleMania 41 last year.

While WrestleMania is seen by many as a celebration, Triple H has indicated that not everything has gone to plan in the lead-up to the April 18 and 19 shows.

Speaking with Joe Tessitore in an official WWE interview, Triple H explained that there are many creative-related surprises he has to face on the road to WrestleMania, stating:

“Oh, there’s a lot. Sometimes it’s surprise by the way that you think a crowd is going to react to something, and they react differently.

“When you’re putting stuff together in your mind, Dusty Rhodes used to say this all the time to me, in your mind, you see things 100%, if you can get 70% of that onto the screen, that’s a grand slam.

“In your mind, you picture it perfectly, in execution, it’s different. There’s a million variables that can change it, that can bring it down a notch, or two, or three, or twenty. Things turn out differently. Fans begin to react to things differently. What you thought you had locked in four months ago is not the path anymore, the path has changed.

“The other thing about our business is, unlike a sport, as bad as it is, if you lose your quarterback, your offensive lineman, star center or star guard in the NBA, you have a second string guy to back him up, and you hope that those second string guys are pretty good.

“There is no backup-Cody Rhodes. There is no backup-Randy Orton, there’s no backup-Roman Reigns, there’s no backup CM Punk. It’s different because it’s the individual attraction. And unlike a television show, if you put the sports and the entertainment side of it aside, there’s always the factor of the human being.

“You can write the greatest script in the world to get you to the ultimate battle scene, and then right before the ultimate battle scene, the star of the show gets injured. There’s no waiting until he’s uninjured to shoot the final scene, it’s live and it’s going to happen one way or another, whether you want it to or not on that particular day.

“The variables, there’s so many and they’re so varied that you sort of have to at any given time be ready for anything, and be able to move on from anything. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, it doesn’t mean it’s not the most frustrating thing that I’ve ever experienced, but it’s part of what we do.”

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Triple H then admitted that he puts “tons” of pressure on himself when booking WrestleMania.

Referencing fan criticisms, he continued:

“It’s a funny thing, if you’re online or you hear fans talking, and they’re like ‘I didn’t like that.’ Yeah, I know, believe me, I’m the first guy going ‘That didn’t work. That wasn’t good. We screwed up there.’

“Sometimes you’re putting things out there where you’re like ‘Eh, this will be decent, this is not going to be A++.’ It has to ebb and flow throughout the year.  There’s times when you know ‘This show will be good, it’s not going to be guns blazing.’ There’s times when you know you’ve got to put your foot on the gas.

“The trick is keeping everybody else in the same mindset. We talked about thinking about tomorrow, all the time people make suggestions of ‘What if you did this?’ That’s amazing, it just doesn’t leave us a place to go.

“You have to balance out the ‘What do I do today that’s epic’ and ‘What do I get to tomorrow,’ it’s always a mix and a challenge to balance that out.

“Nobody bats a thousand, I’m no different, but you want to try as best as possible to manage everybody to stay in the same ballpark, so somebody’s not trying to swing for the fences while everybody else is trying to hit a double.”

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While there has been a mixed reaction to the WrestleMania 42 build and final card, we can expect everyone to bring their A-games to this weekend’s shows.

With all eyes on the Grandest Stage of Them All, that will be one event where WWE will definitely be looking to knock it out of the park.

The latest WWE updates and news stories ahead of WrestleMania 42 on April 18 and 19 can be found right here.

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• Creative
• Triple H
• WrestleMania
• wwe

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