Triple H appeared on New Hampshire's "Greg and the Morning Buzz" radio show last week. Here are some highlights:
On wearing a suit for work every day: "Yeah, you've got to dress for the role so I got to wear the monkey suit every day. I was just saying to you in the commercial break that I spent 41 years of my life trying to avoid having a job and somehow I ended up with one. I don't know how that happened. I always envisioned my life as like once I made it wrestling for a bunch of years, having enough money and then doing nothing. Somehow, I ended up with a full-time job that's like 24/7, busier than ever."
On being in a corporate environment: "I think anytime you're in an office environment with corporate executives but you happen to be 6'4" and 250 pounds with a ponytail - even if you have a suit on and you're looking across the table at somebody. If I put a little bass in my voice, the entire room changes... I'm telling you; just a little change in tune can change all of it. Vince does the same thing; trust me.
"Honestly like with Vince [McMahon], it's the same thing. I've kind of learned to employ this also. Silence is way more menacing. When somebody does something you don't like… It's like if you come up after a match and Vince is yelling it's bad, but it's not that bad. If you come up and he won't look at you and he's not saying a word but you can tell he's mad, then it's really bad because he's not saying anything."
On future stars of the company: "I'd say there are quite a few guys. When I look at the current roster of guys, there are guys like Sheamus, who I think has an unbelievable future. People forget how short a period of time guys have been in the WWE and they haven't really been any place before that. So you're seeing these guys almost from ground zero, from learning to becoming stars and he's going to be a huge star in the future. Wade Barrett is going to be a huge star for us, I believe, in the future. There are quite a few guys.
"Also one of the things that I do here, that I'm in charge of is talent development and our developmental system and recruiting guys and training them. We have some guys down in developmental that over the next years that I think… Sometimes I look at the business and as things evolve and they change and you lose the big stars in the business, it's hard to see where the new guys are going to come from. I'm starting to feel a little bit more confident about it because I'm seeing guys at that developmental level that I'm saying, 'Okay, this is going to be a guy that's going to be a big star in a few years.'"
On new stars getting his stamp of approval: "I think it helps too because I look at it as, okay, like if I were still in the ring competing I'm just looking at which one of these guys I would want to work with because we can have great matches and main event stuff and promote big. I think that's the benefit of having somebody in that role that's been there."
On WWE and their social media initiative: "Vince was big on Twitter once we explained to him what Twitter was and that was right after they explained to me what Twitter was. Listen, our fan base is everybody - from 90 year old ladies to kids. You have to be at the cutting edge of that technology at all times because kids these days don't watch TV the way they did before. The TV is almost a background device. They're on their phone, they're on their laptop, and they're on their iPad. That social media stuff becomes so important. I think destination television, in some ways, is almost gone. With DVRs and iPads and everything else, you watch it when you want to watch it. You interact with other people watching it at the same exact time. Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and all those things are all just avenues to keep people involved in your product.
"The catch 22 of it is - I think as you're seeing with everything else - is controlling it a little bit. It's like the NFL. Not a week goes by that you don't see somebody in the NFL say something stupid. We have meetings with talent all the time. I just said this to guys the other day. I was like, 'Guys, it's not like you're just texting somebody. You're putting it out to the world. If you wouldn't say it on TV, don't say it on Twitter.'"
On his relationship with the Rock: "The Rock and I have a unique relationship. It's unique to anybody else in the company. He and I were kind of like coming up at the same exact time and we were always the yin and yang to each other. They brought him in as the squeaky clean baby face and I was the bad guy. Then it switched. I was in DX and he was in the Nation. He was the bad guy and I was the good guy. Then we wrestled over the Intercontinental Title and then the roles reversed again and I became like the biggest heel in the business and he became the biggest baby face in the business, then we wrestled over the World Title.
"It was Rock and I that Vince came to and said, 'Hey look, I'd like you guys to sign with William Morris and think about going and making some movies in Hollywood.' He brought us both in at the same time. He said, 'You guys are two guys that can do it. I'd like you to move forward.' Rock was like, 'Awesome,' and I shook my head and was like, 'You don't want me to wrestle anymore? I don't get it.'
"We get along fine and we're friendly with each other and we're buds in that sense. I've never been out to dinner with him. We don't hang out but there's always been that professional… Like, we had such a professional rivalry with each other but we also knew in the ring we were magic with each other so it worked. Yet, there was always that - no matter what he did I was like, 'Screw him. I'm going to do something better than that.' That's the one thing I can say. We've never had a cross word with each other. We've never had a strain in any relationship form with each other or anything like that. But we're not best buds and there's always that little bit of professional tension between us. I think it's a good thing. Even now, he comes back now and he's a big Hollywood star but I'm also an executive in the company. There's still that little bit of a weirdness there."
On if his daughters attend the shows and if he would want them to enter the business: "Yeah, they've been to shows. As soon as they're in the building all they do is ask me to take them to the ring. I get in the ring with them and then chase them around. They just know it as getting chased by daddy and rolling around in the ring, and they love it. One of the coolest things for me in my life is that I had parents that when I said, 'Hey, I want to be a professional wrestler,' they said, 'Alright. Give it a shot but have a backup plan.' They supported me and they encouraged that.
"I would encourage my kids - as long as it wasn't harmful to them or something that was illegal or whatever - I would encourage them in whatever it is they wanted to do whether that was a job that could make them rich or whether it was just something that they would find fulfilling. I had that support and for me, that support means everything in the world. I could never repay them for that other than to repay it to my kids."
On appearing on Shawn Michaels' hunting show: "Yeah, I never hunted anything in my life. Shawn has gone from being the heartbreak kid to like Ted Nugent. He's out there with high-powered weapons shooting every kind of furry little thing that scatters. Shawn's a very responsible hunter. I don't want to get PETA mad at anybody. He eats it and does all the stuff right and whatever. He has this show and he's been dying for me to go on there and hunt something with him. I'd been resistant to doing it and he knows I'm not into it. I just don't understand the sitting in a tree for hours saying nothing, putting some grain on the ground and waiting for a deer to come by so I can tap it in the head.
So he called me one day and he said, 'Hey, how about alligator?' I was like alright, there's a challenge to that. One, you got to sneak up on them in a boat, the boat is not stable. If you fall out of the boat they're going to eat you. Okay, they can get back at you. So we went and, yeah, it was great. We used crossbows and I got the biggest alligator of the trip. I got a big, giant gator and it was an awesome experience. I had a lot of fun."
