Triple H on WWE's Evolution, the Rise of the Antihero, and the Psychology of Stardom

14 time WWE World Champion, a two time World Rumble winner, and now he's behind the scenes running World Wrestling Entertainment. Welcome to the Netflix era. Whether it be a mentor, a leader, or an executive, his love and passion for this industry hasn't changed. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the WWE's Paul Levesque. My man. Welcome. Thank you, man. All right. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Welcome. So the audience may not know this, but I'm a big professional wrestling fan going back to my childhood in Memphis, Tennessee. In Mem yeah. In Memphis, we didn't have any professional sports growing up. All we had was, Memphis State Tigers basketball and professional wrestling at the Mid South Coliseum on Monday night. So that was pretty much it. Jerry Lawler was so popular in Memphis that he could have been elected mayor, and I think he almost was. So it was really a a wrestling town. But so growing up, I I, you know, I watched you and WWE, and I would say that h h h was the premier heel champion, the unstoppable force of the whole Attitude Era. And, it's a thrill to have you here. And since then, you've transitioned into being the chief creative officer at WWE and had a, huge business career. So I think we wanna talk to you about both those things. Maybe let's start with your career as a performer. And I don't know if people understand everything that goes into being a WWE superstar, but you've gotta be, first of all, you've gotta be a tremendous athlete. You're a stunt man because you're doing tremendously dangerous things. You have to be able to cut promos, which means, you're you're basically an actor, but you also have to write your own dialogue. And you've gotta be, you know, a charismatic star to all the fans. There's a lot that goes into it. How many people are cut out for this type of work? Well, it's it's a difficult thing. One of one of my tasks now in my job is finding that next generation of stars. Right? So, you know, we have a robust program through college athletics, through an NIL program, through a lot of different avenues where we find talent. But the the key to it really is comes down to charisma and, you know, your innate ability to connect with people. It's one of the things about WWE that I think is remarkable is it's it is a kind of a combination of everything. Right? The athleticism, the show manship, the charisma that you have to have, the, the media skills that we teach from day one coming in the door, all of it. When you leave WWE, whether you've been there for a long time or, you know, know, if if you've been had any level of success, you are so well suited to do just about anything in life because I I truly feel like for a lot …