WarGames, one of the most beloved and unique match types in professional wrestling, will make its long-awaited return this Saturday after nearly two decades. At NXT TakeOver: WarGames, three teams of three men will battle inside an enormous cage across two rings in what will likely be one of the most chaotic spectacles in NXT history.

With just a few days left until Survivor Series weekend in Houston, For The Win spoke to Triple H, WWE Executive Vice President of Talent, Live Events and Creative, about the return of WarGames, NXT’s “secret sauce,” and what made Shawn Michaels go “all in” on NXT.

You can watch NXT TakeOver: War Games Saturday at 8:00 p.m. ET on the WWE Network.

How long has the revival of WarGames been in the making?

Triple H: I’m a huge fan of WarGames, kind of from its inception back in NWA, when Dusty first started it, the Four Horsemen and the whole deal. It’s always been something that I’ve had in the back of my head, conceptually. Something that’s been brought up here and there. This was the opportunity, I just felt like NXT was ready. The feel of it, the whole concept of it just kind of fit with the NXT brand very well. And also it just being Dusty’s, knowing how instrumental Dusty was in the formation and the beginning of NXT, it’s all of that. I felt like it was the right time and the right place.

I’m thrilled, man. I think for our fans, it’s a long time coming. I think for our talent, our locker room, I haven’t seen people this excited for a match from a talent standpoint in a long time. When we announced it, even our main roster talent were coming after me going ‘WarGames, can I be in that?! Is there any way I can do that show?’ They’re excited for it, and I think for the NXT locker room… it’s a way to take something historically meaningful for them and make it theirs. Take the past and make it the future, and put their own spin on it and rebrand it and make it their own.

WarGames was such a big part of Dusty’s legacy – did you ever talk with him about potentially bringing it back years ago, maybe during the early TakeOvers?

No, no at that time I don’t think it was something . We talked about War Games, sure. I don’t know that it was something that, at the time of the early TakeOvers, that we ever talked about putting it on the table. At that time we were kind of flying by the seat of our pants, just excited to have the opportunities and do the things . Trying to convince anybody to build a double ring with cages and the whole thing was out of the question. It was all on shoestrings and smoke and mirrors.

I think that this was one that was the right time, right place, right environment. We have the opportunity to do it, and not looking to go back and have it compared against ‘back in the day’ or anything like that. I think this is an opportunity for us to do something new and exciting, and to have it be today’s. To have NXT own that as today. Yes, there’s this history to it. Yes, we’re proud of that history. But this is ours.

For at least one generation of fans, this will probably be the first War Games match they see. Is there any concern that fans might be a little lost, and how do you approach producing a WarGames match on air differently than a typical match?

Well, you kind of throw it up in the air, cross your fingers and hope for the best. I think our fanbase now is savvy enough, I don’t know how many people will actually watch this that didn’t go back in some way and sample something about WarGames – whether that was on the Network, whether that was on YouTube, or whatever that is. People are very smart, and information is just a click away.

But we also have to spell it out for them. We have to spell it out for them in the programming, we have to spell it out for them in the shows, and we have to show them what it is. But the concept is still pretty simple, and I think that will be easy for them to understand once this starts. Three guys are going to start that match, it’s going to advance from there, the whole thing doesn’t get rolling until everybody’s in the ring.

…. I’m even more excited that we can deliver something unique to today. Look, can we ever top the Four Horsemen versus Dusty and Sting and everybody else? No. You can’t do that. No different than you can’t go back and compare a WrestleMania from the past to a WrestleMania now. Everything stands within itself.

Paul Ellering was involved in the very first WarGames match and he’ll be there with the Authors of Pain Saturday. What was his reaction to WarGames coming back?

It’s funny, I haven’t had the chance to talk to him in depth about it, but I was there when when the concept was first brought up to him and he just got this huge smile on his face.

You know, I think anyone that was in those… they were special. They were meaningful. It was a cool time in the business. You talk about eras in the business, that was an era. So it’s actually really cool that he’s there for this, to me. I said before, there’s links to the past, but yet it’s the future. That’s where Paul kind of sits. He was there at the beginning, now he’s here for the second beginning.

If we looked back to a year ago at the card for Takeover Toronto, something like 75 percent of the talent has since moved on to the main roster, and there’s been a lot of new faces stepping up in their place. How are you able to handle all that turnover, and knowing that the performers you build one event around might not be there for the next big event?

Yeah, but that’s the nature of the beast. It’s funny, you can look at those things in two ways of either ‘ah I built this and now it’s gone, bummer.’ Or ‘oh man, we did this, now it’s gone. There’s a huge opportunity to make something even better.’

I feel like, in some ways, that’s part of the secret sauce to NXT. It’s just always evolving. There’s always something new.

You know, just when Asuka’s at the peak… boom, she’s gone. A year earlier, when the women’s roster almost all got called up at the same time from NXT, just got strip mined – Asuka was kind of the focal point of that. She rode that out as this dominant champion, but yet while doing that, this whole group of women evolved around her. Ember Moon, Kairi Sane, Ruby Riot, Nikki Cross, Peyton and Billie, Sonya Deville. Just all these women that got this opportunity to grow, and a chance, and they gave us the chance to write different directions.

Does it take some time? Yeah. Does it take a rebuilding? Yeah. Does it give us a bump in the road where people just saw a huge event and it was awesome, then they tune in six weeks later and they go ‘who are these people?’ Yeah, but that’s the cool part of it, to me. I like that challenge. It’s exciting that we always have to be thinking about the mix of experienced talent and brand new talent.

When you look at SAnitY, you see some of the talent that are in there… yeah there’s Eric Young in there, but then there’s Alexander Wolfe and Killian Dain – brand new.

There’s Authors of Pain, who have only a couple of years in the business. Andrade Almas, having done stuff other places but coming into his own with us. Lars Sullivan, that’s a homegrown . Velveteen Dream, a young guy just getting the first platform anywhere.

There’s that mix of Aleister Black, bringing in his years of experience, yet while still learning. It’s just a really cool mix in NXT always trying to have that balance, and I think that’s part of the magic of the brand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmMxbcgWZbg

Shawn Michaels has taken a more visible role in NXT in general this year. What’s that been like for you to have Shawn involved and at the Performance Center, both as guy running the show, but also as a friend?

It’s the best thing ever. On one hand I go ‘yeah, it’s great that I get to work with my friend,’ – not that I see him all the time, because I really see him when we do TVs. We talk here and there about talent.

There’s this cool project that he’s down there doing, and I’m up here doing that we’re working on together…. but we’re not in each other’s space every five minutes. But yet it’s still Shawn, the guy that he and I can sit in a room together and hash out something that… I know what he’s thinking, he knows what I’m thinking. I don’t know, we’ve just worked together for so long there’s this magic thing that happens there, and it’s really cool.

He kind of came into the picture like ‘yeah, let me see, maybe I’ll come by and stick my nose in.’ And he’s all in now. These kids… I say it all the time, especially for the guys who have been around the business a long time. Going to the Performance Center is like going to the fountain of youth. It’s inspiring. There’s 100 talent down there that are hungry and busting their ass and in the gym and in the ring.

People would ask us about the Kliq, and the Kliq was just a bunch of guys that just wanted to talk about the business 24 hours a day. And so we all got in the car and rode together and that’s all we did, talk about the business non-stop, because we were all so hungry. That’s what this is like.

Shawn went down there – and I think like many people do, they go down there, they see it, and it’s infectious. He got bit by the bug again. And he’s like ‘man, I love this, I want to be involved more.’ Then it was ‘hey, I think I might go on the live event this weekend.’ And then ‘I think I’m going to go on this out-of-state tour.’ Now he’s doing all kinds of stuff.

Last month, AJ Styles gets pulled from a tour to wrestle Finn Balor at TLC, and at the very the last minute are flying to South America for a match. Last week, you were on a tour of Europe wrestling every night. I know you train all the time, but that must have been rough.

, you could say that.

It was one of those things that on a Saturday I was at an event at my kid’s school, and two hours later on I was on a plane to Santiago, Chile. Whatever is, 12 hours later, I was headed to the arena putting my gear on, going ‘what am I doing?’ And then in Europe and the whole thing…

What it has done though is, it’s been a really cool experience. In the past few years when I’ve had the opportunity to get in the ring, it’s been always based around WrestleMania and the pressures of, like saying ‘I know you haven’t thrown a baseball all season, but it’s Game 7 tomorrow, World Series. We need you to pitch in Yankee Stadium.’ It’s a lot of pressure.

It’s really cool to have an opportunity for a little bit of a change. As difficult as it is – you can work out in the gym all day long, it’s totally different from being in the ring. To be able to go to these live events with these guys that I, you know, a lot of them I had a hand in them coming through the system, and remember that ‘hey, this is fun.’ One night I’m working with Rusev, the next night I’m going up twerking with the New Day, the next night I’m in the ring with the Shield. I heard a lot of fan comments when we were there, people say ‘it’s really cool, this is so special.’ They have no idea how special it’s been for me.

You can watch NXT TakeOver: War Games this Saturday at 8:00 p.m. ET on the WWE Network.

The following night, Survivor Series will be streamed on the WWE Network Sunday, November 19 at 7pm ET.