It’s not every day Triple H agrees to sit down and give an in-depth interview for 30 minutes, but that’s exactly what The Game decided to do with talkSPORT ahead of the superb NXT UK TakeOver show in Cardiff last Saturday.

He talks rumours of Enzo Amore returning, shutting down talk of Vince McMahon taking over NXT, Goldberg and Undertaker in Saudi Arabia, his history with The Rock, he wouldn’t trade anybody for who AEW or anyone else has, plans for both NXT and NXT UK and more!

The full transcript of the wide-ranging interview is below! Enjoy folks.

WWE Triple H after defeating Jericho for the Undisputed Championship

Thanks for joining me Paul – Wednesdays just got a bit more interesting didn’t they?! You talked about the fact you wouldn’t trade any of your talent for anyone else in the world. You’re up against All Elite Wrestling tonight in many ways [August 31] and will be on Wednesday nights. Is it the quality of the TakeOver shows you’ve been able to produce – like the one we’ll get tonight – that gives you the confidence, among other things, to make statements like that?

To me, people can say what they want, how they want. I don’t approach it like as a competitive thing or it’s anything else, we’re just going to put on our shows. We’re going to put on our shows when we need to put them on, in the best places we need to put them on, in the right timeslots for them and the best talent I can find in the world – and we already have them. I’m confident in that. When I look across the board at NXT in general and NXT in the UK here, we put on show after show of the highest calibre – not one match or two matches, the entire show. So I have no doubt.

For me it’s not competitive against anyone or anything, I just want to put on the best show for the fans of NXT, the fans here in Cardiff tonight, the fans around the world – that’s all this is. It’s funny because a few years ago we were doing this and doing the same kind of thing, wowing people, and there wasn’t competitors out there. So I guess we were just doing it for competitive reasons then? To compete with ourselves?

You once told me on a conference call that NXT UK was one of the most popular shows on the WWE Network. Is that still the case and can you tell British wrestling fans that things are progressing nicely from WWE’s perspective?

Absolutely. Look, it takes time to build these things out right. It’s not just about looking at the UK or individual markets, it’s about having a global presence. NXT UK is, I believe, the second most popular show or the second most popular thing on the WWE Network, and that was behind NXT in the US. With that moving to USA Network and having a 24 hour later re-air, on the network, it changes a little bit. I also expect that opportunity on the USA Network to resonate here [in the UK] as well and for the talent that are here, every single that’s here, I want to use that platform as well to continue to grow these brands and continue to grow the presence in the UK and show it to the world.

Triple H with Zack Gibson and James Drake after they won the NXT UK Tag Team titles

Take this NXT UK brand and showcase in a different place all over the world and make sure it has as many eyeballs on it as possible so it can grow and we’ll see where that goes from there. And as that grows out, WWE plans to do more TakeOvers here. They’ll be more UK based NXT TakeOvers in 2020, we’re going to add more to that scheduling and there’s a lot more to come. So, it’s bit by bit. I don’t want to overwhelm everything too much, but it’s bit by bit, we continue to grow so that every bit of growth, every next step is successful.

Just clocking on to what you said there on the NXT umbrella having the two top shows on the WWE Network; you’ve achieved a hell of a lot in your career but that must give you a real thrill?

It’s awesome. This opportunity here and in the US… Shawn Michaels and I, we talk about this all the time. At this point in our careers, to be able to sit side-by-side still and still be working together 25 years later and create something like this and help it grow, to be able to see these talent that are here and you’ll see tonight from Walter, Mark Andrews, Toni Storm and Kay Lee Ray – just everybody that is here and apart of this, to see them grow and have that opportunity with the same passion in there eyes that we had when we were starting – to see that passion and know what it feels like to just go out there and blow the roof off this place and know that they’re growing something and they’re on the ground floor of this greatness, this brand with what they’re doing here… they’re going to be seen as the founding fathers, so to speak, of this British Wrestling Empire that is building that becomes a global empire.

So, it’s an exciting time for them and I think for Shawn and I, it’s some of the most fun we’ve had in our careers and that’s saying a lot!

NXT UK’s creator Triple H

I want to clear up a couple of things with NXT moving to the USA Network. Dave Meltzer has been speculating that Vince McMahon will have to get involved with NXT now that it is on a network, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Not only with what you’ve done with NXT thus far, but it’s not like you don’t have network experience yourself!

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of things people like Dave say that don’t make sense. Because they don’t approach things from a business standpoint. Put it this way: we’re going to be live on Mondays, we’re going to be live on Wednesdays, we’re going to be live on Fridays. There’s so much bandwidth to go [around] it’s just funny the small-mindedness of it that people don’t give Vince McMahon the credit for being the businessman that he is.

The speculation and rumours and it’s easy when people leave or they go their own way to just jump onto speculation and rumours and a lot of it, that’s just what it is. So when people talk about him as a businessman, there’s so many crazy misconceptions. The truth is, all of what we’re doing right now in this business is because of him.

He took a failing business, so to speak, at a period of time in the 1980s and turned it into a global phenomenon when nobody else had the foresight to do it. All the things he has done and where it is today. People look at where it is today and sometimes say negative things and I’m like ‘really?’ because we’ve signed billion-dollar deals with FOX and USA, I’m not sure that it’s crumbling! And he’s also smart enough to understand the things that we do and where they go and how, the pieces of it. If you’re asking the simple term in answers? He’s not involved. Yeah, he’s going to have some say in some things as far as where the brand sits and the marketing of it within USA and all that stuff and clearly, whatever he wants to do at the end of the day also, but truth is at this point in time he has basically just said ‘go and make this thing a success’.

It’s what he told me in the beginning ‘go make this thing a success’ and, you know, we pick up the phone every now and then and we see each other all the time but it’s like ‘how’s it going? going good? excellent’. and we move on. But those who want to speculate on it, it’s craziness. A lot of it is silliness.

Twitter Triple H and Vince McMahon in the gorilla position

If you love NXT, it’s just going to get bigger. There’s going to be more of it. Two hours gives us more opportunity – I look at the roster here and the talent pool I have and I said it yesterday on the call, I wouldn’t trade our roster. There’s nobody out there I’m like ‘Ooo, man, if I could have that’ – nobody. I don’t care who that is and they can make claims to being the greatest in the world with their four matches a year that are good, great. I wouldn’t trade you. That’s just my opinion. I’m not saying whether that’s right or wrong, I’m just saying that’s what it is. I’ll put our roster up against anybody, I’ll put our talent against the world, but that isn’t the point. The point is to go out here – this place is sold-out, there’s going to be a lot of passionate fans and I’ve got a talent roster passionate about going in here and blowing the roof off the place and showing the whole world that they’re NXT and that this is theirs. So that’s the point of this and they’re going to continue to do that, they’re just going to do it with the USA Network in a bigger way which brings more opportunities for everybody.

And that brings me to my second point on recent reports, it came out this week that ‘Oh, WWE wants Enzo Amore and Big Cass again’

Which I immediately then had our PR go like ‘yeah, no.’ Zero interest.

This is what I mean, NXT in the states, you have like 100 talent anyway. So although you’re building out for a two-hour show, you don’t need to necessarily recruit?

I have 104, or 110 talent depending on the moment at the Performance Center in the U.S., another 45 – 50 here [in the U.K.] plus some development stuff around the world. I’m not worried [about filling a two-hour show every week]. The interesting thing about today’s world is, if you call up someone willing to believe anything, you can tell them anything you want in order to try and drum up business for yourself. Congratulations to Enzo, I’m sure spreading rumours has worked well for him. I just don’t want any part of it.

WWE Enzo Amore cutting a promo during his WWE days

One thing I’ve always wondered about, and I don’t want to make it exactly like Vince McMahon in WWE, but is there and itch in you that wants to perform under the NXT banner at some point? There must be something appealing about helping a talent you’ve either created or nurtured in that respect?

To be honest? No. Obviously when I’m at those events and I can feel the passion and everything with the crowd [I want to], but I’m so busy into these other talents. And trust me, there’s almost a day that doesn’t go by where I don’t get a text from somebody on these rosters who go ‘what if…’ or ‘what if Shawn [Michales]…’ or ‘what if you…’ and that’s flattering, I understand that. Look, I watch what they do – I couldn’t hang! Not even in the ballpark anymore.

[It’s] Flattering. Obviously the performer in you, anytime you hear a group of people going crazy with that much passion, you go like man, that’s awesome. I don’t know, I almost feel like I get more buzz, the adrenaline buzz, sitting and watching them succeed. They don’t need us, they don’t. And that’s what’s different about this brand. It’s not a need thing, it’s not like Raw or SmackDown ‘need’. The beautiful thing about our business is every now and again, Babe Ruth can come out and take a swing, you know what I mean?

That’s a really fun part of the business and I think you’ll see some of that in NXT at various points with people that have come through here as it creates its own image and persona. Truth is, this brand is more about the youth and the next level than it is the yesterday. We’re looking forward to be progressive, not live in nostalgia.

On the strength of that, I wanted to get your thoughts on the much-talked-about Goldberg/Undertaker match from Saudi Arabia. Do you think veterans should be working with younger talent rather than veteran versus veteran matches like that? A great example saw Undertaker come back at Extreme Rules with Drew McIntyre and so on and he had a good showing – so can veteran vs veteran be counter-productive when they could be giving a younger talent the rub?

It’s tough. Young guys talk to me all the time about that and as I say, ringing me up and saying ‘hey, what if?’ but the truth is, if you’re uncomfortable – we’re all aware of where we are at and what we can and can’t do, for the most part. You don’t want to hold a guy back, you don’t want him to shift his style down to yours and when you look at what they can do you go ‘I can’t do that any more clearly’ – or probably ever could have. The business has changed, it always grows exponentially over time and the physicality of it. It’s tough.

WWE The Undertaker had a disastrous match with Goldberg in Saudi Arabia in June

Sometimes you put the veteran in there with the younger guy but sometimes you’re just holding him back and it doesn’t always work out.

People can say what they want to say about Saudi Arabia or the match between Undertaker and Goldberg. Listen, my hats off to both of them, it was a bad situation. I can attest to it that it was about 105 degrees and 100 percent humidity at ringside and even Randy [Orton] and I, when we were talking about it afterward, there were moments where I wanted to change gears but I just cannot! It’s humanly impossible in this moment. It was like wrestling in a sauna, it really was.

And there was those moments like when you step out of a sauna and you’re like ‘jeez, I’m lightheaded I might pass out’ – it was so ridiculously hot. And you put pressure on yourself and everything on top of that, so it’s a lot.

It’s a funny thing in our business too, man. No one cuts anybody slack on anything – ever!

Twitter has probably made it a 1,000 times worse?

Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. It just begets negativity. Sometimes I have to remind myself with social media that as you read it, it’s just all people reacting with passion. Their negativity is because they’re passionate. They love this so much, they’re passionate about it. But it’s the forum and the way it’s said. People will say the worst thing in the world on Twitter and they make it sound like if they walked in the room and you were on fire they would just walk away from you [laughs]. But yet if they saw Goldberg or ‘Taker they would be like in awe and speechless. It’s just the craziest thing.

WWE Triple H is the genius behind the whole NXT brand

And the whole time it’s like ‘oh my god, you’ve been an inspiration my entire life’ – really? Because you just crapped all over me on social media as if I wasn’t there. So it’s a weird thing, but it’s today’s world. It’s hard to put into words how they deal with it and what they say. It’s like being isolated, except the whole world can hear everything else. I saw a comedian one time talk about how when you’re in a car by yourself, people can do the littlest thing and you will wish them death, you know what I mean? In the most aggressive and violent way possible because you’re by yourself in that world. But if they were in front of you would never say any of those things or do any of it and I don’t know why because of that isolation [they do it]. Twitter seems like that. You’re all by yourself tweeting away but if that person was there or other people were in the room, it’s different.

There’s something I always wanted to ask you. 10-year-old Alex McCarthy hated Triple H – and I know you’re going to take that as a compliment! – because I was a huge Rock fan. This is around 2000 we’re talking.

Sorry for beating his ass so much [laughs].

You’re not, you’re not! I look at that time and I think the heat you had at that point in the business was incredible. Same for Rock’s superstardom, that’s a level very few get to touch. Why can’t superstars attain the levels you guys did then today? Is it a case that you guys were just that special – and you are all-time greats, of course – or has the business changed where it’s become harder to get to those levels?

There are so many variables in that, that it’s hard. When you look at me having that much heat, I had that much heat only because I had babyfaces that were that over, that charismatic and that loved.

And that’s the point I wanted to make as well, part of the reason The Rock was so big was because he had you as a foil. It works both ways.

Yeah. Put it this way, if Darth Vadar isn’t what he is in the Star Wars movies – and I know I’m dating my references here – are the good guys as good and the bad guys as bad and visa versa. It’s tough. And there are moments that are just magical times. We didn’t realise it at the time I don’t think, we all just thought we were doing our thing and busy arguing with each other about who was going to be the bigger star [laughs].

It was just a magic time in this business and when you look at the who’s who you could work with at that time, I’m thankful for that time. I’m thankful to have The Rock and Stone Cold [Steve Austin] and [Mick] Foley, ‘Taker and everybody that was there. That’s the one crazy thing about this business – there’s not one self-made person in this company. There’s never been one self-made person in this business. This business is much more almost of a team more than anything else you will ever see because one without the other does not work.

You’re only as good as the person you’re in the ring with. The moments in time, those moments of competitiveness, the moment society is at about how people feel about competitiveness or just being happy to be there, all those things play in factors. But I was incredibly lucky in that entire time of my career to have this group around you that you almost can’t help but succeed.

I know you were supposed to face The Rock at WrestleMania 32 – again, 10-year-old me would have gone crazy for that – it was tentatively agreed I guess, what went wrong there?

Scheduling. I don’t remember the details of it but it was one of those things that Rock and I had talked about doing to the point where we did the backstage promo [on SmackDown] where it was like let’s throw a seed out here and see what happens. And we did and it blew up and we talked about it some more and then scheduling just got in the way. It really wasn’t until much later. At that point, we were like over a year away from that WrestleMania. It wasn’t until the following year about three or four months away from WrestleMania that Rock was like ‘Man, it’s just not going to work. I just can’t. All my stuff, my movie thing has changed and I just can’t make it work anymore.’ So, it was what it was.

I would love to have done it, it would have been a blast to step in there with him one more time and tear it up. The cool thing about the place where I’m at in my career, you sort of appreciate those moments a bit more. When you’re busy doing it… you appreciate it, but, man, you’re in the thick of it and it’s tough. When you get later in your career and you start to realise these moments come now and then, there might not be more, you can appreciate the moment more. It’s a lot more difficult – you put a lot more pressure on yourself too when you don’t do this a lot.

But to sort of go back in time and have that match with Batista, when Dave called me about doing that and we spoke about it, I think for both of us [it was] just an ability to go back in time but at a point where we could both appreciate it and just do that again, relive that moment, and then go out there and do it in a way where you don’t embarrass yourself [laughs]. But I think it’s even more special now when you have the opportunity to do it in that manner so stepping out there with The Rock, which for me, you know, there’s guys I look at in my career, it was so competitive at the time for all of us but I don’t know I had more fun with anyone in the ring [than Rock].

WWE The Rock and Triple H back in 1998

I worked with him so much and so many times from him being Rocky Maivia to me being Hunter Hearst Helmsley and all the way through, we just kept going back to each other. And it was always magic I felt like. I feel like we both had that comfort level with each other where we could just get in the ring with each other and have a blast and create something special. So, to do it again would have been something special but sometimes it’s just not on the cards.

I totally agree. In 2000 it felt like you must have faced each other a thousand times and no one was bored!

One thing people always ask me is do you have any regrets, and it’s not really a regret, but it’s just one of those things where I wish we would have had the chance to do in 2000 – when we did the fatal-four-way match – that was originally supposed to be Rock and I and I believe if I remember correctly – he might remember – I believe we were supposed to do an Iron Man match. I believe that was the scheduled match at ‘Mania. Timing of returns and everybody else’s stuff and they needed to get us through another pay-per-view is why we did the four-way and then we came back and did the Iron Man later [at Judgment Day], so it changed the thing but I really wish I would have had that opportunity with him one-on-one at WrestleMania. Because we had done so much together, having that one-on-one would have been special.

Before we wrap up, can you tell the fans what they need to know about NXT UK and why they should be watching it on the WWE Network if they haven’t been already?

The NXT UK brand for me is really exciting in that, as we were recruiting for NXT in the US and really digging deep into that, seeing what was happening in the UK and what they were kind of making, people like Pete Dunne, Tyler [Bate], Trent [Seven] and just all the people over here were sort of making happen, the scene they were creating on their own without really any assistance. Sometimes it would amaze me when we’d get here and talk to talent and it’s like ‘they’re just figuring this stuff out’. You’d tell them something and they’d say ‘Oh, I’ve never heard that before’. and like ‘Man, they just figured this out on their own’. They were watching and just decoding it so to speak and doing their own thing.

WWE Triple H and Shawn Michaels at NXT UK

It was amazing how far they had gotten. So to be able to come here and be able to say we’re going to take what you’re doing and just open this thing up to the world and make it so much bigger. To see that excitement level in them and to then see them step up to the challenge and the sponge in them if somebody would come up to them and say ‘what if you tried this?’ and then the lightbulb, to see that change, come back and be like ‘Oh my god’. The performers they have become, this brand has become – [I’m] really proud of it. And now we see that next generation with the WALTER’s, Toni Storms and the Piper Nivens and just all the people that are now cycling in here and wanting to be apart of it, it’s really exciting and I’m excited for this brand. As this TakeOver takes place tonight in Cardiff, it just opens the door. Next year, we’ll be doing more of this here. With them being a part of USA, it just continues to open the door and it continues to grow and every step of it so far has been overwhelmingly successful and I just can’t wait for those next steps because what’s happening here really is globally known now. There’s no place where I go in the world where I don’t do these kinds of interviews and they ask about NXT and NXT UK.

That’s awesome. And I think it’s just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger so I look forward to that opportunity for all of them.