Grantland.com has a great interview with WWE C.O.O. Triple H, talking about his job behind the scenes, the various roles of the McMahon family, Paul Heyman, and a whole lot more.
The differences between Stephanie and Vince McMahon on the week-to-week WWE product:
"…for the most part, [Stephanie] controls the gigantic entity that creative is so that there's continuity between the digital and the magazine, continuity between the domestic shows or the shows that run internationally, all of those components and those teams, which is a massive amount of people. But creatively, the final sign-off is Vince … That's what he loves to do. It's funny. I often think to myself, he's a promoter and creative guy that somehow got caught up running a corporation. All the other stuff is like his day job, it's 'This is the shit I gotta do' — talk to finance people, see to this and that. But at the end of the day, he really likes to sit down in the room with the creative people and talk about creative."
Many might be surprised to find out that Triple H has actually been involved in the WWE on a creative level for quite a long time.
"If you go back to the Clique, why were we all in the same car? Because all we talked about was business. All five guys, we obsessed about it. Not in a bad way; we just loved the business. We constantly talked about it and constantly were coming up with ideas, even if they weren't for us.
"Starting a year after I got to the WWF, Vince would say, 'Hey, you have an opinion on this, what's your opinion?' And I'd give Vince my opinions. Sometimes he liked it, sometimes he didn't, but we kind of established that working relationship so that when Russo left in the middle of the night to go to WCW, I went to Vince and I just said, 'I understand how creative works. You can't bounce ideas off yourself. So if you want to bounce ideas off me, I'm happy to just hear you out and give you my opinion. Not saying you need it, just saying it's there.' And that started it. Shortly thereafter, it was, 'You want to start coming to production meetings? I could really use you in there.' And I've been doing it since probably '98, '99."
Check out The Game's massive interview with Grantland, including his thoughts on the internet, dirt sheet writers, the truth behind CM Punk's infamous "shoot promo" and much more.
