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14-time WWE World Champion, a two-time

Royal 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.

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[Applause]

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All right, yeah. Thanks for coming.

>> Welcome.

So, the 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 uh Memphis State Tigers

basketball and professional wrestling at

the Mid-South Coliseum on Monday nights.

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 Triple H was I the

premier heel champion, the unstoppable

force of the whole attitude era. And uh

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 um huge business career. So, I

think we want to 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 got to be

First of all, you've got to 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 um you're you're

basically an actor, but you also have to

write your own dialogue. And you've got

to 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

um

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 showmanship, the

charisma that you have to have, the um

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, 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 of people

sometimes can be a lot less about all

the things you know and how good you are

at them as the charisma to get people to

listen to you. And then if you put the

right people around you, you can have

all the things that you need, but people

will follow that leadership. Right? So,

even when it comes to politics, it's

amazing to me when I walk through the

White House

um over the last few months, I've been

there quite a few times, how many people

in the White House are huge fans Yeah.

of WWE. Um I mentioned this to you

backstage, but similar to to David, I

had a

growing up in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Yes. There's really there wasn't any

professional sports. Ultimately, we got

the NHL.

>> as big a pop as Memphis.

Uh and my father and I

one of the few things that we were able

to bond over was wrestling. And you and

then your whole progression where you

started off as Hunter Hearst Helmsley,

which is really what David is like now.

And then he became more of a, you know,

more of the Triple H heel. But, I wanted

to ask you a question about exactly what

you just said. And I want you to sort of

walk us through the

characteristics of these two individuals

who have had a very vibrant career in

wrestling.

Donald Trump, who's now in politics, and

The Rock, who people say may actually go

into politics later. And what you just

said is it's an incredible breeding

ground for charisma and connecting with

people.

Yeah, I mean,

I think if you go back through history,

even in politics, and you look at the

person that gets elected in every

presidential cycle, it's the most

charismatic person on that stage that

gets elected president. The the issues

are important. The um all all the

you know, the the real life day-to-day

things that are important to people

obviously are there, but at the end of

the day, they're picking who they like.

They're picking who connects with them.

They're picking who is charismatic to

them. Um

you know, Donald Trump was very good in

our world of WWE because he was okay to

be himself. He was okay to sort of get

egg on his face and be embarrassed

sometimes. He was okay to put it all out

there um and just be him, but he's

charismatic. He's larger than life. He's

not afraid to say what's in front of

him, right or wrong. Um The Rock is the

same way. That connection with people is

really um

it's it's In my mind, it is what drives

the planet. So, in in wrestling, there's

basically heels and babyfaces or faces.

Or some variation, right? Nobody in In

today's world, there's very few all the

way good, all the way bad. Right. And

actually, that that sort of started to

change in the attitude era. I remember

when the '80s, when I was growing up,

Hulk Hogan was like this superhero type,

you know, babyface. And then

and you know, I I weirdly always just

rooted for the heels. Uh and then Stone

Cold You're more fun. Yeah, that's more

fun. And then Stone Cold Steve Austin

came along, and he kind of was a heel,

but all of a sudden everyone's like

rooting for him. Like, what happened

there? And like, did something change in

American society or did the product get

more sophisticated? I think people

became more savvy to how the world

really works.

Nobody's perfect. And I I I I don't

think there's anybody that is

uh well, I shouldn't say anybody. There

there's certainly people that are just

evil in the world, but um

you know, most people, the average

person, there are people that are

really good,

but somewhere in there's there's some

stuff that maybe isn't. Um and and vice

versa on that. I think

I have a saying in what I do right now.

As long as the bad guy, the heel,

is justified somewhere in his mind that

what he is doing is right.

That leads to the best heel, right? It

because

if 90% of the world disagrees with you,

but you believe, "No, you're all wrong.

I see this and it is right."

You can you can run down that road.

You're not just trying to be the, you

know, the curl your mustache bad guy

heel tying people to the railroad

tracks.

It's real. You feel it, and it's real,

and it's why you want to get to that

place, right or wrong for most people.

So, that the shades of gray I don't know

that we necessarily lead society, WWE. I

wouldn't want to think that, but I think

we reflect it. Well, you did a very good

job in the '80s and '90s where you would

take the

geopolitics. I don't know if this was by

design. And you take a character and

you'd say, "Well, we need to talk about

the Middle East somehow. So, okay, we

have the Iron Sheik." Right? And you

create these characters that would

reflect the geopolitical tension of the

time. Did Did you find that that was

harder to do in this generation or is it

harder to do now just because there's

still so many potholes or Absolutely. I

I just think that if you

stereotyped somebody into a particular

place, a lot of the world would rebel

against that. Yeah. Right? Not in a

positive way. And and maybe sometimes

people that have

no

real reason to have a position on either

side of that, right? Um

The one thing about WWE is we're a fun

reflection of the world. It's supposed

to be fun. It's supposed to be

entertainment. It's supposed to be

fantastical. It's supposed to um let you

come to an event for 3 hours and just

turn off and enjoy entertainment and and

some type of representation of the world

that is around you. But, people get lost

in it, and they begin to take the

representations too seriously sometimes.

>> So then, can you contrast and compare

then maybe WWE

and for a long time, I had a really hard

time because of my fascination with

wrestling migrating to MMA. But, MMA has

really taken over

um a lot of the zeitgeist, especially

amongst younger generations of men.

Do you feel pressure to make it more

physical or more

like it? Or how do you think these two

things play in

What what role do they play, I guess,

maybe in American society?

>> I think they're total opposites. Like,

MMA is just it's competitive. It's

competition. It's that's what it's based

on.

Though best when and and you can look at

that world, and I don't want to get too

deep into their world, but

you have a Conor McGregor come along. If

Conor McGregor came out of retirement

tomorrow and and said he's fighting in 4

months, it would be massive, right? The

amount of people that would gravitate

towards that, the ticket sales, the

viewership would be intense. When's the

last time he fought?

And when is the last time he won? Mhm. I

couldn't even tell you. It's forever.

What what people are buying is that cult

of personality.

Right.

>> Right? It's the same in our business. We

tell stories. I'm less

And and people within our business

sometimes take this wrong, but I don't

we don't write the shows based on

that'll be a great match.

We write it on the stories that we can

create, the protagonist, the antagonist,

how does that work with each other,

telling stories that can resonate with

people that maybe they've experienced in

their real life, some type of

fantastical version of that. Um So, is

there a writers' room? There is a

writers' room. We have a large staff of

>> Yeah. There's a show right now on

Netflix um called Unreal and it is for

the first time ever a look behind the

scenes at what we do. We let cameras

into the writers' room. We let them

backstage at our shows. So, you see the

production of the shows. You see what

goes into it, you know.

There's months of planning that go into

stuff. We're we're looking now at

WrestleMania in in Vegas in April and

what those matches are going to be and

how we want to get there. What is the

storyline arc that takes us there over

time. Um

I would say we're much more akin to like

the Marvel Universe where you're

planning out long-term where the movies

fit and how they go with all the

characters than we are you know, direct

MMA. At the end of the day, direct MMA

is or you know, UFC it's you're booking

matches and the interest is that guy's

really good. He's really good. I'm not

sure who's going to win. Let's put them

together. When when you get the right

personalities involved, then it

explodes.

Paul, I'm going to go back to this

iconic attitude era, which is also what

we call it when Chamath has his third

glass of red wine at the poker game.

>> Yeah.

It gets a little spicy.

Um it got very physical and there's this

sort of backyard wrestling and there's

this incredible iconic movie The

Wrestler.

>> Yes.

This does take a toll on your body.

Although you're not making full contact

what what toll has it taken on your

body? What toll does it take when you

guys are soaring 10 ft, 15 ft in the air

at I don't know what you weigh at max

weight, 2-300 lbs of just muscle

landing. Like what happens to your

knees, your back, the the whole thing?

Yeah, it's a physical business. We have

we have a few sayings in our business.

One, it isn't ballet.

Right? No. Um

and and that's not to knock ballet cuz I

couldn't do that. Uh though many people

would want to see me try.

Um

it's it's a physical business and no one

walks away unscathed. Right.

>> Right? But we have probably one of the

most robust medical programs in

athletics. Um so, we're scanning

constantly for everything. Um

you know, physically as well as head

injuries, everything, right? So, we're

way on top of that. Didn't necessarily

used to be that way. As things have

improved, we've gotten there. Um you

know, the the trick in our business is

to make it look incredibly physical

without being incredibly physical.

>> with this is, you know, it's been

Sachs's dream. He was telling us when we

were doing the show notes yesterday

during the rehearsal, it's been Sachs's

dream all this time

to be involved in wrestling. He feels

like it was like a career path he didn't

get to take. So, is there any way, you

know, given what you've done that you

could lift Sachs

right now. Who wants to see him lift

Sachs?

COME ON NOW.

COME ON.

TRIPLE H versus So,

>> So, so there was a a pitch for me to do

that here and put uh David through this

table.

I just want to see you lift him.

>> Although when I approached him on it, he

said he was holding out for a bigger

moment in the Oval Office. So, we're not

going to do it here.

Come on now. I mean, you know that you

can break Freeberg in half. He weighs

110 lbs wet out of the shower.

But Sachs, he did the Ozempic and he

added 10 lbs of muscle.

How How easily can you lift that man?

>> It's called a bump, Jason. I'm not I'm

not ready to take some bumps here today,

but

>> Let's Let's lift him. Come on.

is he's talking about your fandom, but

he's walking around back here with a

handheld uh speaker and

uh he had his own entrance music. His

entire run backstage, he's running

around like he's

getting ready for the main event of

WrestleMania before he came out here.

So, you're saying you want to lift me?

Hey.

All right.

Okay.

Let me ask a a question on the business

of of wrestling. You got to sign a

waiver. Yeah. I'll sign seven. Let's go.

We see a lot of bifurcation happening

generally in media and content. The live

events are just making so much money,

whether it's concerts or basketball

games and those industries are seeing

revenue and profits kind of escalate.

And then the traditional broadcast

fiction's kind of dying. Like the

margins aren't there, the viewership's

down. How is the bifurcation work for

for for your business, digital and kind

of like the content stuff that you're

doing digitally versus the live? And

like is digital still is digital going

to be like a growing piece of the

business for some time, do you think? Or

is it really a live experience? Well,

it's a live experience, but I think all

those things lead you to the live

experience.

So, where do you tell the stories that

get you to want to go to the live event?

We tell those stories across digital

platforms. We have

right around a billion social media

followers across the globe. We're one of

the the largest social presence.

I I'll I'm not a stat guy, so I'll screw

some of this up, but

number one YouTube channel across all

sports.

I'm not sure where we're at, but we're

in the top 10 of YouTube channels across

everything.

You know, our social presence is second

to none.

>> Do those monetize on their own or

>> do they do monetize, but we also see

them as drivers to everything else.

Right? So, our products now Raw airs

domestically in the US on Netflix, but

the

um

is viewed globally on Netflix every

place else. Right? So, outside of the

US, Raw, SmackDown, all our shows are on

Netflix globally.

Monday nights on Netflix globally,

Tuesday nights uh NXT, which is our our

sort of um

Triple-A baseball or our college

football, if you would. That that airs

on the CW across broadcast. Um Friday

nights we're on USA uh with NBCU still.

We have Saturday nights main event on

Peacock. We just did a

>> Does Does your audience still have an

affinity for live? Are they still big

into

>> 1,000%

so our our biggest events are PLEs. We

just did a game-changing announcement

where we're we're moving them over to

ESPN.

Here starting up and you know, nobody

does large-scale

builds to events like ESPN does, so that

will be massive for us.

Um

you know, we've always sort of been in

the forefront of that. When

when WrestleMania started, it was um

closed circuit. You know, we we

pioneered closed circuit entertainment

where you would go to a theater and

watch a broadcast. We pioneered

uh pay-per-view industry. When streaming

was just coming into play, we were one

of the first movers into We had our own

WWE Network. So, when it was kind of

Netflix and us. Um we then realized that

over time that's going to be a tech war

that we're not suited for. It's not what

we do. We pulled out of that. We went

over to Peacock.

Um we're now on Netflix. We're on ESPN.

You know,

we're across the board. Can you just

bring us behind the scenes in this

negotiation cuz you guys just signed a

huge licensing deal. Maybe you want to

tell folks

the size of it, but how did you bid

people against each other and what were

the different things that different

folks wanted? Well, the the the

beautiful thing about us is with the

amount of content we do, we're 52 weeks

a year live.

So, when you when you talk about a

content company that puts out

entertainment, we are live Monday nights

uh

2 to 3 hours depending on on the on the

evening on Netflix. Tuesday nights 2

hours on CW, Friday nights 2 hours and

half the year is 3 hours on USA.

Uh you know, once a month

a 3-hour plus PLE, uh Saturday nights

main event quarterly or more per year.

That's that's all live. That's all

content that we're putting out on a

regular basis. Um to go back to the live

event experience, our live event

you know, our ticketing, our live event

experience numbers are off the chart and

that's global. We were just in Paris. Um

we did the stadium in Paris. Uh we did

Lyon, France on a Friday night. A PLE on

a Sunday night in a stadium in Paris,

France where we had 30 plus thousand

there and then we did

uh

Monday night Raw from Paris in that same

stadium with a little over 20,000 there

for TV the next night. Came straight

back to the US. So, it's it's every

single week that amount of live content.

>> That's incredible. 500 hours a year.

Yeah. But the way to see us

is live.

Uh this will date me and if anybody is a

fan of the band Kiss, Kiss when they

were in the '70s were like the hottest

live act in the world, but they weren't

selling albums.

They thought if there's a way we could

just get people to experience what we do

live on an album, it will change the

game for us. They did a live one.

It exploded. When when live albums

didn't sell anything because it captured

them live.

It's the same for us. I I I say this all

the time. If we want to make a WWE fan,

if we're working with a partner and

they're kind of on the fence or they're

not super into what we do, we bring them

to what we do live. We bring them to

WrestleMania. We bring them to a stadium

show. We bring them to an arena event.

And when you have 30,000 people to, you

know, 50, 60, 80,000 people in a stadium

going insane.

>> Bananas. It is electric. There is no way

that you leave there and go, "Eh." You

think that's the antidote for social

media?

I think social media leads you to it,

but I think for a lot of people and this

is just my fear, but I think COVID

the moment in COVID started to maybe

show people that like objects aren't

where it's at.

That experiences Same same one, yeah.

are where it's at.

And

you know, especially shared experience.

So when you talk about, you know, your

relationship with your dad, that was

your thing. I hear that all the time.

50% or more of our audience comes with a

child.

Comes comes with a family member. 40% of

our our our fan base is women.

We're one of the most diverse sports, if

you want to look at it that way, or

entertainment products out there. But

the thing that I love the most is when I

look in the crowd, when I'm running an

event and I'm in the back and they're

panning that crowd on camera and I see

what I clearly see as a grandfather with

their kids and their grandkids sitting

all together

freaking out over the show and you know,

you know that grandfather was in a Bruno

Sammartino and the dad was into The Rock

or or Stone Cold and the kids now are

into Roman Reigns or Rhea Ripley or you

know, um it's it it's amazing and it

binds families together. It gives them

something to enjoy together and those

those shared experiences

at the end of the day to me a car is

only worth the value of if you pack it

with your family and you go somewhere

with it and you remember the ride.

That that to me is it. It's the rest of

it is amazing. You're at the White House

for the presidential fitness challenge

being relaunched.

>> Yes. And uh we've talked a lot on the

pod about this next generation, maybe

too much screens, too many video games,

not enough in person and obviously

fitness is a is a big problem there. So

how do we get these kids off the

computers and then get them doing

physical activity and really enjoying

life because when we grew up in the 80s,

we didn't have screens, we were out in

the streets, we were you know,

free-range kids. Everybody on this

stage, I'm going to say right, your

parents sent you out the door said come

back when the street lights turn on.

That was in Brooklyn, yeah. Yeah, I mean

that's what you did, right? And and

that's how you grew up, it's how you

lived and the experiences that you had

and figuring out how to entertain

yourself. Yes. The boredom leading to

creativity. Yeah.

Um and and it was very physical and you

grew up physical. We need to change that

back to people and and get them to

realize that that physicality, there's

enjoyment in that physicality and

there's success in that physicality. One

thing for me, when I was a kid and I

first wandered into the gym and I

learned who Arnold Schwarzenegger was,

who I consider one of the great American

success stories of all time.

He he had a blueprint in his mind as a

young kid of what he saw. He saw a a

bodybuilder named Reg Park and thought

to himself, I'll follow that blueprint,

I'm going to be like Reg Park, I'm going

to become the biggest bodybuilder of all

time, I'm going to get into to

Hollywood, I'm going to take over

Hollywood, then I'm going to get into

politics and I'm going to do right like

he saw this blueprint and he did it.

I saw that same blueprint for me.

Right? But what taught me to do those

things was athletics. It started with

the physical. You both came up with it.

>> physical. The gym does not you.

Right? Yes. If if you go in the gym

>> at that gym.

>> You you either work hard

You wouldn't like it, Jacob. Eat eat

right.

Eat right.

>> Why don't you want to do the bench press

after this? We can do it. Me, you and my

dummy.

But actually let's let's talk about that

blueprint first.

>> a fitness challenge right here, right

now.

>> let's go.

Let's go. We'll do an all-in fitness

challenge.

Let me follow me ask you. So you had a

blueprint in your mind. I remember, you

know, I've seen you interviewed before

and when you were coming up in the

business, you were learning from guys

like Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair and

you were a student of the game and then

you incorporate that into your character

your character was called The Game and

then hit another level. So you clearly,

you know, you were leading the

development of that character

and I think that over to another level

when somehow the character and yourself

somehow you hit some sort of center

>> yeah. Yeah, joined.

I guess what does that do in terms of

the creative friction that you deal with

now running the talent because they have

their own blueprints in their mind about

where they want to go with their career,

but you as running the overall creative

have a direction where they want to go.

How much friction does that create? It

doesn't create friction, it creates a

partnership. Which is what I love. That

one of the favorite parts of my job is

to sit down in a room with talent and

say, where do we want to go?

Where do we want to go with you? How do

we want to get there? That's not the

conversation of well, I want to be the

champion. Okay, okay, everybody does.

What is what is what is your story and

how do we tell it and who here

of these other talent can have a story

that goes against your arc to combine

with their arc to tell a great story,

right? Once we start to riff those

things, today's world is different. You

go back, you know, 40, 50 years, Ivan

Koloff was a Canadian guy that played a

Russian because we were in the middle of

a Cold War and it was the easy thing to

do, but you couldn't do that character

now because the internet would go like,

he's from Canada.

Right?

It it doesn't work. They know the truth.

So today you have to sort of blend who

you are, real life,

with the character that you play and

sort of blur this line, blur this line

of the fourth wall of was that real or

do these guys really not like each other

or is that really, you know, while

you're putting it together backstage,

we're all agreeing on where we want to

go and then we tell this story that

people cannot tell what's real and what

is fantasy and that's when it gets

magical.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's give it up

for Triple H. All of that. Thank you

very much.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Phenomenal.

Phenomenal. Thank you, sir.

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