- Hey, this is The Game, Triple H with the WWE.
I am here today at FBE to, oddly enough,
react to people reacting to me.
- (Michael) Sweet Chin Music into a Pedigree!
- (Johnny) Boom!
- This one was a tough one,
because we'd both been gone for so long,
and while it was fun to be out there with them
and in front of that many people, and doing this one more time,
you put a lot of pressure on yourself late in your career,
25 years in, or however long you're in to be able to still do
what you do at the level you did it at 25 years earlier,
and it just, that doesn't happen that way sometimes.
This was one of those ones. It was bittersweet in a way.
- (Johnny) Oh man!
- This was one of my,
you know, one of my favorite storylines we did.
Randy Orton and I had a long history with each other
from Evolution all the way through, and there was a moment
where I went after him in his home.
- (Seth) It's really a precursor to a lot of the cinematic matches
we've seen recently in WWE pay-per-view,
because of the pandemic and stuff like that.
- We've been doing 'em for years,
whether it was Austin and Booker in the grocery store, or whatever.
It's always memorable for us as talent
when you get to go into somebody's house,
or a house that they're renting and just destroy it.
- (Seth) If Triple H shows up in my backyard,
we're gonna have a problem, I'll tell you that.
He'll be the one going through my window,
I got a pregnant woman in here dang it!
No danger, alright?
- I'm more worried about Becky than I am about Seth.
She's pregnant, she's tired, all that stuff.
She'll beat the two of us up.
- (Michael) Has turned his back on X-Pac!
- (Johnny) Shame, shame, shame!
- (Michael) Right over Shane! - (Jerry) What?
- (Charlotte) 'Cause he wasn't scared to be a bad guy.
The ultimate bad guy.
- (Sasha) Triple H is such a good bad guy,
like, you wanna hate him at all times.
- It's funny for me, in my career,
I always gravitated towards that as a fan.
The bad guys were always more interesting to me,
and more intriguing characters.
It always seemed like it was so much more fun to portray that.
For me, it's just easier to see the things that bother people
and then be able to do those things, if you're not afraid to do them.
- (Shawn) He had the passion and the desire,
and the drive to feel like he was good enough
and he deserved his opportunity, and that clip you just showed
was sort of in that era for him.
- That was a very controversial time for me, within the WWE landscape.
As the Rock was becoming,
and Austin were becoming these key good guys,
I knew that without the bad guy in those scenarios,
the good guys aren't as good as they need to be.
I went to Vince, I pitched this,
I wanna flip, and I wanna turn on the group.
I wanna turn heel, and I wanna do this,
and they just didn't get it.
It caused a lot of strong conversations to happen
with all of us about, you know, God no, don't do that yet.
Not yet, ride this out until it's done, man.
We have so much more legs on this.
One of the big lessons, I think, that Vince taught me
all throughout my career and even to this day
is if you believe in what you're doing,
be willing to gamble on yourself.
(crowd cheers)
- (Johnny) Oh, this is when DX gets back together.
- (Jim) And Michaels, bad knee and all!
- (Stephanie) Coming in for the save!
- (Montez) You wanna do this? Do you wanna do this?
- (Angelo) Let's go! - (Montez) Yeah, let's go!
- (Angelo) Suck it!
For me, personally, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this,
but hey, when I was a kid, I know how many detentions I got
for you know, telling people to suck it.
- It just brings me back to me being a talent
and sitting, watching Flair and Dusty Rhodes,
and everybody that I watched growing up,
and knowing what that meant to me
and how it inspired me to get in the business.
I have talent say it to me all the time.
Oh my God, you know, you're part of the reason
why I got in the business or something.
It's the biggest honor you can have.
- (Shawn) When we got together as D-Generation X,
it was something that was just an absolute blast to be a part of
because you knew you were doing something very different
and very outside of the norm.
People either really loved it,
but a lot of the traditionalists really hated it.
- When we formed DX, we were breaking a mold
that, as Shawn said,
a lot of people really resisted and hated.
We would do stuff in the ring and it was just very spontaneous
to him and I, and we would just riff off each other,
and when we'd come back, be like oh my God,
I can't believe you did that, or vice versa.
You could tell the people that it angered,
and when we'd come back, and you could tell the people
that thought it was funny.
- (Jim) Showing his competitive spirit here!
- (Angelo) Oh!
- (Montez) Hunter Hearst Helmsley. - (Angelo) Helmsley, oh!
- (Johnny) That's the most amazing thing to me,
'cause they've heard the name Triple H so long,
they don't even know what Hunter Hearst Helmsley means.
- There's a moment when the Attitude Era begins to launch
where, you know, the characters are kind of going out the window,
and it's becoming larger than life versions of you,
and just much more attitude driven and all that,
and I remember Vince coming to me and saying like
look, what do you wanna do with this?
And I wanted to morph out of the character slowly,
become something more, because we were gonna do DX with Shawn.
I didn't wanna change the name, because I had so much time
and energy invested already in this Hunter Hearst Helmsley guy
that it felt like, to just say that was all garbage,
and forget it, I'm a different guy now seemed wrong, so,
everybody backstage, Shawn, Kevin Nash, Hall,
they all called me Triple H,
and I think it was Shawn that actually called me that the first time.
And so the suggestion was made, just stick with the nickname, it works.
- (Stephanie) Oh, this is priceless. - (Hunter) Knocking on that door!
- (Johnny) I knew, I knew!
It's the whole deal, it's all of 'em, there you go!
- I knew about it before getting to the building that day,
and I remember Billy and Dogg and Kid coming to me going like
there's a whole bunch of army stuff with our logos on it,
what are we doing?
And I was like, so Vince made me swear that I would not say anything
to you guys until he did, but trust me, this is epic.
We're about to change the entire industry, man.
- (Adam) For DX to show up at WCW's door,
I was like what is happening?
- It's hard for people to understand today
how much that moment changed the business.
That was a moment in time
sort of where you didn't acknowledge the other guys.
- (Stephanie) One of his best entrances!
- (Angelo) Every entrance matters because you gotta get everybody
who's tuning in and take 'em on a journey.
- For me, the pageantry, the entrances,
the way things are lit, the music,
everything that leads you to these fights to me,
is as big as the fight.
You know, you put a lot of thought into these,
and I've seen sometimes people think oh, it's just all about
me trying to build grandeur on myself, well it was,
it was about the story of the match and the characters,
and trying to make them as epic and big as possible.
- (Seth) Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I see some familiar faces there.
- (Adam) That's Alexa Bliss, Charlotte Flair, and Sasha Banks,
all right there!
- (Sasha) Legit told all of us that we were going to have
this moment of our own one day, and just what, a year and half later,
two years later, we're all debuting on Raw,
we're all like champions.
- (Charlotte) It was so cool when he told us in the gear,
and being a part of it, we were like this is our biggest
WrestleMania moment ever!
The fact that now I've had my four or five WrestleManias,
just at that moment, like, I didn't have to do anything.
How does he do this?
- Probably one of my favorite entrances of all time.
Not because of the, I mean, because I thought it was very cool,
but also having them out there with me doing that.
Being able to share that stage with them
and give them that experience as knowing where they're
about to go with their lives and their careers
was awesome.
- (Jerry) Oh, JR! - (Johnny) That was the return, yep!
- (Jerry) This is it!
- (Johnny) The loudest reaction I've ever heard.
- (Adam) This is my personal favorite Triple H moment.
- For me, that was a moment that,
if I could have written the whole thing,
I couldn't have done it any better or would've done it any differently.
The moment was incredible.
- (Sasha) You know you get some goosebumps when you return, dad.
- (Charlotte) I can't image what that sounded like there.
Like to be backstage or to be him,
and that's gotta feel good as a performer.
- This is, you know, nine months give or take
after an injury where I tore my quad,
and didn't just tear my quad, but like, completely blew apart
the entire capsule of my knee.
I don't care who you are,
when you come back from something like that,
you think, well I hope they, at least give a crap and remember.
I remember even standing in the curtain,
they chanted the entire time during the commercial break
before I came out, and still thinking
please give a crap when my music hits.
- (Jim) For God's sakes!
- (Stephanie) Oh yes! The turn.
- (Adam) Stephanie! - (Jim) What?
Oh God!
- (Sasha) This is so juicy!
- (Jim) What is this?
- (Seth) Young babyface Stephanie.
It's so cute now, but at the time, it was very devious.
- It's funny, because Steph and I were just, you know,
we didn't really know each other then,
and we were put into a working situation with each other.
The storyline being what it is,
and we always say our marriage works so well,
'cause we had a dry run on TV.
- (Stephanie) That is when I turned on my father,
and joined forces with the evil Triple H.
That was the moment that started it all, right?
Here we are, married, with three kids,
and if that moment never happened, who knows where we would be today?
- It was a surreal moment,
and it wasn't really expected to go the way that it did,
it was expected to be just kind of a big swerve
to get out of a different storyline.
The whole thing was just so unheard of and shocking
that it blew people's mind, and she was so good in the role.
Especially as being this young, fresh faced innocent girl
to all of a sudden being this just devious manipulator.
It really made everything work.
- (FBE) So this year marks the 25th anniversary
of Triple H in the WWE.
Can you talk a little bit about
what Triple H has meant for you, personally.
- (Seth) Oh, personally for me, Triple H has, you know,
he's been there through it all.
If it weren't for Triple H,
there would be no Seth Rollins as you know him today.
- (Sasha) I kinda owe my whole career to him,
because I wouldn't have the opportunity if he didn't care.
- It's just humbling to see, you know,
people and performers that are such big stars
that one, saw you in that light, and you know,
saw you as they were coming up and trying to get into the business,
much like I did with people that were before me,
and then to think that they think that I'm even just a small part
of the reason why they get where they are
is incredible and humbling.
- (Shawn) I've been able to make an awful, you know,
wonderful living, one, doing what I love to do
and then getting to do it side by side with your best friend.
That is absolutely an unbelievable thing.
- My life revolves around this business in a lot of ways.
So to be able to do the day-to-day business stuff with my wife,
to then be doing what we're doing together at the NXT,
and the Performance Center,
it's funny because in a lot of ways,
I feel like I just get to be a giddy kid
sitting next to my best friend,
I don't know, running a wrestling promotion,
so to speak, almost like it's a video game
or something like that, except it's real life.
- (FBE) So finally, if Triple H were watching this right now,
what would you want to say to him?
- (Sheamus) Tell him not to get a big head,
I'll still knock the [censored] out of him.
That WrestleMania victory was a fluke,
you can tell him that.
- It's a fluke, tell him I don't, tell him I don't remember it,
because he kicked me so hard in the head.
- (Charlotte) I'm forever grateful for the confidence
he instilled in my dad and gave back to him,
and just giving me the opportunity at NXT,
which changed my life.
- I appreciate the fact that people say oh,
I instilled his confidence back in him.
I just told him he was Ric Flair.
I just looked at him every day and I thought Jesus,
this is Ric Flair, the greatest in-ring performer of his generation,
and he had forgotten it,
and everybody else saw it but him and I just helped him remember.
- (Stephanie) I couldn't be more proud of you.
I love you so much.
You deserve every celebration 25 years of this iconic career,
and I can't wait for the next 25.
- That's awesome.
(laughs) It's a funny thing, because it's a little bit past now,
I feel like I've been celebrating the 25 for 25.
It's nice, in a way, it's like your birthday
all the way up until the birthday the following year.
- What is it like to see these superstars
talk about you like this, not only just share memories,
but talk about what impact you've had on their careers?
- It's humbling. It really, really, is.
In some ways, it makes you feel old.
You know, when people tell you, oh I watched you when I was a kid,
and you're the reason why I got in the business
or something like that, it's like well thank you, I think?
All of those people, whether it's Sheamus,
whether it's Adam Cole, whether it's the Street Profits,
whether it's Sasha, Charlotte, so many.
As satisfying as your career is,
it's like doing all those things and it being wonderful for you,
and then your kids come along and you watch them have that success
and you watch them live their dreams and have that success.
It's almost more rewarding.
- So what would you like to say to those in the WWE Universe
who have been watching you for all these years?
- Thank you.
They give us the privilege, I'm trying not to get emotional.
They give the privilege to do what we do.
Thank you for every cheer, every boo,
everything you threw at me, everything you,
horrible things that were said because I deserve them.
Hopefully now, I'm making generations, or helping to give the opportunity
to generations, more talent, that can continue to deliver
a product that is worthy of your passion for WWE.
Once again, thank you for all of this.
It's been an epic 25 year ride at this point.
If you're watching this, you know where to follow.
You know how to follow.
Support NXT, it is the future of this business.
We're creating the stars of tomorrow for you, for the generation after you,
and for generations to come.
Thank you for watching.