Triple H Recalls Taking On Role As WWE Chief Content Officer, Says Vince McMahon Was Still ‘Directing Traffic’

Levesque stated that he wishes things were as easy as ‘well, why didn’t they just do that?’

Dating back to the summer of 2022, Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque has been heading up WWE’s main roster creative. He assumed the role after the initial round of sexual misconduct allegations arose against Vince McMahon, and McMahon stepped down from his role as CEO and Chairman of the company.

Levesque was the latest guest to sit down with Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes for a recording of ‘What Do You Wanna Talk About?’ Rhodes asked Levesque if he considers WrestleMania 40 to be his first full WrestleMania as Chief Content Officer.

Levesque spoke about the time period from when he took on the role to WrestleMania 40 and remembers Vince McMahon still chiming in at points. McMahon got back onto WWE’s Board of Directors to assist with the sale of the company to Endeavor. He would ‘fully’ step away from WWE and TKO after the Janel Grant sex trafficking lawsuit was made public.

Elsewhere in his response, Levesque touched on the assumption that he could do whatever he pleases from a creative standpoint, and that’s the end-all be-all. He said he can defend his position on things, but it’s not that black and white.

“I think so… and again, this is where I’m terrible with times but, it’s not like one day, here, it’s yours and everything else went away, right? It was so many aspects to that of… ‘Hey, Vince is stepping away. You’re gonna take this spot’ but he’s chiming in and he’s still meeting with me all the time and he’s still directing traffic from the side, and there’s no real clear moment for me but I would consider it that? Yes,” Levesque agreed that WrestleMania 40 was his first full WrestleMania as Chief Content Officer.

The only thing that is difficult in that transition… at the end of the day, when people are like, ‘But yeah, it’s your decision, right?’ ‘Yeah, sorta.’ Yes, and you have to defend your position and you have to be able to sell that to people and explain it to people. If it’s a little bit not your position or a little bit, ‘Why did this happen?’ And you don’t wanna say, well because –” Levesque and Rhodes paused and both of them laughed. “‘It wasn’t totally my decision,’ and not because you don’t wanna seem like you don’t have that power but, you have to position it that way… There’s so many aspects to what we do, even just on a regular, general daily basis. You’re putting something out there and in some manner, you’re like, in an ideal world, I would do this. We don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a realistic world, where I can’t do that because of this and this. I can’t do that because of this and I can’t move this here because — it could be something as simple as these two people don’t get along, or I know this person has an injury that I can’t put all that there or whatever the moment, the sequence, the scenario is. There’s so many factors to all of it… I wish it was as simple as what people think when they just go, ‘Well, why didn’t they just do this?’ I wish it was that simple. I really do.”

Brandon Thurston of POST Wrestling pushed out a report that had to do with text messages from Triple H and WWE President Nick Khan that showed tension towards Vince McMahon. For more on that, click here.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit What Do You Wanna Talk About? with Cody Rhodes with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.