Triple H Heaps Praise On Bobby Roode As A Producer, States That He Asked Michael Hayes To Mentor Roode

High praise for Roode.

With Bobby Roode’s in-ring career coming to a close due to a neck injury, he transitioned to a behind-the-scenes role at WWE. Roode is currently an agent/producer.

WWE Chief Content Officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque spoke about Roode during a recording of Cody Rhodes’ What Do You Wanna Talk About? podcast. During a media appearance, former SmackDown co-lead writer Brian ‘Road Dogg’ James stated that Levesque leans on Roode often.

Levesque heaped praise on Roode. Levesque then shared that he asked fellow WWE producer Michael Hayes to mentor Roode.

“He’s a sponge — it’s funny. When I very first — I didn’t know Bobby (Roode) at all, then he came into NXT, when we were there, and a couple things I realized very quickly about him was, one, he had an innate ability for this. Two, I don’t think he’d been taught a whole lot — not from the wrestling standpoint. He knew that — the television standpoint, and the psychology standpoint. I think because TNA was sort of a, hey, just go do it and then that’s what comes out. Nobody did TV like here… When he came in, he was like a sponge, and I would see him picking everybody’s brain, just for his own stuff. When his carer started to wind down, at that time, I remember thinking to myself, when he wants to be done taking bumps, like, he’s a good guy for this. I always start out with the, ‘He’s a grown-up, as well.’ He’s not a kid just looking to get another paycheck, right? He understands the difference between business and being one of the boys and all that stuff. Grown-up, but gets it and just has a great demeanor for it and is a sponge for it and then the more I got to work with him… unfortunately, he had a neck injury that wasn’t subsiding. He and I spoke about it. I said, ‘Why don’t you come in and start learning to be an agent? And if the medical stuff clears up, it’d be great. It’ll help your career. If it doesn’t, we’ll start using it’ but, man, he jumped on it, and just very quickly I started moving him up the line and then having the conversation with Mike (Hayes) about, ‘Mentor him.’”

On the Fightful Select subscription service, there are rundowns for who produced matches and segments for the weekly Raw and SmackDown programs.

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