Triple H hears the criticism aimed at WWE’s creative, and he wishes fans would point that energy somewhere else.
The Chief Content Officer, who has taken plenty of heat for the company’s direction over the past year, addressed the nature of fan passion during an appearance on Busted Open Radio. He compared the reaction WWE gets to what plays out across every major sport.
That passion is what drives people. It’s no different than the NFL where guys that have never played a down of football in their life, or haven’t played since peewee or whatever, are screaming and ranting, ‘This coach sucks. He knows nothing about football. Doesn’t understand the game. Why would he run that play? Why wouldn’t he do this? Why would they draft that guy?’ There’s millions of reasons why, but it’s that passion.
He leaned on a timely example to illustrate how quickly that passion swings.
Just like the NFL or NBA or Major League Baseball, people sit on the couch and yell, ‘I’m done. I’m never watching the Knicks again. They suck.’ And then they win and now they’re the greatest thing ever. It’s amazing. It’s passion. At the end of the day, it’s why we do what we do.
Where it gets tricky for his business, he explained, is that heat tends to land on the writing instead of the character generating it.
I wish sometimes we could put that passion into the talent now, as opposed to when somebody gets heat in our business, it’s like, ‘God, why would they write that that way?’ As opposed to, ‘That no good piece of crap did this.’ There’s something to saying that innocence of not knowing and, ‘It still being real to me, dammit.’ But it is what it is. I love that. I love the hate. I love the love. It’s all passion for what we do.
