Triple H: Shaping WWE’s Future, Vince McMahon & The Story Behind John Cena's Heel Turn (E343)

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance App. Nothing like being in our ring in front of those people, controlling their emotions and knowing I'm about to do this and they're going to lose their minds. That is the voice of Triple H. To give him his real name, Paul Levesque, the former wrestler turned chief content officer of WWE, the man who's now leading the way for the global entertainment powerhouse. And can I just say, this isn't a conversation just about wrestling. This is a conversation about a man who's helping to shape one of the biggest businesses on the planet because he oversees everything from the storylines to developing new talent to deciding the future of the sport, including things like their huge Netflix deal.

1:08Look, this was an exclusive conversation we had, Damien, and it was an explosive one as well. It was. It was eye-opening. Especially when he spoke about the complex relationship that he has with his father-in-law, Vince McMahon. The bit that stood out for me, though, was when he revealed just how close he came to death and the health scare challenges and what it's done to shape his perspective on life, love, and everything else. You're absolutely right. I mean, if you're a big wrestling fan out there, of course we talk about the famous heel turn of John Cena and also the planning that goes into moments like that.

1:39But there's also genuine feuds that happen in this sport and you'll hear him talk about his relationship with CM Punk and how you get over those issues. And of course, we discuss big celebrities in the ring and he explains to us why so many celebs are now appearing in the WWE. as we welcome to High Performance, Paul Triple H Levesque.

2:05Well, Paul, welcome to High Performance. Thank you. How would you describe the creative mission that you're on at WWE? I just want it to be fun. Our business can get very serious when you're doing it as often as you are. And the drive and the pressure to be more and the, you know, it's relentless. I say about our business all the time, it's not the boulder in your path, it's the pebble in your shoe, right? Like it's show after show after show and it never stops. So when you get to even like WrestleMania, which is like our Super Bowl, you know, we have this running joke that when WrestleMania is over, somebody will walk up to gorilla position where we run the show from and they will hand us a script for Monday Night Raw, which is the next night.

2:49And you're like, well, my off season is over. Here's the show. Here's tomorrow's show. you know, and it just goes on. So it can be overwhelming. I think for me, if I was to pick one thing on the creative, you know, you can say the standard stuff of, I want the creative to be great. I want it to resonate across pop culture, all those things. I want it to be fun. I want it to be fun for fans watching and have them be entertained and give all the emotional rides that we do. But especially for the people creating it, I want it to be a fun process, Like creative process for people should be fun. They should have fun doing it.

3:24Like no one ever goes, you know, you're going to go in the other room right now and write some good entertaining stuff. Do it. Go. You know what I mean? And like it's just that's not part of the process. You have to sit in a room with other creative people and collaborate and have fun doing it and laugh and tell jokes and have a good time. And then you come up with really good stuff. So if I said that was to pick one thing that was sort of the mission is to allow our people that are creative to be having fun while they're doing creative. I think everybody understands that when they're doing the creative and what we do, because it's live TV and it's, as I said, it's relentless.

3:59It's the next thing. And, you know, in some manner, people's physical health can be on the line doing it, all that stuff. But it's just to constantly remind them what we get to do. It's a privilege to sort of get to do it, right? Like we get to create these larger-than-life characters, put them in these crazy circumstances, and then go around the world and you're like kids' heroes. Like you're creating these heroes for kids and people that they can watch and aspire to be like and can be motivated by. And there's life lessons in as silly as it is, the things that we do, how many kids I've seen over the years say, well, you know, John Cena was my favorite growing up and he taught me hustle, loyalty, respect.

4:43I've had, you know, I've had people come up to me at points in my career. So like Post Malone, I, you know, was in a meeting with him one time and his dad was there and he came, his dad came over to me after and he said, hey, I just want you to understand, like, he's not saying it that much. but like growing up, you and Stone Cold Steve Austin were like his biggest thing. And he said, I don't know that he would have made it through. He had a pretty rough childhood. I don't know he would have made it through that or made it to where he is if it wasn't like you guys were his role model inspiration to that.

5:20And not because he's famous, but because when you can be that for somebody else, like that's amazing and it's inspiring. So I think trying to keep that in people's, the forefront of their thoughts, like what we get to do and how cool it is. And then even when it's tense and people are yelling and screaming and stuff's happening, like I try not, we all try not to do that and try to keep calm, but sometimes you can't help yourself, right? But at the end of the day, it's not that serious. Like we're making fun content, right? We're not curing diseases. We're not saving the world. We're not doing anything.

5:58Hopefully, we're inspiring people or doing whatever. But we have a saying, a couple of us in the writer's room, where when stuff gets really super pressured or things aren't going well or something tragic happens where you just look at somebody else and say, dude, it's a phony fight in our underwear. We're all right. You know what I mean? It's not that big of a deal. Let's calm down. let's go to bed and we'll get up tomorrow and we'll come up with something better or whatever it is you know it's just try to keep it in perspective I think allows you to be like yeah you know what this isn't that serious let's relax a little bit and then you know move on and just enjoy the process see I love the process of storytelling you know there's that great Maya Angelou quote I'm sure you've heard it people don't remember what you say what you did how you they make how somebody makes you feel and that's the truth in our business That's the thing.

6:55It's why we do what we do. And for other people, when we see those people in that crowd, WrestleMania this year is in April 19th and 20th in Las Vegas. And when we're there, I know there'll be moments that I just see things on camera or I see people that weekend that are there and I see the look on their face and I see that like, you know, when you can get people in a crowd just like losing their mind over something they just saw. It's the coolest thing in the world. You're making them feel. And that sticks with them. Different, a lot of times, sometimes in any other sort of form of entertainment, the stuff that we do, it's evergreen.

7:37Like it's almost like music in where, you know, when you're a teenager, right? Like the music that you listen to as a teenager at the most formative parts of your life stick with you for the rest of your life. If you hear a song, you remember where you were. Yeah. You remember where you were. You remember what you were doing. It just, it makes you feel a certain way. When that song hits, you're an 18-year-old kid, right? I think our business is very much like that. That's why people will go back and watch old WrestleManias or old matches or things that they watched when they were a kid growing up.

8:10because it's so meaningful to them in a feel standpoint that when they go back and watch those things or a part of it, it takes them back to another part of their life.

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10:05so can i ask you how you learned this then because i imagine when you first came into the world of elite wrestling you thought it was about the muscles and the moves and the look and the stance and the name and the branding someone at some point must have said to you no no no it's the feel where did you learn that from so many different people but there was a a guy that um he was a wrestler through like 60s, 70s, 80s, Pat Patterson. And Pat was sort of a right-hand guy to Vince for a long time and was in other territories where he was a buddy. Pat was sort of like a super creative guy. And what he was really good at was sort of the wrestling part, right?

10:51We write these elaborate stories, or we think they're elaborate at least anyways, right? like story arcs that go months or a year or whatever, and you're manipulating your way through that. Then the storylines break down into the weekly episodes, right? And then there's the matches themselves, which are the matches themselves are these story arcs that take you on a journey in that match. The commentators are helping you get there with it, but it's just done without words. And Pat was the first guy, I think, that really articulated to me, he's like, you know, over the years, he would say to me, he was like, this business isn't here.

11:27It's here. It's not a thought. It's a feel. And he said to me one time, he was like, he was putting me over. He said, so I was starting to come to meetings. I was always fascinated from the very beginning of how this stuff all got put together. Right. It fascinated me just as much. Even when I was, I trained with a guy named Killer Kowalski, very famous wrestler from like the forties and fifties and sixties. And I was fascinated. know, he would be putting these cards together for the shows and, you know, nobody else cared. I would be like, hey, Walter, why did you put these in this order and stuff?

12:01And he'd be like, well, I want to start with the big thing. And then I want to go, you know, take them down. And like a concert would be right. Like you want to ride that wave. So I was always fascinated with that. And so I started getting involved behind the scenes and being like trying to learn that process. And Pat came to me one day. We were, I had noticed we'd get done production meetings and he'd come and find me and he'd be like, hey, come sit with me. I want to talk about this match and we'd start talking about what was happening later in the show most times it wasn't even my stuff and uh one day he said to me he said you know this bill business is not about here or here yeah i mean we're not about here it's it's about here it's about a feel and he said you have the feel you feel it you can't tell me why that works you just know it works you can envision it and know what emotion is going to come out of that you have a feel for it and he said i have a feel for it him and he said but there's very few guys in this business he said you'll meet a lot of guys over the years in this in this industry that they can put cool stuff together but they don't really know what's going to happen with it they don't they don't have the feel um there's a lot of performers that can go out there and make magic stuff and then you'll ask them the why later and they're like what seemed like a thing to do at the time i don't know why i did that right like they can't articulate it.

13:18And he said, you have a feel. Don't ever lose that. And you'll be great at doing this. And over the years, I've seen that. Like I can legitimately think about the business and think to myself, like how many people did I meet over the course of 30 plus years that really felt it and could tell you this is exactly, if we do this exactly, that emotion is going to come out of them and all this stuff. And it's a very small number. So it's sort of, I think, for the people that have it, sort of a gift creatively. And I think that's across other forms of entertainment, movies, whatever that is. I think there are certain directors that they sort of have a feel like they can envision what's on that paper, exactly how it's going to look and exactly how it will make them feel when it comes through.

14:04Those are the guys that become great at it, right? In my mind. How would you describe a perfect story art for you, Dan? you know it depends like i think in the in the storytelling aspect of it there's so many variations of what we do right and and are one of the things that's amazing about wwe and what we do is our ability to sort of it's its own world so it doesn't always have to make sense it does like it has to follow your logic you can't be like but how did that happen it has to follow some form of logic, but in one hand, you can have two performers in almost what the build is almost like a sporting event, right?

14:50Two championship match and the two guys both training and one's a little bit of an underdog and the other guy's a dominant champion and you're sort of replicating a sport build. And then I can have the undertaker on the other hand, you know, when he puts his arms up the lights come on and you know he has magic powers and like you know you just can't stop him and he'll you'll hit him with a big move and he sits up like he's in a movie and you know the the character is fantastic and crazy and out there and then we'll have silly characters um you know where they just we have a character now r-truth and he's like he's just like ridiculously i don't want to say stupid in the show but like no i think that is the right word.

15:36Yeah, he'll run in. I've seen him and I think exactly that. Yeah, he'll run in and do the wrong thing. He does the wrong thing at the right time in the show. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, and so one minute it's one minute it's serious, one minute it's drama, one minute it's sad, it's happy, one minute you're laughing. So you can do all these things. So these storylines can be just about anything and you want to give them that mix of a little bit of something for everybody and then weave it through a show. But much like a concert, I think our shows for the live fan is very much like a live concert.

16:12I want to start out big with something that they're going to like, holy cow, this is amazing. And then you want to bring them down, slow it down a bit, get a couple of things that are faster paced, give them a little comedy, come back, then build to a big finish. So the live event show is similar. And then even on TV, you got to look at that differently. So when we're shooting something for television, I have to look at how does that play on television? And then how does that play to this live crowd? Because part of the secret of what we do is the fans themselves. Like any other sport that you do, the reactions are just to what's happening, right?

16:49As a boxer or an MMA fighter or a football player, anything, you sort of want to tune that crowd out and go do your job as focused as you possibly can. To our performers, it's the exact opposite. They're going to go out there and do all their stuff with precision, but it's based on, everything is based on that reaction. They're designing everything they do and waiting for that reaction. So you're actually like completely tuned in to every little nuance of what that crowd is doing. So we have to do that live, and then we have to tell our talent sometimes like, hey, this reaction from you, I don't need them to see.

17:29I need that camera right there to see it so I need this to be subtle I need when this character says this I need that reaction to you know just be a subtle like nod to what that person just said where I realize that bothered you but I don't need them all to pick it up I need that camera to pick it up because otherwise you get yourself into theater acting where somebody says something and you're like you know and it's so over the top that on camera you're like this guy's like overacting it's ridiculous so how much are you watching back the events that you're putting on so you can work out what does and doesn't work or do you have a bunch of lieutenants that are telling you what's working we have a lot of that but we have i often say our business is the coolest thing ever because we have a focus group every night that we do a show they're telling us so when somebody walks out what reactions are they getting when they perform what reactions are they getting what is working what is not working right talent go out there Sometimes talent, you know, obviously The Rock does like his finish the people's elbow, right?

18:29It's the silliest move of all time. He runs twice, hits the ropes, drops like the worst looking elbow on you. There's not a knock on it. It's just, it started as a joke. It started as, it sort of started as a place of us on live events that weren't televised, him trying to make The Undertaker laugh and break character. and he did, you know, we were all doing dumb stuff and he did that one night and everybody thought I looked really cool, it was silly, and then somebody dared him to do it on TV and he did it on TV, like as a spoof and the crowd reacted to it and he did it again and they reacted even more and like all of a sudden you realize like, wow, I'm onto something really wild here.

19:11So when he would hit somebody with a setup for it, that whole place would stand up because they knew he was about to stand there and throw his elbow pad and do all the stuff, right? It became a big thing, but it wasn't designed to be that way. It was just, okay, I did this and like they reacted. So I'm going to do that more. I'm going to explore that. This is an interesting thing, I think, from your perspective, right? Is that when you're in charge of the creative direction of WWE, you can get yourself into a headspace where you're like, right, so I need to control what's going on. That way I can then take it where I want.

19:42You've just described to us that one of the most iconic things of the last 20, 30 years in WWE, the Rock's Elbow, came from improvisation, came from being a bit silly, came from kind of breaking the rules a little bit and having a laugh in the ring. So it's about getting this balance right. Is there still, with WWE being so big and televised, now on Netflix, globally, WrestleMania's massive, is there still scope for your wrestlers to improvise, to do something that isn't quite planned and see what happens, right? It's one of the other things that I feel creatively, so for me, different than past regimes of how they've done things or whatever.

20:19I like to work with the talent and I like to give them the freedom to go out there and try and do certain things and then be able to tell them afterwards like, hey, that didn't work. Don't do that again. Could you give us an example? So I'll give you an example of something that really worked. Jey Uso right now. That's probably better than one that didn't work in case someone gets pissed off. Yeah, they're like, why'd you tell that story? Thanks a lot. Like Jey Uso right now came out of a long storyline with Roman Reigns and sort of becomes this baby face, or the good guy of the group, of the bloodline, and breaks out on his own, main event J, who was in a tag team for years, finally goes off on his own, and we want to see, let's give these guys a shot, him and his brother, let's give them a shot on their own to see how they can do.

21:01So we put him on another show, we create a new entrance track for him, and the entrance track is very rhythmic. And he went out one night, and he just, he got up in the turnbuckle, and he was doing this thing where he was very rhythmically going to the music, and the crowd started doing it with him. and then you know he came back and i was like hey you did a thing and he wasn't really aware of it and what we all started talking about like you you did a thing tonight where you got up in the corner and you started to rhythmically bounce to that song you were just doing it but i don't know if you noticed but the crowd started to do it with you and uh so like then the next week you know this happens over a series of weeks like hey go go go further down that road hey what if you put your arms into it and you started doing this thing and he you know backstage he would always say the yeet thing and it it became this comic moment between he and his cousin roman where jay would say yeet and it would bother him and all this stuff right and it just caught on and we went with the yeet and he started doing the thing with his arms during his entrance rhythmically and now it's become this deal for him where we will bring him out through a crowd and he will stand in that crowd and while his music is playing he's doing the arms and that entire crowd is doing it with him and singing the lyrics and doing this thing.

22:20And it just, it has launched him to another level of, you know, stardom sort of based on the aura of his entrance and all the stuff that he does with it. And, you know, if he's in a match and he does a move and he'll turn to the crowd and do his arms, and they'll all go yeet with him. And it's just become this thing. It's just by paying attention to what the crowd is doing and how you manipulate that. But he's on fire and he'll be at WrestleMania in a main event match against, you know, Gunther for the world title. And a lot of that is based on that entrance and those moments that were just. There's that little decision to move with the music.

23:01Something that he did, you know, for me years, you know, people ask me all the time, I do water spit in my entrance, right? Like I blow water up into the air and people always ask me, how did that start? when I was a bad guy and I had just won the title and everybody was on me about it. And I would come out and wet my hair right before I got in the ring and I put water in my mouth and I stood up and when I threw the title up, I spit the water out at everybody in the crowd. But I noticed the first time I did it, they went crazy. And I was like, well, that's something. You know what I mean? So the next day I did it again and then it just morphed into me doing it up in the air and we would put light on it and it would look really cool.

23:39And it became... this iconic thing where, you know, 25 years later, people are still like, do the water spit. Well, some of the biggest sports stars in the world. Do it. Do it. Yeah. But it was just based, like, I could have very easily done that one night, never thought about it, never done it again, and just moved on and it would have never happened. But you just, little things that click that you stick with. So in many ways, we tell the stories and we lead the crowd, but in many ways, the crowd leads us. See, I think what you're describing there has got so many parallels for people watching and listening this in life.

24:12You know, you talk about the most perfectly designed feedback loop, which involves the four stages of you've got to observe, then you've got to orientate yourself, then you've got to decide and then act. So in the basis of that feedback loop, what's been the most surprising thing that you've ever observed that you could pass on to our listeners? I don't know. I just think it's that you have to be open to it because it doesn't matter what you like. it matters like especially in our business right there's things that we do creatively where i'm like that was terrible but they loved it right so we're gonna go we're going there like what example you know everybody has a style that they like certain wrestlers no different when i was just a fan right there's sure i like that guy i don't like that guy as much right like he's he doesn't His style doesn't intrigue me as much.

25:04As a creative or in doing what we do, you cannot just do it for you and say, I like this, therefore I'm going to do just that. Because if nobody else likes it, well, you're going to go out of business, right? Like you have to be open. I think that's a life thing. I see people all the time. You see people that have a certain personality quirk and you think like that just irritates everybody. but they just do it all the time and you think like clearly you know that irritates people clearly you know that doesn't work for you as a person or whatever it is you're doing but you continue to do it and then wonder why people don't like it I think it's just being open to things that are happening and being self-aware being aware you can easily write creative and think this is going to work like this and then it doesn't and but not see that just keep going with that creative because no no this is good I don't care if they like it or not like this is good doesn't matter if you like it or not matters if they like it or not right that's where you're in business for unless you know and you can talk about musicians this way like you want to write the music for you and then go about your career as if well if they like it great if they don't I made the music for me and it was good.

26:23I liked it so that I was putting my emotions out on paper or whatever and playing it. But if you want to be successful, you want it to be a business and you want it to be, you've got to give people what they want to hear and see and feel and all that stuff. So you have to be willing to change and that's in life. So what about the heel turn then of John Cena? I mean, one of the biggest, most shocking moments, right, in WWE history. you can't know what the reaction is going to be like whether that's a good or a bad decision surely you don't know but I think when you feel it like I could picture that here let's go through it then who was the first person to even suggest that this was a thing that well look there's been people talking for 20 years about you know I wrestled John in geez like Wrestlemania like 21 or 22 and we he and I just spoke about this the other day and he was like, it was the first time he had gone to like a big level event and they were starting to boo him.

27:22And I was a bad guy and John was the good guy, but it was 50-50 at best at WrestleMania that year of who they wanted to cheer for. John was starting to get to the place where he was so popular and so big of a star that they started to choke on it a little bit and started to, now the let's go Cena, Cena sucks chant started. and they were booing things that he did. And, you know, during the build for that WrestleMania, the worst stuff I did to them, the more they were cheering me. And I was like, it's frustrating to me. I'm supposed to be the bad guy, but the more I'm doing bad things, they like it.

28:00And the guy that I'm supposed to be getting them to cheer is getting booed. But we talked about it then, and it was like sort of he was, I said to him at the time, I said, you're like the Red Sox and the Yankees, if that resonates here, all at once. But who cares as long as it's sold out, right? Um, when this came to be, there was various times through John's career that it would be pitched. Like, what if he turned heel and people didn't want to do it? Like John was so, while there was a core, some group of fans that disliked him, there was such a core group, especially of young people that were like, he's everything.

28:35Right. And he's, he's the, the hero hustle, loyalty, respect, like all these things. How can you turn that into a bad guy? But that's the challenge, right? And so as we came into, hey, John's going to come back. He wants to retire. And he wants to do this one last run. And he's going to come in in January. And he's going to go all the way to December of the following year. And then he's done. He'll always be a part of WWE. He'll always be an ambassador. He'll always do stuff with us. But in-ring career wrestling as a performer, he'll be done. And John and I spoke and John is very much like the quintessential pro in that like, look, I have my thoughts on things, but whatever you want me to do, I will give you a thousand percent and I will do that to the best of my ability.

29:23Like I just play a character named John Cena, but he doesn't have like, he's not like overly concerned about the stakes of it or anything else. Right. Even with his movie career, just wide open to it. and so when we talked he was like look if you over the next whatever it was 10-12 months if you want me to lose every match it's fine with me you want me to win every match it's fine with me you want me to be champ again it's fine with me is that rare in a wrestler to be that like one off really you know what I mean very rare that you get that especially at that level because you're protective of what you've built yeah and we started to talk about it and in my mind and John and I just spoke about this the other day I think it was in his mind too the safe thing to do is a year-long tour where he goes town to town and he does his greatest hits.

30:11And it's safe and it's easy and it's fun. But as a performer, you're sort of going through the motions. You're playing the same concert you've played a million times. And people love it, but I've seen it. And it's nice and it's all those things, safe, easy, fun, all that stuff. But I went to John and said, what if we pulled the lever that no one wanted to ever pull? and what if we turn your heel? Because to me, it sort of felt like if you never do it, we kind of just left that dangle in there. See, I think these things excite you as well, though. Oh, for sure, for sure. And then to me, it's, okay, so now we get to write for this guy that's been this ultimate good guy for 20-plus years.

30:56We get to turn him bad. And how does that look? And what does that look? And so in the first conversation we had about it on the phone, John is very great with pitches. He sort of lets you get all the way to the end. He doesn't say much. He just listens. And then when you get all the way to the end, he was like, wow. And what are you pitching on a call like that? Turning him. Exactly, exactly what happened. What will happen fight to fight, event to event. No, but exactly what happened at Elimination Chamber, right? Which is, and then what if, you know, Cody is being asked, you know, sell out to me and all that stuff.

31:32and Cody says no and you're there and it looks like you're supporting Cody. Good for you, telling The Rock to go F himself and all that stuff. And then the unthinkable happens and you look at Rock and Rock looks at you and you kick him in the nuts and you beat the dog shit out of him and just leave him laying there and you turn heel. You sell out because in your mind, and I always feel like this, like bad guys have to be justified in the why. It has to make sense. It can be skewed. to like, well, that makes sense. I don't agree with that. I think he's wrong. I don't agree with it. But I see how he could think that, right?

32:12So, you know, in John's mind for 20 plus years now, I've done everything the right way. Yet you've told me I suck. Yet you've booed me. Yet you've said I'm super Cena. I can't wrestle. I only have five moves. I, this, I, that. Like all the things that he's overcome for 25 years, you can now flip that on them and be bitter. Because in your last run, in your desire to have one last big successful run, I know my time is running out. And if I'm going to do this, I might not be as good as I used to be. I might not be as fast. I might not be as strong. I might not be as good of a performer. so I have to sell myself out.

33:00I have to cheat. I have to do things that I wouldn't have done the rest of my career because of hustle, loyalty, respect. I wouldn't have done those things, but now I will because I'm desperate in my last hours. It makes sense from a character. So when we go through that and John and I talk about it and John is like, wow, I didn't think that's where you were going to go with this. That's bold, but I fucking love it. and he was like, I love it because I could be safe and I could be easy and I could come in and I could phone this in and just do my greatest hits and move on, or I can be challenged.

33:38This is challenging to me. This is a juicy role. Like, this is me now. Like, how do I make these people hate me? And how, you know, and who knows? By December, does he see the light and become a good guy? Maybe. Does he retire as a bad guy? He's wide open. What does The Rock think about it? He loves it. Yeah. Rock is in a place in his career, I think, with WWE. You know, it's the biggest movie star on the planet. He just wants to do what is best to help WWE. He's on the board. WWE wrestling in general is in his blood. Grandfather, you know, grandmother, mother with promoters in Hawaii. Dad was a wrestler.

34:17You know, it's his family, right? And so it's in his blood. And I say this to him all the time. Like, you see when he comes out, he does this thing with his arm. minutes he's got goosebumps all over him i've been seeing that since the first time i met him and uh like 96 i think i say to him all the time like you can't get goosebumps doing anything else dude you don't get goosebumps making a movie shooting the same scene 12 times you know what i mean you get goosebumps in front of 80 000 people because the it's there's nothing nothing like being in our ring in front of those people controlling their emotions and knowing i'm about to do this and they're going to lose their minds.

34:55Like that's the goose bump moments. I used to sit there every night because I, as I mentioned, rock bottom, I mean, the people's elbow, it's like one of the silliest moves of all time. And as a performer, when you're waiting for him on the ground, like to do the thing and you're watching him do all this stuff and you're thinking like, this is the dumbest shit ever, right? I love that. And, you know. Come on, get on with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just drop the elbow already. We all know what's coming. Doing the dance and the whole thing, right? But the people are going crazy. and it used to always make me laugh because I would always, you know, you're looking up at him and I would always see like goosebumps all over his legs and I was at the Emmys one time and they had posters up.

35:34WWE was there and they had all these big giant posters up there. This big giant poster of The Rock just happened to be him standing over me about to drop through the people's elbow and he's standing over me and I couldn't help but notice the photo was so crisp I could see goosebumps all over his leg. I took a picture of it, I sent it to him and said, dude, look at your legs. Like you can't get that shit in Hollywood. You know what I mean? Like it just doesn't happen anywhere else. It happens in our world. So for him now to be a part of what we do, final boss, right? Like he's the biggest movie star in the world.

36:04He comes in, he's a bad guy here and then talks about it in the third person. But he's like this final boss character. It's just fun to play, right? And it's fun to be able to come in and do. And he has an insane schedule. So he pops in and out and does little things here and little things there. And it's great, you know, having him around and being a part of it. So he likes to be disruptive. So in the moment where he's doing this stuff with us at Elimination Chamber and the idea comes up about, and then what if Cody tells you to get lost? And then John turns and he's like, dude, like, holy shit, this is amazing.

36:41Like, we're all involved in this amazing moment that shifts the business, you know, shifts the business. and also guys that are, John resonates like Rock does beyond our business. Like he's like a household name, you know what I mean? Not just, you don't have to be a WWE fan to know who John Cena is, what Rock is. So I told this story the other day where, you know, my mother-in-law's in the cabinet for the US, the White House, and she was at the State of the Union. And she called me afterwards and she's like, I'm leaving the State of the Union as I'm walking out. Like there's reporters there. and one reporter yells over, Linda, as the Secretary of Education, can you tell me what were you thinking when John Cena turned heel?

37:24And I'm thinking like, this is what they're yelling in the Capitol. When two worlds collide. Yeah, the American presidency and WWE. It's craziness. I'm quite intrigued that you've mentioned John Cena in terms of his openness and his humility and the same with Dwayne as well in terms of that willingness to work with you. What are the characteristics of the very best people that you've worked with that you, I mean, you've described humility and open-mindedness. I'm interested if you could expand on that and give us some examples. It's being open to thoughts different than yours and then being willing to collaborate on them to make them great.

38:01We did a, on SmackDown the other night here from O2, we did a contract signing with CM Punk and with Roman Reigns and with Seth Rollins and Paul Heyman was out there. obviously we've all known the premise of this contract signing for a while and we know what the highlights of the contract signing are they're going to sign this contract punk's going to get his opportunity to main event wrestlemania but he's we're not gonna there's a favor that is owed between like it's elaborate thing but like we're not going to know what this the shoe that drops is but that's not the favor that you owe me and then you sort of like we all hash out what that segment will look like probably a couple of weeks before or the week before.

38:46Then we get there that day and it's like, okay, everybody's got the basic core tenets of this. And then here you go. Go the three of them or four of them, Heyman, Roman, Seth, Punk, sit in a room and figure out exactly what they're all going to say, how they're going to say it, who's going to say what, what the reactions are, what the emotions are going to be, how they're going to do it. And like, I let them sort of go do it. But then if they have a question of where are we going to go with this or whatever, how does that work? Or, hey, we're all on the fence about this. Can we run this by you?

39:18We're thinking about doing this. Well, that's cool. What if? That sounds cool here, but now I'm on the outside looking in. I can say like, I feel that, but what if you did this? Oh shit, that's, yeah, that adds a whole nother layer. We didn't even think of that, right? Because you start getting - So collaboration is the secret. Collaboration and the ability to allow, to trust performers to go out and do their thing. Trust has to be built over time, right? Because there's some performers that you can't, like, I don't trust your instincts. I don't know that you have the best guts for where this is going to go.

39:52So we want to control that a little bit more until you get to a certain level and you sort of earn that trust and learn how we all work together. But when they're at that level, then it's this collaborative process. But part of the best part of my days when we're at a live TV show is when like whatever the main event is or whatever that thing we're working on is. And we all either out by the ring, just all sit down. And how do we want to make this happen? Here's what we're trying to get out of it. And then we all just start like throwing stuff around. Like, what if he says that? What if she does this?

40:27What if this happens? Go way outside the box. What if this, right? Like, all right, well, what if? You know, and that's sort of how you get there. Like you can very easily go down one route, but then somebody will go, what if John turned heel? holy cow, like, you know, like, now you're off. Do you bear grudges? Because like you and Punk have got a long history, right? Yeah. I just wonder whether as someone who almost needs to separate himself from his own wrestling career to make the right decision for the business, how things like that sit with you. Like as far as him as a performer and disagreements in the past, I don't think about it.

41:04When he came back, he and I had a phone call. And I meant this when I said it to him on the phone because there had been moments in times where we'd try to reconnect or whatever. And I think a lot of times our disagreements over the years came down to just bad communication with each other, you know? And I was in the in-between guy of what the creative team wanted and what he wanted, but I was trying to smooth it all over. But so to his point of view, I was seen as the enemy, but then he didn't trust me, so I couldn't get him to open up. I can't collaborate with you if you're not open. So he would be closed down so that I couldn't collaborate with him.

41:44Did you just stop talking eventually? Sort of. Yeah. And there was, you know, probably a dislike of each other, but based on bad communication. So when this was all, this return here that he's in now sort of came about, we got on the phone together. And one of the things that I said to him is, because I sort of felt like there was still like this underlying mistrust. And I said, look, to me, if this is going to work, we have to lose everything else. I am a different person than I was 10 years ago when you were here. If I wasn't, I wasted 10 years of my life. I'm hoping you're a different person.

42:22If you aren't different, then you wasted 10 years of your life. I feel like I'm different. I think you feel like you're different. So let's forget all that shit that happened before. That was bad communication. Let's be open to each other. If you don't like something, tell me. if I don't like something I will tell you if you like it tell me if I like it I will tell you let's work together we've had a couple of moments since his return like there was one moment where to return and they had told him something creatively and they told me he does not like this I was like okay I'll talk to him went talk to him and I was like what's going on and I told him the creative and he was like that's good whatever and I was like I know you don't like it everybody's told me so like let's be open he's well so then he complained about what it was And I said, okay, let's go sit and talk about it.

43:09Come up with something good. Like, I'm not, I'm not married to that stuff. Just a thought and an idea. And he was angry and he walked away from me. And a couple minutes later he came back. He's like, I'm sorry. I have post-traumatic stress disorder still from before. I forget that it's, I'm not used to this process. I would love to sit down with you and be creative. And that sort of changed the paradigm shift for us relationship wise. And now part of like, it's a funny thing for me to even say, like sitting down and being collaborative with CM Punk is one of my favorite things at TV because he shares a very similar view at the end of the day of the business as I do.

43:49So it's like fun now for me. 10, 12 years ago, you'd have been like, hey, I need to sit in a room with an hour and collaborate with Punk. I'd have been like, I'll pull my own teeth out, right? Now I'm like, oh, that'd be awesome. he's going to be here tomorrow like he's going to sit with us for an hour and do creative love it phenomenal because now riffing ideas it's like it's the best so when you get to work with those people it's great your leadership style and I'll ask this question with the best of intentions and I don't want you to think that it's a sort of gotcha moment in any way but WWE was run by your father-in-law right before you Vince McMahon you're now the man in charge and when people talk about I've still got sort of stress on how it used to be like how much of when you came in did you want to go do you know what like my father in law did an amazing job to build this business but it needs to be different now and if you did have that feeling what did you feel needed to be different to allow this kind of a conversation to happen i wouldn't be where i am without bits right like from a from a mentor from a like he saw something in me that I had an interest creatively.

45:02And I think so that I was pretty decent at it, right? This is long before I ever met my wife. I didn't even know at that point. I knew he had a daughter, but I'd never met her. I didn't know anything, right? Nothing to do with that. So I started getting involved with him creatively. Very quickly, we get this creative rapport where like sometimes he would call me at home and be like, hey, can I run a couple ideas off you? Bounce a couple of things off you, whatever. And when I was at TV, he'd be like, hey we're doing this thing with i'm making this up but we're doing this thing with stone cold and taker like we're thinking about this but what do you think of that like and how like how do you see that and we started this collaborative thing but so i learned sitting under his learning tree i learned sitting under pat patterson's learning tree i learned sitting when i started nxt as our developmental system dusty was down there i learned i worked a lot with dusty creatively i learned from a lot of those i have so many great minds in the business and then all the people that I got to work with over the years from Taker to Sean to Bret Hart to everybody that I worked with, I learned things from, right?

46:01But from when you learn, especially from mentors, you learn what to do and then what not to do. And there were things that bothered me about the way he did things, certain things of his personality. He would run things totally different than I would. And we've talked about that before. Like even when I was running NXT or this, he would be like, why you do it like that? And I'd be like, because it's working for me. And he would be like, well, I don't know. Could you give us an example? He was much more controlling, especially as he got older, much more controlling. Whereas when I first came in, like DX, when we started DX, it was funny.

46:38There was like, we were just doing our own thing. Nobody was scripting anything. We were doing our own thing. Most times we were coming back and he was mad at us and like screaming at us. Are you going to get us thrown off the air? God damn it, don't do that again. You know, and we were just like, whatever, and we'll go do it again the following week. Then there was a point where that started to work, and we started to really get over, and it started to do big business. Ratings change for us and all that stuff, right? And now all of a sudden, we show up at TV one week, and they hand us a script, and we're like, what is this?

47:06This is what Vince wants you to say tonight. We're like, what? Like, he doesn't tell us what to say. Why not? He wants to start. Like, so we go to his office and like, what is this? It's a script. But I want you guys to say. We're like, it's terrible. Like, it's not funny. It's not us. And, you know, I was much newer at the time. Sean was Sean at the time. Way different now. But, you know, we were sitting in the meeting and then we read it a couple of times. We had the argument with him and he said, well, you know, that's just what I want you guys to do. So just go do it. And Sean crumbled up the piece of paper and he said, well, I ain't saying any of this shit through it at Vince.

47:39And we walked out of the office and I was like, wow, we're going to get fired. But there was various points and times where he would become very controlling of things. very specific to how he wanted it to be his prerogative. He's the boss. But we would all talk about it and we would all be like, it'd be better if we did this or, you know, like things like that. And even Pat Patterson come to me like, hey, Vince wants to do this thing. It's so stupid. And let's do this instead. And it would be better. We should talk him into this. And like, I talked to him till I'm blue in the face. You go talk to him.

48:11You know, I would see how he dealt with talent sometimes. And there are some things that he did way better than I do. and some ways that he handled talent that I think, I wish I could handle talent in that way, but it's just not how I am. Can you explain that? Vince could be very harsh with talent. I would say this. There's, as a parent, when I think that's how a lot of talent look at Vince, he's almost like a father, was almost like a father to them. So when you're in that role, right, there's a certain, you're on the road a lot. There's a certain control factor and you're sort of like the, you're the adult in the room.

48:43You're the parent. And parents can deal with their kids in many different ways, right? Carrot, stick, right? Like Vince was very much the stick. I like to be the carrot. And it's not because I feel like, oh, they have to like me all the time. No, I'm going to make decisions that you're not going to like. I'm going to tell you that, but I'm going to explain to you why. I'm going to walk you through the why. I believe this is right. And if it's wrong, if I was wrong and you go out there and do it and I was wrong, when you come back, I'm going to say, I had to do that. It was wrong. Like we should have done something.

49:16And you openly admit when you get things wrong. I will say that to people, right? But I also want them to see in their mind when they reluctantly go out and do something, but it works to have them go like, I fought you tooth and nail on that, but it worked. And that's not about me being right. That's just about like learning, because I learned it a lot and I was wrong a lot, right? Like learning how to be open to right and wrong. you might see something a particular way but somebody else with way more experience to you then goes do that and then you can't begrudgingly do it it works and then come back and go I still think my shit would have been better you know you have to go like that that did work is amazing and that happens to me a lot with Vince over the years too you know he would tell us we would always say as talent like I hate when he's right you know like you fight him all day long and then you go out there and do it and he was right I was taken by that line that you said in the conversation earlier where you said, if I'm the same man as I was 10 years ago, I've wasted 10 years of my life.

50:20So when you look over the last 10 years, what are some of the lessons that you've learned in that time that you'd want to pass on to people? Everybody is better than you. And I don't mean that individually. I mean that as like all the ideas are better than just your ideas, right? like the collaborative process. At the end of the day, and I say this a lot sometimes to people, look at the end of the day, I'm the guy that's tasked with having to make the decision of the direction. Because sometimes you're in a room with a bunch of people and there's four different directions to go in and it's split.

50:56All four different directions seem like they're pretty good and everybody is adamantly stuck on theirs, you know, whatever groups or teams or whatever that is. And you have to be the one that goes, we're doing that one. um also then like what hills do you want to die on don't sweat the small stuff both vince and pat would say to me sometimes just give guys the win look at it they want to do something you're like that ain't gonna work but at the end of the day nobody's it's not a big deal no one's gonna remember it like long term not gonna damage anything like okay try let's try that i'm not sure but let's try it and see how it goes and then when they come back don't go like that was terrible like just come back go what do you think yeah not sure it worked the way i thought it was going to work yeah that's what i thought too like you know help them get there it's a process you know i'm sure there's things that i've done over my 30-year career that if i looked at them now and i thought they were great at the time i go like the fuck should have done it like that i should have done that totally different would have been so much better because i know so much more now than i did then right and the great thing about this business it's a people change it's like saying music you You don't just learn, I learned music and I'm great at it.

52:14And then you're just great at it forever. Because styles change. People's tastes change, right? Like that's why people our age go like, music today is not what it used to be. It's not very good. Because it's not. Yeah, yeah. That's the first indicator that you're old, right? Like music today is not very good. And police officers look young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Teachers look like pupils. See kids driving, you're like, how does that kid have a license? He should be on a big wheel or something. Like he's not even a repotor. Three old men getting angry about the world. Exactly. Yeah. But it's part of the process, right?

52:45And then, and that's a part of it too, right? Like, so I can look at it and say like, man, I like the style of wrestling I did back and the guys that I watched in my generation, right? Like I like that style better, but it's gone. And I can't force feed that into people now that like the style they have. There's a saying that I say a lot I don't know where I got it from or it's any good, but I just saw it. Toothpaste is out of the tube, guys. Can't put it back in. Right? Like, that ship has sailed. It's off. It's gone. So what's your relationship with regret then? Because once the toothpaste is out of the tube?

53:22Yeah. You can't dwell on it. Are there things I would change? Are there, you know, moments or creatively or you think like, God, that was terrible or whatever. You have a bad event. We have all these sayings in the business. Well, that was bad. Well, we get to do it again tomorrow. You know what I mean? Like, if it didn't, but if Friday Smackdown show wasn't very good, well, we get to do it again on Monday for Raw. So what's your process then if you've had a bad show? What are the questions that you ask? What did I miss? Why? Sometimes it's, sometimes it just doesn't, I envisioned it this way, didn't come out that way on paper.

53:58It's just part of the creative process, right? Nobody writes a movie or a book or something and thinks like, I'm going to make this pretty good. or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do me. I'm going to look at shoot a mediocre movie here. Right. But then it just doesn't come out the way you envision it coming out. Whatever changes, people didn't buy it the way they did it. The performance wasn't the way you expected it to be. It didn't get shot the way you want it to be. We, you know, our stuff's live, right? So if there's an emotional moment you need to capture and it just, they're on the wrong camera shot when the emotion happens and you're like, God, they missed it.

54:33Like, oh my God. Right. Like, and you just think like that just didn't work the way I wanted it to, but that's okay. Like, why didn't it work that way? Like why? And sometimes there's reasons and sometimes it's just, just the way it worked out. It just, it didn't click. But early in my career, you know, if you have a bad match and everybody that's ever been in this business has had stinkers, right? Like you go out there and it just stinks. Like people don't care. you come back and you're like, Jesus, that was bad. And it would bother me. Like it would bother, I would carry that with me. Like in, and until I had something else that was great, I would be like, oh, like, you know, there your whole world is falling apart.

55:19You can't dwell on it. If you're climbing a mountain, you make a misstep and you slip. That's okay. You gotta, you can't think about that one slip. You just gotta keep climbing. So you just got to get back into the next creative groove and go. And you have to be careful that it doesn't become a rut that you start to like, you know, I think about it in sports all the time. People get themselves into slumps hitting in baseball or whatever because they just, they start to lose their confidence, start to lose their thing. Like you can't do that to yourself. You just have to, you get past the things that worked.

55:55You feel good about the things that worked. You revel in that for a moment. it, you kick yourself for a minute about the stuff that didn't work, and then you move on. And it's never like, hey, how great are we at this? Because that can be this in a moment. And it's never how terrible are we at this? Because that can be great in a moment. It's just, you just have to keep working your ass off to be great, to deliver something great at all times and forget about like the past, it always exists. It's one of the things that I learned from Vince that I thought he was not good at was, I used to say to him all the time, like, I don't know why you can't enjoy any of this.

56:39You're like the guy that climbs Mount Everest, gets to the top and you haven't even gone back down yet. You're looking around to see, is there a bigger hill that I can go up? You know what I mean? You don't have the sign. I like that challenge, but I don't, I can carry the wins better. I can celebrate the wins, I think, better. I can enjoy that success. Like, that was really good. This is phenomenal. Has your health scare played into that thinking? Maybe. Maybe, though I think I was there before it. Right. I do think my health scare in that moment in time made me realize that none of this is the end of the world.

57:15So it's more helped me on the, hey, that was bad. and now you're just like, oh, like it's all you can think about and hear about and everything seems like it's terrible. It doesn't matter like that at the end of the day. The bad ones, it's a moment. Sometimes you have a bad day. Some days it rains, next day sun comes out. If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees. No BS. I made the switch because I was tired of those ridiculous bills and sneaky charges from my old provider.

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59:43would you mind just sharing what happened back in 21 yeah so i don't you know this is a funny thing is, and now with some time behind it, I'm not, there was clearly I had a genetic issue prone to arterial issues, clogging, things like that. My dad's grandfather died at like 42. My dad's dad died at like, I think he was like 60, early sixties. My dad's had a quadruple bypass, right so it runs in my family though for since i started with the company in 95 we have like cardiac rigorous cardiac testing yearly never caught any of it never saw any of it never saw issues i didn't have high blood pressure i didn't have high cholesterol i didn't have any of those issues so this sort of hit me out of nowhere but that's what the heart issues do right the silent killer that you never see anything but our schedule at that time for me was it's it's nutty now but it was just as nutty then I was mostly doing uh NXT but I was running ragged we had a period of time where I had been gone for like maybe three or four weeks almost in a row where I was east coast west coast east coast west coast like just going back and forth Florida back to New York back to LA right and I hadn't been home and along the way I got sick and I just like I had like a cough and it just wouldn't go away.

1:01:07I got back down to Florida and I started like, like if I would lay down, I started like getting short of breath, but I thought I was like, man, my lungs are feel clogged. And I thought like, man, I'm just like, I got the flu bad. I kept getting myself checked again for COVID and like, wasn't that. And then I got home and I, you know, my wife's like, yeah, you look terrible. Like, you know, what's going on? I started coughing some stuff up. My wife happened to see there was some blood in it a little bit. And she was like, that doesn't look right to me. Like, you need to go to the doctor and find out what's going on.

1:01:39I went in, tested my lungs. I had pneumonia. But in that, they, you know, they like do some x-rays and then they see some fluid around my heart. So they, I go in, they run some other tests real quick and I'm home. I go home, like after the test, I like go home and my doctor calls me like five minutes later and he's like, I want you to pack a bag. Just take whatever's essential. I I want you to get in the car. I want you to drive to Yale right now. Like, do not waste time. Do not, I'm like, what's going on? He's like, I'm not exactly positive, but I think you're in heart failure. And he's like, get in the car now.

1:02:14Don't fuck around. Like, put your shit in the car and go. Like, and I'm like, like, I was like, holy shit. Like I was freaked out. Right. And I'm like, well, why don't I just go to Greenwich? It's like much closer. He's like, cause if you go to Greenwich and I'm right, they're just going to transfer you to Yale because they have a better cardiac care unit. for what you would be going through. And they run me there. And he's like, your ejection fracture for your heart rate, or it should be around 60. I was at like 33. I go to Yale. Second I get there, he tells me, like, you're going to wait in the emergency room.

1:02:48Don't go anywhere. Just go to the emergency room where I'm going to have somebody meet you there. But I have to wait like this long ass line. Get to the emergency room. Tell them who I am that they think I'm in heart failure. They run me in there. By the time they get me in there, my ejection fracture's at 22. By the time they get me out of the emergency, they're like, you're in heart failure. By the time they get me out of there to get me to a room, I'm at like, I think I was like at 18 or 17. They, you know, like now they're running tests, but they're like in the morning, we're probably going to, we're going to see what's going on, try to do a cath.

1:03:23By the morning when I wake up, I'm at 11. Like I'm cascading fast. By the time they run me in to do the cath, I'm in single digits. and what happens when it gets to zero like that's it's game over it's zero you're zeroed out yeah because it's how much your heart is pumping out so i go in for the cath and when i come out there like you had about you had a hundred percent blockage and you're left ascending like so basically like it was completely blocked now because of an athlete they believe my heart had started to build another pathway so it's amazing how your body is it had started to build a secondary pathway to keep my heart working.

1:04:02But in building that secondary pathway, it does it from the same sort of stuff. And that had a clog in it as well. So, you know, they, cath, do the whole thing. And they're like, well, you should be good to go. We're going to monitor you and do all this stuff. When you're going through that, now they don't know what kind of damage it's done to your heart, like scarring or anything else. So they have you, or my doctor had me wear this life vest, which is like a defibrillator vest that you wear. And if you go into V-fib, which for if somebody doesn't know, like a-fib is like where your heart races.

1:04:37And it's usually people don't die from that. It's controllable. It can lead to strokes or other things later, but like it's controllable. They can, you either through medication or they can shock you, get it back in rhythm, you're good. V-fib, how it was explained to me is if your heart is a water pump, if you, a handheld water pump, if you pump it and you pull the pump all the way up and you push it all the way down, water comes out. If you just put the pump in the middle and jiggle the handle, but it doesn't move, nothing comes out. V-fib is the handle jiggling. So your heart goes into a V-fib and it's just fluttering, but nothing is happening.

1:05:17So most people get V-fib, they pass out. And if your heart doesn't restart itself, you die. So they put me in this vest to say, you know, just to be on the safe side. Now, years later, a performer for us named Bray Wyatt would have a similar cardiac issue that they would tell him to wear a life vest for, which he did not wear and he passed away in his sleep. It was in the car, right? He just didn't wear it. While I had it on, I had a little V-fib, which is like your heart short circuiting, but it was short and it was super quick. And it's like, they were sort of like, we don't know if that's something that every now and then people have or if, because it was so fast and your heart reset itself.

1:06:04Like, but at that point they said, but we feel like you had a V-fib of some degree, we have two options. We can either say that was an anomaly and let you go about your life. But if you come back, if you die five years from now, because you had a V-fib attack, that's unacceptable. Or we can put a permanent defibrillator in your chest. And if you ever have a V-fib again, it will save your life. Now you might never have another V-fib again. And we might put this defibrillator in and it's in there for the rest of your life and you never use it. But he said, if you come back to me 30 years from now and say, you put this stupid thing in there and it never went off once, like you wasted my time.

1:06:46He's like, that's acceptable outcome. So we want to put a defibrillator in your chest. And when you were facing your own mortality, it sounds frightening enough. What were your thoughts when you reflected on the journey of your life today? Funny that a lot of the stuff that you do that you think is really important is just stuff. It's not, you know, I've heard it said this way since then, probably heard it before that and just didn't pay attention to it. But like where people would say things to you like, nobody's going to remember if you didn't go to work today. 20 years from now, no one's going to go.

1:07:22Remember that Thursday on, you know, February 18th, you didn't come into work, right? But if you miss your kid's game, they remember it. Those are the things that are more important to you. Nobody dies and writes on their tombstone. Wish I'd worked more, right? I wish I'd spend more time with my family. Wish I'd spend more time with my kids. Wish I had better relationships. Those are things people think about when they're at that point in their life where they're not sure, which is where I was, right? So it made me think of things differently. Now, it also made me think like, yeah, but like what I do is important.

1:08:04Like to me, it's a passion, like, right? Like just saying like, well, your family and your kids and all those things, that's all wonderful. But you also have to have a purpose and a passion. And for me, it was a purpose and a passion coming back and doing what I'm doing. But I think it put perspective on the, that is not life and death. That is not, you know, at the end of the day. Like I just had a conversation with Randy Orton the other day. We were in 02. two. And so we've been here in Europe for three weeks on tour, TV every week, Monday, Friday, from Spain, Belgium, all these places. The second week of the tour, I did not come, right?

1:08:50I worked on it from the office, had my team do it. I actually was on for one of the shows from a remote location in the States, but I did not come to the event, which I very rarely miss television programs events, unless there's something else work-wise that I have to do, which takes me away from being at the events. It's part of what I do. It's part of what I love doing. And I love being there and doing it. And Randy came up to me and said, hey, you were on a TV last week, huh? And I said, yeah, I wasn't. And he said, I heard because you went to your daughter's softball game. I said, you are correct.

1:09:24My daughter had a softball tournament in Florida. I didn't want to miss it. So I flew home. I went down to Florida. I watched her softball tournament. I flew back to the office and, and, you know, got back to work and all that stuff. And then came back out here and he just smiled. He was like, man, I'm proud of you. It's a different place in life. He's older now has kids, young kids too. And so he's, he's at a different place in his life where he can appreciate that now, because at there would have been one point in my life where I would have been like, yeah, my, you know, I don't, I don't, they would have been my kids necessarily, but there would have been things where something important, a life moment happened within your family or something.

1:10:04And I've been like, yeah, but I've got to work Peoria. You know what I mean? I'm on that show. So I can't be there, you know, and it was just your drive when you're younger for those things. But then later in life, when you start to realize like, yeah, that stuff's all important, but I can't, like, if you said to me right now, you miss that thing, that important thing in your family or for your kids or for your wife or whatever it was because you went to that live event pure i can't tell you what i did that live event peorio or whether i was there or not and and most of the fans that were there were probably like yeah i think i went to that i think he was there i don't remember to really be quite honest but the other thing i would have remembered for the rest of my life probably so it's it's what's important and what's not doesn't mean you don't work your ass off doesn't mean you don't do all those things and aren't driven i still wake up every day and I'm thinking about the business.

1:10:54I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the business. I still, you know, get up in the morning and I'm excited to go do what I have to do because I love it. And, um, it's a part of that. It's, it's just a part of who I am and that I can still do that as phenomenal because I think that when something like that happens to you in your life, when you have something like that happens, a heart issue, cancer, whatever that is, you lose who you are, you lose your identity, right? Like I'm this, I'm triple H, this big larger than life wrestler persona. Like that's how people see me. And I'm this and I'm that, I'm all these things.

1:11:36And while you know who you are and you're just, I'm just another guy. I don't see myself as any better than anybody else or different than anybody else, but you have a persona of what you are and who you are because of what you do in life. And then that, like all of a sudden in a moment, that's gone that you're not that anymore you are no longer that guy well fuck who am i what do i do like who like i'm not you know but now but i can also look at that and say on the flip of that most important job i have is dad most important job i have is husband right so yeah the other that's part of who i am but it's not all i am and and i think it's i've said this a bunch like sort of the health scare for me because my health is great now like i have a defibrillator in my chest i don't think about it but like it has never gone off and i'm my heart's 100 and i'm healthy and i do everything i want to do other than wrestle which i don't want to do anymore anyways i'm lucky to be back thinking like i'm i'm still who i was i still have that purpose i still can do all these things but i sort of see that moment of reset with my health as a gift because I thought of things differently.

1:12:48And in that moment of time where you're given that gift, it resets your mind to like, yeah, that's all great. So when things happen bad, I can put them aside now really great because I'm like, had a bad show? Great. I have three kids at home. They're awesome. I got a wife. I got everything I could ever want and more beyond any dream I could have had. It's a reminder that just because something is hard for you doesn't mean it's bad for you. Yeah, exactly. And that's a gift. That's a gift because it's hard to, you can rationalize that and say it. You can think it and say it. That's why like in today's world of internet and there's all these like cliched and I've done it a million times here, right?

1:13:31We have these sayings. We have this thing we say. We have this, yeah, they're all just bullshit sayings, really, unless you actually do them or believe that or that has to be who you are inside. It has to be part of your core. so when I say those things I actually mean them because I've it's sort of now I've I might have said them before you know I used to say all I mean I would say that all the time nobody writes on their tombstone they wish they worked more yet I was doing it it changes who you are on a fundamental belief standpoint so that you can get to the this peaceful state of sort of like yeah I do all this other stuff I work really hard I I'm successful to a degree what I do and like all those things, but it's not the most important part of my life.

1:14:15It's an important part of my life. It's not the most important. It's not all I am. It's not who I am. It doesn't define me. If this stops tomorrow, it doesn't define me. You can use it as the example of what I did, what I was, who I was, what my life was. It doesn't define me. I'm not just a professional wrestler. I'm not just a guy that runs the creative for WWE. It's all wonderful, but I'm a lot of other things that are in a lot of ways way more important than any of that other stuff that's just a job and it's why even talking about it sometimes I get emotional about it still because it's still so powerful to me the shifting of that and even even having to learn that during the process because during that period of time while I was out and I was sick like a lot of the stuff that I created was collapsing and falling apart and going away and all these things and teams that I had and all that stuff, right?

1:15:11And that could have cascaded me even worse and made me depressed than like all these other things. There's a thing called cardiac depression and people that have incidents like that where they can go into this depressive state because of loss of identity or now their life has completely changed and that left turn in your life can cascade you into a horrible place in your life but sort of i was able to get past all that even like while that was happening but like luckily for me the lesson of all of it sunk into a place where i was like yeah that sucked oh well you know what i mean and at least i'm still here oh whatever and and move on and it's important to still get emotional about it because as soon when that stops happening the gravity of it is it's finished you've lost the message yeah you've lost the message so yeah it fundamentally changed who i am i don't want to change you know you can break bad habits and then fall off the wagon right you can there's all those things you can do all those things and go right back to what you were before and i sort of every now and then there's moments in time where i have to make a decision about like and do i go to la and do this speaking engagement that seems really like a big deal and do i do this and man this seems like a cool opportunity and it's a big thing but then like yeah you know when i haven't been home and like the kids got this going on or this this important thing coming on you know as my kids were growing through through all this and like a daddy-daughter dance or something like that that i'm like i couldn't tell you what would have happened on that day work-wise or anything else wise but i i know there was a conscious decision of like that that's really important my daughter's got this thing I gotta go to that that's why having my boy with me today is so nice we just chat on the car on the way down watch some of your old fights talk about the rock it made me smile when I came in here that you had your son with you like that those are such cool things and cool moments you know for you it's another day at work in some manner right it's cool for him remember that day for the rest of his life right my dad used to bring me to work and he would do this podcast it was so cool and I did this and I did that those are things that stick with people forever and those little things, especially when you're young, he idolizes you, right?

1:17:28Like, you're everything to him. Sharing that time with him, nothing better. Nothing better. So no matter how important all this other stuff is, you know, that... So how would your daughters describe you then? Goofball. King of the... Sound like the perfect kids. King of the terrible dad jokes. Yeah. If we asked you then, what is high performance? Where do you take us to? what does that look like for you now? People would say, I would get asked this all the time. Before I was sick and everything, people would say, how do you manage? What's your work-life balance like? And this is part of the lesson.

1:18:11High performance is, to me, being passionate about something and constantly feeling like, for you, it's the how do I do the next thing to improve that, right? I'm a big Schwarzenegger fan as a kid growing up from a standpoint of as a young man, I saw this guy, grew up in a little tiny town in Austria with nothing, saw magazines with these bodybuilders in them and said, I'm going to be the greatest bodybuilder in the world. and then saw Reg Park, who was the greatest bodybuilder in the world and said, I'm going to become a movie star like he did. And then after I become the biggest movie star in the world, I'm going to go be a politician.

1:18:59I'm going to become a great politician and I'm going to change the world. A lot of people think those things. Arnold saw it and was like, okay, so am I going to do that? I'm going to go join a gym and then I'm going to lift weights every day and I'm going to kill myself. And, you know, like what is the plan and what are the steps to go get it? And then at some point that becomes less of a day-to-day plan and more of a, it's your mindset of this is the thing that you are passionate about. And you have this, not in your entire life, but you have a singular focus of your attention to what you want to accomplish with your life is a singular focus of attention on that next level.

1:19:40That's high performance to me. And it's not just thinking it, it's doing it, right? Discipline is doing something that you don't want to do. Everything in your body is telling you don't do this. Like it's hard. Stop. Go take a nap. Go sleep. Do whatever. Like don't get out of bed this morning. It's warm and cuddly in here and it's fucking cold outside. Stay in bed. It's getting up anyway and going and doing it. And on the days that you absolutely think training is the last thing in the world you ever want to do, it's going to do it anyway. and doing it like you love it. Not going through the motions, doing it like it is the greatest thing you've ever done in your life.

1:20:21Putting that level of commitment to it, right? That's high performance. But what's really high performance, and people used to ask me about work-life balance all the time, and I would say it's bullshit. There is no such thing as work-life balance. When you are working, you will think, I should be spending time with my kids. When you are home with your kids, you are thinking, I shouldn't be sitting on this couch watching a movie with my kid. I have so much work to do and I got to get this done. And right. Like it's this push and pull always in your life. Work-life balance is just managing how you emotionally handle the push and the pull and putting yourself where you need to be in the times when you need to be there.

1:21:02Right. So you can wake up in the morning. First thing you're thinking about is what do I do today and being excited about what do I do today to get me to where I want to be, whether that's being the greatest bodybuilder in the world, the greatest movie star in the world, the greatest wrestler in the world, the best executive. What do you have to do to get there? But managing all the other things around it so that when you're with your kids, you're with your kids. When you're with your wife, you're with your wife. You're not on a date with your wife, trying to make her feel important and going through the motions of like, I gotta take my wife out on Friday night or whatever.

1:21:37We haven't been out for a while. I gotta take her to dinner. The whole time you're on your phone. You got to be present. You got to be present. You got to be in the moment of it. And I think that's one of the hardest things to do in life is not let your brain shift around to all these other distractions and things, right? The work will be there when you get done this date. The kids will be like, when you're at work, the kids will be there tonight. When I get home at six o 'clock, I'm going to turn this stuff off and I'm going to put my phone aside. Now I can tell that story and my wife would be like, dude, you're on your phone all the time, right?

1:22:05Yeah. It's hard. it's really hard to put it down it's really hard to shift your brain to the other thing it's really hard to sit at a you know my daughter's softball game which i'm really into on one hand but all of a sudden not be like i wonder if at wrestlemania we like you know what i mean and then the ball hits me in the head or something like you got to be there and be present in it and that's that to me, that control over your emotions of who you are, of what you want to do versus what you need to do, of comfort versus goals and what you want to get, that's high performance. The other stuff, like that's all the things you just do to get there, but it's controlling that.

1:22:51It's the dance in your own brain of, man, I want to do that, but I want to do that. You know, when I was a kid, it was, you know, my friends are going out. Yeah, but I got to go to the gym, right? And they're all going out near the gym by yourself, banging out reps. And because I was trying to get bigger, because I was trying to get in the wrestling business and I was singularly driven. I tell this funny story sometimes to people in high school. I got like the dork award in high school. I never missed a day of high school. So at the end of high school, I got this award for everybody. Perfect attendance.

1:23:29You know what I mean? Never missed a day of high school. I never missed a day of high school because my mom was a stickler for things. She would not let me go train. If I was sick, she's like, if you miss school, you don't go to the gym. You're sick. You're not going to the gym. I didn't want to not train. I was so driven and focused on where I wanted to get to. I could have the flu and be like, feel like I was on death's door. And I'm like dragging myself to school because I'm like, I got to go to the gym tonight. Like, and she won't let me go if I don't. It's overcoming those things and following through on your drive and your passions when you don't want to.

1:24:06And that's, that's high performance. That's what separates people from succeeding and not succeeding. I think. What are the three non-negotiable behaviors, the three behaviors that mean the most to you and you want to live by respect i think like that everybody deserves that um it's a funny thing i learned that i learned that lesson i don't know that it was always ingrained in me to some degree it was there but i don't know that was always ingrained in me but i learned it um the interest was very much that way right like uh you know and my wife is certainly like that my wife says hello to everybody like to the point where i'm like can we leave now you know like but like the the janitor in the building or the rigging guy putting up the lights or the catering people at what we do or the they're all just as important of a cog in the wheel of what we do as anybody else like it's all a team and without one piece of that team you know it's like building this elaborate structure and you're like well this is not all these pieces mean something to take there's one out the whole thing goes over right like you know they all are important in that and they're all important in it so that that humble and that humility and that respect of of um other people i think humble and humility would be probably the next one of like don't don't buy into your own bullshit yeah you're no you know you've you've had moments of success, you've had things that you've done that have been successful or whatever.

1:25:40Great. So have other people. And just because somebody hasn't had that doesn't mean they're any lesser. So nobody is better than anybody else. Nobody, they're different or their situation is different. But being humble to that just because you are seen or known or doesn't make you any better or different or anything else you don't earn you don't deserve things you know who i am like that's one of my like somebody gets pulled over and they're like the you know you see them but you know who i am yeah you're the fucking guy getting a ticket that's who you are like he is what differences make who you are it's irrelevant to what we're talking about here and yeah i know your name so what um and the last one if if we're talking business or anything else it's drive life maybe passion right which i feel like are the same thing to have that passion to where you're driven to do stuff i see people all the time that want more but aren't doing anything different to get more they're just doing the same amount of work if not less and and almost to the point of they're not getting what they want so i'll show you i won't try so hard.

1:27:00Well, that's certainly going to get you where you want to go, right? Like I'll shut down. I'll go out there and I'll, I'll not put in the effort or I'll not work as hard. Um, and to stay focused to that drive. I can't tell you how many talent I see come through our developmental system in phenomenal shape, work ethic. They look great. They're, their stamina, you know, they never blow up in the ring. They're just, everything is spot on. They do everything right they get brought up to raw smackdown and they start on a journey and six months in i'm like this guy's you barely can tell he's the same guy he was six months ago like they get out of shape they they stop training so hard some of that's a learning curve of like doing it on the road versus doing it in the performance center all those things but like becoming complacent and and when i feel like sort of when i say like passion or drive complacency is the opposite of that, right?

1:28:01Like, so when you're complacent is because your passion is waning. Sometimes you have to remind yourself of what your passion is to do this. It's funny. I see sometimes talent that they're sort of at this level, I don't want to say phoning it in, but at this level, and it's not, it's not progressing and they're not killing themselves. If I've gotten a modicum of success and I'm good with that and I feel good about where I am and I'm, and they're sort of, that passion has waned and then they get injured and boy, that shit goes through the roof because all of a sudden the threat of, I got it, like, what do you mean?

1:28:35Maybe I can't do this anymore or like, and all of a sudden now they're back, locked in, right? And their work ethic is back and all those things because that threat of losing something, it's easy to get complacent, lose that passion, lose that drive, lose that fire, become complacent, become in a place where you're just going through the motions of what you became good at and you're just doing it every day. And it's easy to phone it in and it's easy to keep doing all this stuff. And you've figured out a path of least resistance where I can be this successful and do it at this level. And that's good.

1:29:13But if you want to keep growing and continue to do more and more and more, like you always have to be striving for that next bit and never lose that passion, never, that's good enough. or, you know, any of those things. So I think that's an important factor too that I think a lot of people don't have. I've read stories about like Kobe Bryant missing a shot, a clutch shot in a game. And then like everybody leaves and he's still in that arena for hours after taking that shot over and over and over. He's not beating himself up because he missed it. He's just fixing the problem. And I think that's a lost thing with people is that defeatist attitude of like, well, this bad thing happened.

1:29:54That's just how it works. And they're against me and they're this, or I didn't get that, or they don't push me like the other guys, or they don't do this with me, or, you know, that defeatist attitude, as opposed to why aren't they doing that? What problem do I have? How do I fix it? And it's not for everybody to tell you what the problem is. It's for you to figure out why is this not working and then fix it and work your ass off to fix it and go take the steps to fix it and do the effort and make the steps and do all the work that it takes to require to go to that next level and then keep that passion once you get to that level to say what do I do now to become even more than that you know what do I do now to okay even if it's in like in rock or cena like my WWE career is I'm physically at the end of it okay how do I use that same, what did I do to get here to get me to there?

1:30:49Movies now is my thing. I'm going to go do that. For me, it would have been very easy for me to, like my career's done, you know, done in ring, all that stuff. And I got a nice job here doing this and I'll just do this and all that stuff. I want this to be better. I want to do all those things I did for that other stuff to drive to a different level of whatever you consider that success to be, to always chase it. I don't want this company to be as good as it was you know if if you say today and i'm making this up but if you say today is the best it's ever been let's hope five years from now i want to look back at today and go like that was nothing like where are we now look at that like how big do we want this company to be how what can we do what other things can we do how can we grow and how can we make it bigger nick con president of wwe that he thinks that way as well something that he's taught me in the time that I've known him is like, yeah, but how can we, it's great.

1:31:47It's great where we are. We've great success. It operates on another level and in many ways, a place that you never thought it would get to. But like, that should be 10 years from now, we should be like, we were just getting started then. That's the desire. Brilliant. So the final question then is, what's your one golden rule for living a high performance life? and this will sound cliched, tomorrow's not guaranteed. You have to do the things that you want to get done now because there's no promise, but yet it's always there, right? So what do I want to happen tomorrow and do the things that it takes to happen as if there's no more time to do it in?

1:32:32Because it will, you know, tomorrow will come hopefully and you want to have done all those things to get you to where you want to be. I'm a big believer in life is exactly what you make it. Yes, there were things that will happen beyond your control, but the rest of it is all within your control and how you react to those things, your emotional response. And you cannot control, I can't control what you're doing. You could get up right now and kick me in the face. I have no control over that. I have control over how I react to it. I have control over how I respond to that, how I think about it or right.

1:33:06Like there's all those other aspects. You can only control how you respond, but how you respond then should benefit you. No matter what tragedy happened to you, how does that benefit you and, and your response to that? So you have to be willing to do all those things. And it's not a matter of, well, you know, when people say like, don't sleep, you know, you don't need sleep. Just keep working or keep doing this. No, no, you need sleep. You need all the things to be sane and do all the stuff, but do all the things you need to do and do them like, you know, the procrastination is a dream killer.

1:33:41Complacency is a dream killer. I think most people get past high school and they go to college and then they get a job and like, right, that's it, right? I got a job. Now I get married. I have a kid, whatever that is. And I'm complacent. That's it. That's what I'm supposed to be. But like, it didn't, you put whatever goal you want in front of you. I think about Elon Musk like that all the time. I like him or hate him. People have their own opinions of him or whatever. To me, he's a guy without limitations. He didn't know shit about rockets and said, we should go to Mars. We should be able to get there in our lifetime and do all that stuff.

1:34:16I'm going to learn how to make rockets. I'm going to learn how to fly them. I'm going to learn how to do all that stuff, right? I just read an interview with him the other day where they were learning, trying to figure out how to land these things so they could reuse them and stuff. and they're on a meeting and he's like, what if the arms caught it? And they were like, it's the dumbest shit that's ever been said. And everybody disagreed with it and all that shit. But he kept going back in meetings and going, what if the arms caught it? And then finally one guy was like, I don't know, maybe that's not that stupid.

1:34:45They're there. And like, you know, they go down that road and then here they are catching rockets with the arms. Like we limit ourselves, we limit our thoughts, we limit our, where you want to get to. And then even if we have those dreams, we're not willing to, people would rather go hang out with their friends than go do the steps that are necessary to get where they want to get to. And if you're really passionate about something and you can frame it right in your mind, then the process of going to go get it is as enjoyable as getting it. It's actually more enjoyable because once you get it, it's sort of the buzz goes away.

1:35:19Love that. So enjoying the process of all those bits and pieces along the way. At our performance center, I used to say this to kids all the time when they're there. I know you can't understand this. And you hate every day we make you come in here and do drills. And it's Groundhog's Day. You're doing the same shit over and over. And I am telling you, this is the greatest point in your career. You will have unbelievable success. You will have all these achievements, make all this money and all this stuff. and one of the things you will look back most fondly on as your career is I miss that time in the performance center where all of us were together and having these moments and this camaraderie and all this stuff because right now, as much as you hate it, the process is where it's at and going through that process.

1:36:05Embrace that, understand it, learn to love it now while you're doing it. Enjoy that. If you can get there to where you talk yourself into in your mind, like I love going in the, that ring every day and doing drills and throwing up and, you know, they're running me into the ground. Like this is the best gig ever. And I'm, I'm living that process. Don't get so caught up in the way you want to go to not live in that moment. You talked about being present, be present in the shit you're doing and enjoy that process to get there because one day you'll get there and man, all this other stuff went by in a flash.

1:36:39Crazy, you know, but if you can enjoy it, then every day is a blast and you get to enjoy the passion rather than it being in a grind. What a brilliant and powerful conversation. And do you know what is most impressive for me? For someone who spent their life in the ring, for someone who's now at the top of a multi-billion dollar business, like your own emotion and your own connection to your own mortality actually is right there at the surface, isn't it? Yeah. You feel that? Very much so. I think for a lot of people that are successful, especially in entertainment, but I think a lot of people that are successful in life they either have a mentality of how they see other people where they just don't care right like like they ruin your life they don't care this is about my shit or they have a very high eq where they can sense other people and read the room and sense their if we're having a conversation sense how you're feeling about that conversation sense what you're looking for, those things lead you to, you know, or because you have a high EQ.

1:37:45And I think when you have a high EQ like that, you feel things maybe stronger and more passionately. And it sits right on that surface, which is what makes you good at what you do in some manner. It can be a detriment to what you do because it sits right on the surface and people can see that and they can manipulate that or whatever. But it sits there because your understanding of your maybe emotions or how you feel allows you to feel how other people feel and you know it's like my wife is very much like she probably is one of the highest eqs of anybody i've ever met like to me and she's very emotional and it's right at the surface so when she's angry it's right at the surface well i think it's good for men to see this right yeah i think so i think so because it's a lot of times it's a hidden thing right like just you're going to be that like don't let them see you be weak, right?

1:38:31Like you have to, you know, as a leader or whatever, you can't let them see you be weak. I feel like, um, emotion is not weakness, like being sad or being emotional about your feelings or whatever that, that's not being weakness. Not being able to control your anger is a weakness. If I'm at gorilla and something happens and it's out of my control and something happens and I flip out and I'm angry. It happens. I'm a human being, but it is the, it's the one thing to me that I'm mad at myself for after, because I, I could not control my emotion in that moment. I got pissed off and I let everybody know it.

1:39:12And it was, I'm like, I feel like a child that just, you know, threw a tantrum because I, it didn't go the way I wanted to go. I can't control my emotion when the truth is, and I learned this in the ring, if I'm in the ring and we're having a match and something bad happens, if I freak out and I'm controlling that match, but if I freak out and I'm like, I'm like, I'm yelling at people. Like all that does is make them panic and they freak out and they get tense and now they screw up even more and it gets worse. If the panic happens, right? Like, and I'll use this as an example. If you're on a plane, her bad turbulence hit.

1:39:49If the pilot goes on, it goes, holy shit, everybody took their seatbelts. Jesus Christ, we're going down. You're going to lose your mind. If he goes, ladies and gentlemen, we're experiencing some mild turbulence right now. If you please put your seatbelt on, put your head between your legs, kiss your ass goodbye. But I think we're going to make it. Like, let's see. But if he's calm, you're like, all right, he seems like he's not freaking out. I'm calm. And I'm, anger, that, all that stuff, just, it's just, it's lack of control. It's losing your emotions. The other emotions are great. Why is that a bad thing?

1:40:21Something happens in the show and it's emotional. And I see some talent succeed in a way that they only dreamed of. And they come back and they're emotional. I'm fucking emotional. I'm crying with them and so proud of them and all that stuff. It's not embarrassing to me. What's embarrassing to me is if they screw up and I'm like, you stupid motherfucker. I'm better than that. I should be at least. I should control that. That's the stuff that's embarrassing to me. That's the stuff that's, people should understand that. Anger is, whether justified or not, it's, you don't need to show it to people.

1:40:56You just show them you can't control yourself. The other stuff, it's wonderful that you can, and it makes people motivated. It makes people want to work for you, with you, and, you know, to achieve things. when people see your passion is infectious. Passion for something is when you meet somebody that's passionate about what they do, it's infectious and you want to do it with them and it motivates you to do more. You be around somebody that's angry all the time, you're just like, this guy's an asshole. You know, you don't want to work with him. You're just like, Jesus, if he yells at me like that, I'm going to punch him in the face, whatever.

1:41:32You know, he's just, you don't want to deal with it. You know, and at some point, people are doing it and they lose their mind. And there's many successful people that are that way, but they're doing it losing your mind. And all you can do is look at them and kind of chuckle to yourself and think like, this guy just yelling at me. Like, is he losing his mind? This is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for him. Like he's losing his mind. You know, it's just silliness. So I think he can, hopefully people learn that over time that they can show their emotions. I don't think it's good to keep them bottled up.

1:42:05Damien, Jake. You know, I liken Paul to a bit like a movie director. You know, he has to put together the storylines. He has to make sure that his actors or his performers are going to deliver on the night. He then has to take a look at what worked and what didn't. He has to take audience feedback. He has to tweak things and change things. And I think that the standout sort of thread through all of that for me is his like deep passion for just making WWE brilliant. It's very clear when he talks that this isn't about him. It isn't about making him more famous or him more successful. He's kind of done everything he wants to do.

1:42:39I just love how he wants to lift everybody up, whether it's people who are already famous, like, you know, Speed or Travis Scott, whether it's new performers coming through where he's nurturing them, whether it's someone like John Cena going, I'm going to give you the best finish to a wrestling career that you can possibly imagine, or whether it's the fans in the stadium or the fans at home. He wants everyone to have a great experience. And I think that as long as that remains his driving factor, I don't think that WWE will struggle under his leadership. but what I liked actually were the specifics about his leadership.

1:43:11What sort of stood out from your perspective in a leadership sense? Well, the bit that stood out for me was this idea of being open to feedback loops. So where the idea of this comes from is there's a World War II fighter pilot called John Boyd who talks about OODA loops and the OODA stands for, first of all, you've got to observe, you've got to watch and he's in the position of, he's watching the crowd, he's watching the reaction to certain moments. then you've got to orientate yourself and move to where that point is. So you've got to be willing to change or listen to feedback, which is what he said.

1:43:43Then you make a decision and then you take action. And I think in any walk of life, anybody in whatever job we do, whether we're teaching a classroom, whether we're in business trying to entice customers, this idea of being able to observe, to orientate, decide and then act is something that what Paul offered there is a textbook example of it. I think it's great. And also just to give, you know, a bit of behind the scenes information to people that are listening to or watching this. As soon as it finished, he's like, guys, come to the show tomorrow night. And then instead of just saying it'll be a great show, he goes, you'll love to see what goes on behind the scenes.

1:44:17What you see on telly is one thing, but the amount of work from all of the team to make it happen is what you will really love. And I thought, there you go, that's you, away from the camera, away from the show, away from anyone else hearing it, actually live in the values you've just told us, which is that you care about everybody and you understand everyone's roles. I thought he was, I have to say, a deeply impressive individual and, you know, far more eloquent, open, emotional and connected to people than I thought he was. Yeah, absolutely. For somebody that's lived two lives, if you like, one as a professional athlete at the peak of his powers and then to now be taking over a business, I mean, that's a rare journey for anybody, but to be able to articulate and explain his rationale, his decision-making and the lessons we've learned has been absolutely mind-blowing.

1:45:02Thanks, mate. Thank you. Huge thanks to Paul for making time to come and chat with us while he's over in the UK promoting WrestleMania 41. That happens very soon in Vegas. Make sure to follow or subscribe to High Performance so you're bang up to date with our latest episodes. And if you want episodes before anyone else, download the High Performance app from your app store for early access.

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