Weekend Edition: Triple H on 'genius' of Trump, Hulk Hogan's legacy & replacing Vince McMahon - The Sports Agents

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. How the hell is Triple H doing this match? Airbrows eliminated! Triple H is a 14-time WWE Champion! We're bringing you a Big UK exclusive on today's podcast with 14-time WWE Champion Triple H.

0:25Mark Pougatch:Triple H brings us behind the scenes and into the writer's room where he's been the WWE's chief content creator for the last three years. Is it more real than you think? How is he trying to change the culture after the McMahon era? And why does he think WWE can learn from President Trump? And we'll also pay tribute to six-time WWE champion Hulk Hogan after his death and ask what is his legacy within the sport. Hulk Hogan arrived! Hulk, Hulk, Hulk! What is he doing? Oh my God! Is he the third man? He's the third man! What the hell is going on here? Hulk Hogan has been... And we're looking back at the best bits from this week's shows, from our interview with the NFL legend turned Birmingham City owner Tom Brady and our reaction to the Lionesses winning the Euros again.

1:12Welcome to the Sports Agents.

1:22The Sports Agents. with Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman.

1:28Mark Pougatch:So another varied week on the sports agents. Mark interrupted his holiday to speak to Tom Brady, seven-time Super Bowl champion. You were not going to miss that one, were you? I wasn't. I've interviewed him once before, but only via a press conference and was just kind of open-mouthed, how he commanded everything. So I had to leave the kids by the pool to come and interview him, definitely. I'd just come back from the weekend events in Basel, England winning the Euros, and I said to Ruben, my son's home at the moment, and I said, I'm going up to interview Tom Brady. And honestly, it's a wonder he didn't charge into the room.

2:08Mark Pougatch:He started just reciting stats, all of his career stats, and said, tell him I'm a proper fan. Tell him I'm not one of those English fans. I'm a proper fan. I was like, yeah, I'm really going to tell him that. But he does have that effect. people just, you know, they don't even need to know much about American football. And he is, he's a mega star, isn't he? And he didn't disappoint. Here's a little taste of the chat. Of course, comparisons will be made to Wrexham. And what a script, what a storyline having, you know, these two very glamorous Hollywood kind of style owners, both in a league together, they've obviously come up, you know, through three, three promotions, and there you are going to be facing each other.

2:43Mark Pougatch:Has this kind of permeated American sporting culture? Is there going to be team brady and team ryan and rob in the u.s pitting you against each other i hope so yeah and i'm totally good with that you know i think that the reality is we don't have much say in what's going on out there on the pitch on game day so they're going to go out there and the players are going to be the ones that contribute to winning and losing who puts the ball in the back of the net and who's able to defend the other team from getting that ball in the back of our net that's how it's going to be decided so we're going to talk a lot of smack in the meantime between all of us because it's pretty fun theater and i think there's some literally friendly side bets going on but make no mistake the people are going to decide the fate of those games are the players wearing those jerseys and big spending from both teams big spending yeah yeah we got to we got to keep up with one another uh of course with the lionesses winning the euros we talked about whether this is the new england the expectations are that they win and that they deliver with ex-england goalkeeper Karen Barsley and the Guardian Susie Wack.

3:44Mark Pougatch:If you look across the board quite a lot, if you add two years onto the Rage, you know, you could see them still being there. And certainly one of those who will be there, you'd hope, barring any other kind of, you know, catastrophes or injuries would be Hannah Hampton, Karen. She's quite understated, isn't she? In the way she kind of goes about things, which makes me think of a conversation I had last night at the game, actually. And we were standing there, like watching them get the trophy. And we're just like, do you think she actually knows how good she is? But yeah, she's incredible, as you mentioned there, you know, around the Mary Earp's retirement, you know, and kind of the backlash that got her through absolutely no fault of her own.

4:20Mark Pougatch:She's taken it all in her stride. And I think what I just love the most, she's got these like game defining moments in her, you know, both in and out of possession. You know, I think the thing that really, really stands out to me is that pass against Netherlands. And Lauren James. Her distribution is a weapon. And that's why Serena's made the decision. And it's paid off. I'm really excited for her. To be told as a young person, you know, this won't be the sport for you because, you know, your eyesight is going to preclude you from playing that kind of, you know, top-level sport. Gives you a mark, doesn't it?

4:52Mark Pougatch:Or gives you an indication of... She's overcome a lot. And again, I think it's very fitting that she is in this team because they encapsulate that everywhere, you know, in terms of people writing them off and people, you know, getting shown up and them proving everyone wrong. Catch up with all episodes of The Sports Agents on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts. Hit subscribe or follow and don't forget to rate and review. We had to postpone our Q &A for this exclusive on the way, but we'll do one very shortly. Yeah, because up next, Mark Pugach brings us a UK exclusive with 14-time WWE champion Triple H.

5:27The Sports Agents.

5:32The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. Triple H, thank you for your time. Oh, thank you. Let's talk about Hulk Hogan's passing, if we may, and how much the sport, in your view, owes to him and what he did. Look, I think his contributions to sports entertainment, to WWE, can't be measured, right? There's arguments to be made that in the 80s, when Hulkamania sort of runs wild, so to speak, in the WWE, that it launches this to a whole nother level of mainstream popularity. WrestleMania 1 was a pop culture who's who, right, of people you would have never thought would have been attached to pro wrestling, of, you know, Andy Warhol and you name it, right?

6:24His charisma, his character, he just became one of the biggest global icons. arguably in that time in the mid 80s one of the most recognizable people on the planet transcended what we do transcended sports entertainment in a way that nobody had done before was a household name and then the business would carry on from there and then he would do it again in the 90s with the nwo and becoming hollywood hulk hogan just had a had a presence and a charisma and a character that could not be denied. And his contributions as a performer to this industry are second to none. And what sort of character was he to deal with and to be around?

7:09Look, anybody is going to have criticisms of people. And I can't state the human being at all aspects of his life. I can only talk about how he treated me, really. And he was always great to me. You know, he was a very, very business minded, very steadfast in his beliefs of business, but was professional and easy to work with and a great person to be around. You know, for me personally, for how he dealt with me, I don't have anything negative to say. But I understand for a lot of people it's complicated. It does not take away from his contributions to an industry. A final one on Hulk. Do you remember the first time you met him and what that was like for you?

7:49So I was in WCW. I was just getting started when he very first came in there. It was a funny thing that I felt like everybody around him acted differently. The entire company acted differently when he was there, but he was just one of the guys and always came across that way to me. So like they would change the look and the feel of backstage and, oh, my God, Hulk Hogan's here today. And everybody would get the lecture that Hogan's coming today. Everybody's got to be on their best behavior and all that stuff. And then he would walk in and was just Hulk Hogan. And he'd just come around and say hello to everybody.

8:24And he was just just another one of the boys, as we would say in our business with people, you know. And because of that, I think people got along with him later in our careers, as I would be more behind the scenes in business. I would work with him from an office standpoint and from behind the scenes. He was just a businessman doing what he did. And again, was great to me, was easy to work with through ups and downs. And there's always going to be positives and negatives in business and in anything else in life. But his contributions that I said, if you were to make a Mount Rushmore, which is now a very popular thing to say, I don't believe that there's one without his face on it.

9:05Triple H, let's talk about the documentary then. WWE Unreal Season 1 out now on Netflix. Was there any reticence on your part that you were, as we say in England, letting us into the magic, so to speak, by doing this? Yeah, I think, look, we'd have been silly not to have the conversation about doing it, but also silly not to weigh out all the options of what does this look like? What do we let, you know, have out there? What do we not put out there? And what does that do to folks? I'm a big believer in everything changes. And the internet has created an environment where most people know everything there is behind the scenes in the business to a degree.

9:52And they're fascinated by it. And they talk about it. There's no, you know, unless you're a little kid, which probably not watching this show anyways, you know, you know what this business is. We're not hiding that. We're not trying to tell you, hey, this is all real. Forget about all the stuff you read behind the scenes. This is all real and it's a real sport. There's none of that. We're entertainment. We're fun. We're supposed to be fun. We're supposed to make you believe in good guys and dislike bad guys. And we're supposed to inspire you to be something more. We're supposed to have good guys or baby faces that inspire you to overcome against all odds.

10:26And no matter how many times they get beaten down, they stand back up and stand up for themselves and eventually succeed. We're all those things. We're supposed to make you laugh. We're supposed to make you cry. We're supposed to make you angry. We're supposed to make you happy. It's a part of it. But letting you in the behind the scenes, for those that understand what WWE is, that watch it now, it's not going to ruin it one bit. Because you're going to see the passion of everybody behind the scenes that gets put into doing this. for those that aren't necessarily fans of WWE or have never experienced it.

10:59This is a show that lets you know all the things that go into creating it. And it's massive. You know, it is not just, Hey, I saw these two guys. They just go out there and they pretend to fight in their underwear. And then one guy won and it moves on. Right. Like the amount of storytelling, the amount of creative, the amount of production, the amount of people that work on it to create this entertainment product that millions and millions and millions of people, thank God, love around the world. I think it just enhances that. And much like Drive to Survive did for F1, whereas it created a lot of new race fans that didn't understand what it was prior and what went into it, I think this will do the same for us.

11:40People that will watch it and think, man, this is fascinating. I want to see the finished product. Could you walk us through the basics of putting a fight together? So in every fight, You've got a face, the good guy, and a heel, the bad guy. What's the actual mechanics of choreographing all that? Well, so there's choreographing it from so many different levels. You know, one is, hey, choreographing the direction of the storylines for now for the next six months. One is choreographing it over the next month. Another is choreographing it over the next week or so. And then one is right down to the match itself.

12:17So, you know, when we make a determination of Cody Rhodes is going to face John Cena, what is the story we're looking to tell? What story are we looking to tell coming out of that? And then what needs to happen in the moment, right? No different than a movie when it comes to the moves and the physicality that's happening in there. That's mostly the talent and the producer. but if there's things that are risk to reward ratio, they will then come to me to say, hey, is this possible to do? And it's my judgment call as to whether that's worth the physical risk they're taking to tell that part of the story.

12:56But it's a complex process. You mentioned John Cena then. What was the thinking in, he's a fan favorite in turning heels. So becoming a bad guy, I don't know. Is that some sort of allegory for what happens in life sometimes that somebody you really like actually turns out to be quite nasty? And John earned the right in his last year in this business to do it the way he wanted to. The turning into a heel or a bad guy was thrown out in, I know it was something that he talked about doing for years and under the right terms wanted to do. And it was like, well, if we're going to do this last run, you can sort of make the tour and go to all the cities you want to go to and sort of do your greatest hits and everybody will cheer and everybody will love it.

13:40But it will have sort of run its course by the end. Or we can try to do something different and try to intrigue people in a different way and challenge John in a way that he hadn't been challenged in the business for a long time. So when it was brought up, he was the first one to say, oh, my God, I love that. Man, I can creatively sink my teeth into that and have fun and do something different, right? Obviously limited by the John Cena that we have today and his physical limitations versus 120 years ago. But that is what was intriguing about it. And for fans, it was a different ride. For fans, it was something new and fresh and intriguing.

14:25and then we'll see where that goes. And the great thing about John is he's wide open to having fun and really challenging himself to be different. So now we'll see where it goes. And will he ride off into the sunset as the bad guy or will he have the turnaround? It really comes down to that. But for many people, him turning into a bad guy was the most popular thing he could have done. Okay, yeah. Sometimes people don't want to be the good guy all the time. It gets a bit dull. That's boring. Exactly. You've had a change as well, of course, yourself from the ring to management, becoming the new Vince McMahon.

14:58Lots and lots to learn, of course. Were you surprised about just how much there was for you to learn when you moved to the management side? Yes and no. You know, I'd been sitting under that learning tree that was Vince McMahon and so many others from Pat Patterson to Jack Lanza to a lot of people sitting in that learning tree. So I understood. But when they're your decisions to make and as the business grows, yeah, the challenges become bigger and bigger, the pull at your time and your mental focus to stay in a creative place. Yeah, there's so much that goes into it. It's hard not to be surprised by it.

15:37It's hard not to be slightly overwhelmed by it. But at the end of the day, you have, or at least I have an incredible support team around me of writers and producers and performers that are all weighing in to help make the product everything that it is. So to me, that's my favorite part about it is sitting around with talented people and creatively coming up with ideas and riffing. And I would imagine it's like a band creating music where they all just sit around and have the parts that they put into it and then are just blown away by the outcome of it. It's a wonderful process for me. Shocking to some degree, yes, but in some ways, everything I expected it to be.

16:18And the challenges were that inevitably in the last year, serious allegations of sexual assault and trafficking levied at Vince, which he's always denied. But nevertheless, how did you deal with the fallout of all that? Because they were allegations. Sure, sure. And all we can do is move forward and allegations are allegations, right? It's a complicated relationship for anybody in life. Nobody is perfect. But accusations are made. That's a whole legal thing that is totally separate and aside from what we do. My job is to put on the best creative product that WWE can do. And luckily and happily, it's been successful and it's been working wonderfully.

16:59Business is in an incredible place right now and continuing to grow. It's a wonderful time in our business and fans are enjoying it. So we're headed in a good direction. And have you had to think about how you portray the product today? in what is, whether people like it or not, a much more politically sensitive, politically conscious world than it was maybe when you were fighting? It's very different to 20, 30 years ago, whether people like it or not. People might have said in those days, WWE, there was too much violence or objectification of women. How have you had to make sure that actually the product you have today is still very enjoyable, but is in line with what people expect today from entertainment?

17:41I think in many ways, WWE is a reflection of society. And it's in a way that I don't know if people understand it, but when they look back, I think they could see it in the nineties in the attitude era. Yes. The product was very different. Yes. A lot of the things that we did then we would not do now, but it was sort of where society was. It was sort of where television was shock television, shock radio hosts. It was a big piece of, of the world at that time. We are now a reflection of the world we live in now. It's always a line that you're at. You don't want to cross it, but you want to know where the line is necessarily.

18:20So it's always something that we're constantly aware of and constantly shifting our product to maintain that line that society dictates is sort of the right line to be on. Absolutely. Gabby went to interview the London Mayor Sadiq Khan recently. He spoke about bringing great big sporting events back to London. WrestleMania was one of those that was mentioned. Can you confirm to us today, is WrestleMania coming to London? I cannot confirm, but we're wide open for business. And as we said with the mayor when we were there, Nick Khan, myself, WWE President Nick Khan and myself, when we went to see him, we're open for business.

19:00And if we can find the right time with the right opportunity and the right terms for everybody involved where it works, we're a global company. And we want to bring our biggest events and our best events all around the globe. So London has always been a second home for us. London has always been amazing. The fans are amazing. So we're open for business. And we look forward to hearing from the mayor again and continuing our conversations. Well, WrestleMania may come here or not. But the American president, but in Scotland, playing golf. Is it right that you described him as a genius, Triple H? I think in many ways.

19:37As you move through life, you continue to learn. And over time, everybody learns. He is one of the most intuitive people I think that I've met. And when he has a plan and he knows that it's correct, he will stick to that. And I think over time, many times that's proven to be correct. But I think he admits when it's wrong also. So my world is not a political world. My world is a world of entertainment. I've always enjoyed my interactions with him when he's been here. And, you know, he's in our Hall of Fame. So my hat's off to him. I can only imagine, as people ask me about the stresses and the criticisms and the negativities around leading WWE and the creative, I can only imagine what it is to be a world leader in this day and age.

20:23So my hat's off to anybody in this arena, whether it's the mayor of London, the president of the United States or anybody in between. God bless them and the job that they do. Also, God bless the manager of West Ham United. Is that right? You're a West Ham fan. And if you are, how did you become a West Ham fan? Yeah, in the past, I've been there a bunch and, you know, got to know some of the folks in and around West Ham. But in the last few years, I have to admit, my schedule doesn't permit. So you would have to tell me at this point the West Ham situation. I think their situation is OK. I think that's probably it's not great, but it's not terrible.

20:59Listen, thank you very much indeed. I know you'll wish West Ham a happy season and we wish you all the best as well with the documentary with Netflix and going forward. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. The Sports Agents. The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. Thanks to Mark Pugach for that. If you have any questions, messages on our socials or an email, thesportsagents at global.com.

21:25Mark Pougatch:And if you're enjoying the episode on the News Agents feed, then just search for The Sports Agents to listen to this week's episodes in full YouTube, Global Player, or wherever you get your podcasts for that. New episodes every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The Sports Agents with Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman.