Triple H recently did an interview with ESPN ahead of WWE’s first all women’s pay-per-view WWE Evolution. He touched on a number of interesting topics including how tryouts work and the decisions that go into running a tournament like the Mae Young Classic, but the most interesting subjects involved NXT star Xia Li and whether or not we’ll continue to see gendered pay-per-views in the future.
Check out what Triple H had to say on those subjects below.
On being impressed by NXT’s Xia Li:
Two years ago in China when I first met Xia Li, she didn’t know what WWE was. We had to explain to her what WWE was because we were there looking for athletes and she had never seen it. She grew up in farmlands in China so she didn’t know what it was. Once we told her what it was and showed it to her, she was, “oh yeah, definitely.” Then she came in and tried out and she just fell in love with it, and she has so much heart and passion I was like, “yeah, we’re bringing her back.” There’s certain people you see when you give them the chance to, and they’ve never seen it before, they get the bug bad. She was one that was like that.
For Li to do what she did [at the Mae Young Classic], two years from even knowing what it was, to be where she is now, that’s incredible. That’s [NXT coach] Matt Bloom, that’s [NXT coach] Sara Del Rey, that’s the team that we have and the system that we have.
On if we’ll continue to see gendered pay-per-views:
To me, if you segregate it, then it’s not equal. I agree with it in theory for the Evolution one — I love that concept. I love doing it and to do one [women’s only pay-per-view] here or there, I think it’s great. I don’t think it should be an all-the-time thing.
To me, the variety of what we do is what makes it great. If everything is the same, then it’s ehh [shrugs shoulders]. If you have a seven-to-ten match card, that’s a big card, if half of them are women and half of them are guys, that’s cool. I really do not think that’s a stretch or implausible at all. I think that depth to me makes it more exciting. I’m a believer that you don’t have to see every single thing every single time on every pay-per-view we do, and that it should be spread out a bit. Maybe you don’t see the same people on the next pay-per-view. [The shows should] be different, but still be able to give the fans that same level of quality and same level of, “Oh my god, I have to see that.” I think that’s doable.
