Unlike the past couple WrestleManias he’s presided over, we saw very little of WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque at WrestleMania 42 a couple weeks ago in Las Vegas. John Cena took on the hosting duties Triple H handled at 40 and 41, and it was new World Heavyweight champ Roman Reigns who closed Sunday’s Post-Show while paying customers expressed their disapproval of WWE’s corporate parent, TKO.
Fans aren’t as convinced of The Game’s booking infallibility as they were in 2024, and
quotes like “f*** off being a critic, be a fan” didn’t help his stock with many adult fans who read them. Still, in the dirt sheets and in the court of online opinion, most of the blame for WWE’s creative woes the past two years does seem to have been assigned to TKO and not Triple H.
Reports this afternoon from Post Wrestling and Fightful Select indicate Triple H isn’t being blamed for any issues with the product right now internally. For Post, Brandon Thurston also covered a WWE “town hall” for staff held today, during which TKO president Mark Shapiro and WWE president Nick Khan dismissed criticism of WWE creative as coming from a small group of disproportionally loud fans.
At the staff meeting, Khan told the room that Trips was continuing in his role as head of Creative. Thurston’s source wasn’t clear whether that meant Levesque had been signed to a new contract, or if it was “a less formal affirmation of his performance”. But Fightful Select says it was “heavily implied” by a source “that Paul Levesque aka Triple H has recently reached a new long term agreement with TKO/WWE”.
WWE hasn’t gotten back to either outlet’s request for confirmation of Levesque’s contract status.
Post’s report also mentions that Shapiro “prompted” Khan to address online criticism of this year’s ‘Mania at WWE’s employee gathering. The former agent “specifically cited the perception that WrestleMania Night 1 was less well-received than Night 2” as something that comes from “a vocal minority”. Thurston closes with:
Khan went on to read multiple messages from around 2015, which may have been tweets, that were critical of WWE’s product at that time. He appeared to be using the examples to argue that such criticism has historically proven to be unreliable.
As many pointed out regarding the Night Two Post-Show “F*** TKO” chant, it was done by fans who had already given money to TKO to attend WrestleMania 42, many of whom its reasonable to assume will likely give TKO more money for WWE products in the future. That “vocal minority” of fans who will complain about but still consume whatever Triple H or whoever’s running WWE creative puts out is real, and frankly fellow enjoyers of online wrestling dialogue — it includes most of us.
But while Khan and Shapiro are right about us, I wonder if they’re not underestimating the frustration people who don’t follow any Wrestling Twitter™ accounts and hardly ever visit a website like ours have been expressing lately. The rapidly rising cost and increasing difficulty of accessing a product oversaturated with ads and product placement doesn’t just turn off lifelong rasslin’ fans.
Time will give us a better idea of whether the two presidents have rose-colored glasses on, and more news on Triple H’s job standing. For now, weigh in on Triple H’s new deal, and Nick Khan’s favorite scapegoat, in the comments below.
