Sure.

There were so many aspects to that of, you know, hey, uh, Vince is stepping away.

Y- you're gonna take this spot.

But he's chiming in, and we're, he's still meeting with me all the time, and he's still-

It's a tran- transition.

No, the, the only thing that is difficult in that transition, you're, you're trying to ...

At the end of the day, when people are like, "Yeah, but it's your decision, right?"

Yeah

... on the street to prove to people that this was real, because they thought that that was the badge of legitimacy of, of what we did.

Over time, the badge of legitimacy of what we do is just what we do, right? It's, it's so difficult.

It's so physically demanding.

It's so all-encompassing.

It's so all those things.

It's an art form that takes over your life.

Right

Yeah.

20, 20-plus years.

I've known him personally for that 20-plus years.

The one thing that I know more than anything else about Brock Lesnar is Brock Lesnar's gonna do whatever Brock Lesnar wants to do.

So, um, when we get to Minnesota, when we get to this match, keep in mind, the- Brock, I believe, in his mind, retired at WrestleMania.

I believe that wasn't enough for him.

I believe he wanted to come back to prove Oba wrong.

What makes both of these guys, though, so special to you?

Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

done.and the flares and the people like that.

I was a mid-card guy.

You guys see me as this unbelievable legend that you all listen to and all this stuff.

But when it comes to your own careers, and many of you have already surpassed the position I was ever in, you're miserable about it because you think that you haven't reached the success of other things.

But yet I see myself as having this amazing career.

I fed my family.

Yeah?

You're, [laughs] well, you can tell just ba- based on your emotion right now how much AJ Styles means to you and how much you enjoyed working with him, so, um, and-

I just, I just like seeing guys finally get a shot and do well.

Like, no BS, when AJ debuted at the Rumble and, uh, he had his thing with Chris, he was there, but it was like, "What's going on?" And then he got me, and the rest is history.

And I'm so glad he's been a success everywhere he's stepped foot, and that says, it's a testament to who he is and the performer he is, and I'm-

How does it feel? I can already see in your face compared to when I saw you walking towards that statue last year, you look like a different sort of relaxed this year.

Yeah, you know, um, one, I'm, I'm almost more proud here seeing Steph go in than it was for me.

Last year was a little hectic and, um, you know, while I was walking the red carpet, my speech was not anywhere near at all even formed.

So, you know, I was, uh, just looking to get back so I could have something written out a little bit so I had a template of something.

Visit SpinQuest.com for more details.

Sometimes it's, um, you know, when you're putting stuff together in your mind, Dusty Rhodes used to say this all the time to me, that in your mind, you see things 100%.

If you can get 70% of that to come out on the screen, that's a grand slam.

I- i- in, in your mind, you picture it perfectly.

In execution, it's different.

There's a million variables that can change it, that bring it down a notch, um, or two, or three, or 20, or whatever it is, right? So things turn out differently.

Fans begin to react to things differently.

What do you feel that this means to each man's legacy?

How, how much can you describe the difference of how big this thing has gotten from the mid-'90s when you started?

Well, it's crazy.

Even then, as big as it felt to me, especially going into the ring with the Ultimate Warrior, was such a big star at the time, my first WrestleMania.

But it was at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim.

You know, it was sold out, but it was an arena.

It's now this spectacle that you see here before you, a stadium, two nights.

I mean, it's, it's a whole week of activities between SmackDown, the Hall of Fame, um, you know, everything that's going on here, Monday Night Raw afterwards, the two nights of WrestleMania.

How did it get to this point, in your estimation, from when you took over, from where it was to where it is right now?

I want to ask you because I know... working working with you is is different than working with any other boss management booker that i i've worked with but do you have a pet peeve about this the the talent is there a pet peeve you have i don't i don't is there something that just that that gets on for example is there something i do

You know, the outdressing everybody thing.

No, it's not a pet peeve.

Sometimes there's frustration of... being able to have the perspective of looking back over a long career and so many people's careers and so many different talent and all different levels of success, and then wanting to say to a talent like, dude, this is meaningless.

And you are arguing and wearing yourself out mentally and wearing yourself out emotionally over this point that is meaningless.

Like literally by next Monday's show, no one is going to think about this again.

And it's so many people, they get so caught up in the minutia of the little tiny things that don't really make the difference.

with

You know,

the outdressing everybody thing.

No. It's not a pet peeve.

Sometimes there's frustration of... being able to have the perspective of looking back over a long career and so many people's careers and so many different talent and all different levels of success, and then wanting to say to a talent like, dude, this is meaningless.

And you are arguing and wearing yourself out mentally and wearing yourself out emotionally over this point that is meaningless.

Like literally by next Monday's show, no one is going to think about this again.

And it's so many people, they get so caught up in the minutia of the little tiny things that don't really make the difference.

of

El Pollo Loco

... self in the game, especially now as the technology improves so much.

It is amazing to me how much video games in general just drive things in society.

You're seeing Street Fighter game, uh, coming to life in movies now.

You're seeing Mortal Kombat come to life in movies.

You're seeing NBA franchise games, NFL franchise games, driving business for them.

You're seeing it in WWE, right? Uh, for a lot of kids, that's how you get into WWE, is other kids are playing video games.

Yeah

He really hasn't lost anything yet.

Anything.

But, but when you just say, "I, I'm just at a place where I don't want to do this anymore," it's time.

Before you get hurt, before you get told you, you're not allowed to do this anymore.

I think he was there.

I'm hoping that he will contribute because, again, he's one of the most influential people in the business and one of the greatest minds in the business, and I think when you see somebody like what Shawn Michaels is doing in NXT, I think that that's, that's a path and a career for AJ Styles beyond this, uh, period that he's in.

But for me right now with him is not the time to talk about it, right? This is an emotional night for him, an emotional night for, for him, his family, for everybody involved.

in 2018.

Limitations, terms and conditions apply.

That Undertaker persona was legit.

We had a few opportunities to be in the ring.

[crowd cheering] Maybe that changed his respect level for me.

Then there was one night where we were all out, everybody was out.

He kind of motioned for me to come over and poured out two shots of Jack and kind of sat there looking at me for a little bit, and then we started talking, and finally he just said, "You're all right with me." And he, we did a shot of Jack, and, and I, I don't drink, and he knew it, and, uh, I think it was kind of the icebreaker for me and him.

[bell rings] He won, he won, he won, he won.

He was a locker room leader.

Go to buyfordnow.com or your Southern California Ford dealer for more information.

[audience cheering] House.

Let me just say thank you to San Diego in general for inviting us into your house.

But especially Petco Park, what a facility.

Chris Conley, Jacqueline Lash, um, here at Petco, couldn't have been better.

Our partners at ESPN and Netflix couldn't have been any better.

You saw it all week long.

Can you speak to trusting her in a spot like this where we only have two singles matches on this card, and she's in a world title match with Nikki Bella? Just once again, if you could talk about the rise of, of Stephanie and, and her, in this role.

Yeah.

So you have to be in a whirlwind, you have to get here, and you have to hit the ground running.

It's what, um, everybody here in WWE has done.

It is certainly what our WWE superstars have done.

Um, and even though they didn't have to make the trek here, it is certainly what fans have done.

If you were in this building last night for SmackDown, the energy was incredible.

These fans here in Perth are off the charts.

[upbeat music]

[cheering]

It, it was everything to me, and I grew up in a, in an era n- near Boston where, um, you know, I had the Larry Birds and the, uh, that era of folks.

But yet, wrestling for me was so much bigger than any of that, and one of the things that always bothered me was outside of the wrestling fans that I knew, nobody talked about wrestling.

So when a show was over, when there was a big event somewhere, even for WrestleMania, the media didn't cover it.

There was no place where I could go and turn on my TV and watch the results and have people talk about it like it was a, an everyday thing, like a normal thing like they did every other sport, and I never understood it.

Um, that changed.

That changed when we announced this partnership with ESPN.

Her presence, I think she truly has it all.

Do you think for new fans who are gonna find WWE now on ESPN, that this current roster we have now could actually challenge that '02, '03 era for talent?

I ex- absolutely believe that.

And the, and the beautiful thing about the, the roster that we have right now, 'cause all of the names that you said are, um, stars that have been doing this for a long time and are at the top of their game, but for every one of those you mentioned, there is a Bron Breakker breaking through underneath them.

There is a Bronson Reed breaking through underneath them.

There is a Gunther, there is a new crop of talent, right? There is a, a Rhea Ripley who i- in the big scheme of things is fairly new here, right? There is a Stephanie Vaquer.

And then on the flip side of that, when you get to those talent, there is a Trick Williams, there is an Oba Femi, right? There is an Ethan Page, there is a Sol Ruca, all of these names.

That is the future.

Yeah.

What should fans, uh, be most excited about?

Man, I think just that partnership in general, ESPN.

When I was growing up, I always wanted there to be a place where people talked about what my passion was, which was WWE, right? And you'd...

WrestleMania would happen, you'd turn on the news, no one talking about it, no one bantering about it.

Now- now we are.

Yeah.

ESPN brings that to the table.

Um, this event's gonna be spectacular, but I think Cena-Lesnar's gonna be off the chart.

Yeah.

And one day, if you connect enough objects together, you'll have somebody to wipe your ass too.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Um, the, the heel stuff for me was always where I wanted to be in my career, but i- if you're just saying just having a crazy time, DX was just-

... you wanna let us in on right now?

I don't want to be the worst secret keeper on the planet, you know what I mean? Yeah, we got some, we got some big news today, um, about the future, the, and, and how things are happening with WWE, but it's gonna be exciting and, uh, I'm, I'm thrilled we get to do it here today in the shadow of, uh, Canelo Crawford.

It's nice.

It's nice.

Yeah, because I- if I'm not mistaken, WWE and UFC, now you guys are under the same umbrella, TKO Career.

Right, right.

And I grew up a huge fan.

Really in the back of my mind, you know, man, that if I could do one...

How, how difficult is it to put something together that quickly when you know, like, "Hey, we might have storylines in place, but we kind of need to shift things to make sure that this goes off, you know, as well as possible"?

Yeah, it take, it take, it takes some work, right? You know, you have a, the, the way the schedule is laid out, you have all your long-term stuff laid out in a certain manner, and then all of a sudden you've got something in the middle there.

Instead of six weeks to the next thing, it's three weeks.

So you got to draw everything out, and, and, and shift some stuff around.

But that's, you know, it's f- funny when stuff like that happens, people say, "Oh, man, it's just another shift or something." We do it every week.

It, it...

Somebody gets injured, you know, it, uh, and they, it could be as simple as someone's sick, they've got the flu, they...

Everything felt really, really good.

Was there any reticence on your part that, that you were, as we say in England, letting us into the magic, so to speak, by doing this?

Yeah, I think, w- 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, and they're fascinated by it, and they talk about it.

There's no...

You know, unless you're a little kid, which you're 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.

Uh, 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.

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?

Triple H, why'd you guys decide to pull back the curtain now and let us see a little more as the fans?

Well, I think in today's world with the internet and, you know, half the fun for our fans, I think, sometimes is speculating around what is going on behind the scenes anyways.

So we decided to let them take a look.

We're not exactly showing you everything and how the magic is, is done, or how the, the, you know, the tricks are done, if you wanted to use a magic reference, but we're giving you the behind the scenes.

We're showing you what goes into this.

A lot of people think it's just these athletes show up and they put on a show, and that's it, and you know, it's all predetermined, so it's easy.

It's not that at all.

Obviously you're not in the business of doing things that work against you, so did you take that into consideration, and how did you come to the conclusion that you came to that this was the best thing for you to do?

When you do that, do you feel like, "Oh, I got this, so I'm not chasing, you know, being in the ring anymore"? Because that was, as a fa- lifelong fan, that was really cool to see, dude.

Thank you.

Th- you know, there- there came a point in my time, long before I, I hung up my boots for health reasons, where I was kind of done with it, and I- I hate saying that because there's a few that I feel like, you know, later...

I don't- I don't wanna say I never phoned anything in, but- but I just couldn't focus on it, right? It would be...

I would be doing all this other stuff and then trying to train twice a day, trying to get ready to be in the ring.

The day of WrestleMania, I would be working on entrances and, you know, doing a million other things, and somewhere late in the afternoon, I'd be like, "Oh my god, I got a match in a couple hours.

Like, I have to go think about this for the first time." I actually sort of felt bad sometimes for the people I was working with because I didn't have the bandwidth and the things for those other folks were almost the priority for me.

(laughs)