Triple H talks making NSFW moments matter more in WWE
Yesterday at 06:34 PM
When Roman Reigns and Solo Sikoa squared up in the middle of the ring for RAW‘s first-ever match broadcasted on Netflix, the crowd met the WWE Superstars with a three-work declaration: “F**k you Solo!”
Now, on USA Network, after an F-Bomb flew through the speaker on a television set, Standards and Practices would have immediately started muting the show, which can rob an important moment of its gravitas and lose some important context from commentary and/or the people in the ring.
But on Netflix? Well, the crowd let their voices be heard, and WWE allowed it to be so, with Pat McAfee reminding fans “We are on Netflix.”
Is this the new WWE? Will swearing be encouraged? Well, no, as after already declaring that the show would maintain the same rating as on the USA Network, Paul “Triple H” Levesque told The Press Box before the show that he doesn’t think cursing for the sake of cursing is a worthy endeavor, instead using the words to punctuate an important moment, instead of the meat and potatoes.
“Well, first of all, there’s a lot of factors in that. We have to deliver ‘Holy s**t’ television. [Laughs] The talent have to deliver ‘Holy s**t’ moments,” he said. “The first time they bleeped the ‘Holy s**t’ out of a show for us, I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ Because it went fully to black at one point. I was like, what do you mean they did that? Why? They’ve never done that before. When I get off the air here, I got a live television show to get through, but when I get off the air, somebody and I are having a phone call about this because I’m out of my mind on this. It’s sort of the, ‘Well, the standards and practices changed,’ and all this stuff. I’m a little unsure about how that’ll be. I’m sure that’ll be a conversation as we move forward. I think there’s a little bit less of the restrictions, there’s less of all of that from a content standpoint. I think we don’t want our show to become something that it doesn’t need to be,” Triple H explained via Fightful.
“I’m not a big believer in, ‘Oh my god, this show would be so much better if everybody could drop the F-bomb.’ Who cares? Put it this way, if you’ve written such a bad television show that you need that to make it work, and I’m not saying it can’t work, it’s like being a comedian. You can use every curse word there is as a comedian and it can be awesome. You can also not use any, and it can be awesome. There’s a way to do both. But I’m not a big believer in it needs it to be successful. I’m also a big believer in that rarities of those things creates moments.”
Can Triple H thread that needle consistently? No, probably not, as he does have to produce well over one hundred live shows a year with no opportunity to shoot coverage or get a punch in if a line didn’t land correctly. But that strategy is a sound one, as blood, for example, is far more compelling when it happens on occasion instead of weekly.
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