Paul "Triple H" Levesque Just Wants to Stick to Sports (Entertainment)

Plus Some Thoughts on the Wrestling Media Discourse

I’m sure the last week has been challenging for Paul “Triple H” Levesque. As WWE’s Chief Content Officer, he’s firmly focused on the road to WrestleMania, navigating the billion dollar behemoth from Saturday’s Royal Rumble to the “Showcase of the Immortals”, a three-month stretch that sets the tone for the company’s entire year. At 54, the former WWE champion (a famous nepotism hire after marrying into wrestling’s royal family in 2003) is doing it for the first time without an adult in the vehicle to help see him home.

This is no small thing.

Levesque “oversees the Company’s Creative Writing, Talent Relations, Live Events, Talent Development and Creative Services departments.” He’s the number two man at WWE according to their corporate website, one of four executives in an all-male C-Suite—and the only public facing one, the company’s avatar for all things creative. In other words, he’s at the tip of a a very large spear, his every decision critical to ensuring the company delivers for stockholders during what is always the biggest financial quarter of any fiscal year.

Under his stewardship, WWE just set a record at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, packing 48,044 into the domed stadium to see Cody Rhodes battle CM Punk for a shot at the WrestleMania main event, along the way besting the facility’s previous attendance record held by New Kids on the Block for 23 years.

But, to borrow a line from Rhodes, that’s not what anybody wanted to talk about when Levesque met the wrestling media after the event.

The departure of Vince McMahon, in the wake of a particularly gross scandal in a career full of them, is a seismic event in the history of professional wrestling. The scion of a wrestling family, McMahon saw the industry through several revolutions, taking what had once been a regional business national and then international, always seemingly one step ahead of the trend. Most recently he’d been among the first to see streaming’s potential, then savvily moved the WWE Network to Peacock as the online business expanded and competitors looked to carve out market share.

But, as ruthlessly brilliant as he was in the board room, McMahon was also a brute and a bully, running roughshod over competitors, employees and wrestlers alike, meeting any challenge with both proverbial fists flying. While he’d occasionally been bopped in the nose as a result, perhaps most famously by the World Wildlife Fund necessitating a company name change, McMahon has gotten away with it for so long that he’d likely forgotten what consequences are. Last week he rediscovered the concept of accountability. No doubt it was a sobering discovery, both for Vince and his many cronies in the company he’s built from a family business into a national institution.

Levesque is perhaps the most prominent McMahon protege still standing, not only the heir to his throne creatively, but also married to Vince’s literal heir. I’d imagine last week’s revelations hit different when you have to see the man at Thanksgiving and figure out how to explain to your kids what they’re saying about Paw-Paw on the news. I understand that he didn’t want to talk about his father-in-law’s grotesque behavior or read the detailed blow-by-blow of accusations he turned his wrestling company into a brothel where consent was optional, secured after the fact with Bloomingdale’s gift cards, a promotion or a new BMW.

As a senior executive in the company, however, he’s accountable to the public and shareholders for answers. He should have known he’d be asked about the lawsuit. In fact, he should have preemptively answered any questions about it with a brief statement that echoed TKO’s (WWE’s parent company) previous statement to the media. Instead, he met media scrutiny like a deer in headlights, completely unprepared for a big-boy-pants-moment, even revealing he hadn’t even bothered to read the complaint that forced the company founder into retirement.

“I’m gonna do exactly what you would expect me to do here,” Levesque said. “Look, we just had an amazing week. And I just said, a 10-year, $5 billion Netflix deal. Rock joining our board. We just sold out the Royal Rumble, put 48,000 people into Tropicana Field. I choose to focus on the positives.”

Frankly, this is an unacceptable answer. It’s fine to pass the buck if you’re just a contracted talent like Cody Rhodes. It’s perfectly believable that he knows little more about the situation than we do, discovering in real time what was going on at WWE Headquarters while he and the other wrestlers spent their life on the road at live events. That’s not okay for Levesque, a senior officer in a company that pretty clearly had systemic issues and a culture that made it acceptable to treat some female employees as sexual objects used to pleasure management and talent.

In 2024, sticking to sports isn’t a viable option.

Worse, Levesque’s “own goal” was easily avoided. WWE actually has a Code of Business Conduct that was updated in 2023 to reflect the problems McMahon had created with his reckless behavior. If the question is “what is WWE doing to insure something like this doesn’t happen again?” the answer should be relatively easy.

“WWE is committed to providing a work environment that is free from harassment,” the policy reads in part. “Harassment of any kind towards any WWE Personnel will not be tolerated, Harassment violates the law and creates working conditions that are wholly inconsistent with WWE’s commitment to its Personnel. WWE’s anti-harassment policy applies to all persons involved in WWE’s operations and prohibits harassment by or of any employee, applicant for employment, intern (paid or unpaid), manager or non-employee, clients, contractors, subcontractor, consultants, visitors, vendors, or any other third party in the workplace or while engaging in business activities on WWE’s behalf or through a contract with WWE.”

If Levesque intends to continue these post-event press conferences, he owes the public and the press better. As someone who helped with media training at the White House, it appears to me his PR team didn’t prep him appropriately for this appearance. A two-paragraph opening statement addressing the elephant in the room could have saved WWE a ton of bad-publicity and relieved pressure from media partners who are under increased scrutiny from a band of online critics who watch these press events with a keen eye.

On Twitter each question is judged by a handful of extremely critical posters, many on the fringes of wrestling journalism. Most of them have never worked in the media and don’t necessarily understand that members of the press may have different roles and goals. Even established reporters, like Brandon Thurston from Wrestlenomics, may not always have a wide-reaching understanding of how media works for a professional journalist. Thurston, who does a great job covering the business-side of the industry, wrote a damning screed, criticizing any of his peers who asked Levesque about something other than the McMahon scandal:

I respect everyone has different goals in wrestling media but we get to ask only a few questions per month to WWE EVP Paul Levesque and rarely have access to any other executive. A sex trafficking lawsuit was filed a few days ago against 3 parties: Vince McMahon, John Laurinaitis, and against the company itself, WWE. It alleges trafficking and sexual assault (including claims of instances inside WWE HQ).

…Given the context and profoundly disturbing new allegations, to ask Levesque about any other subject last night in particular is a disservice to the industry and the people in it.

As someone who has been hired to write feature stories about WWE events, I can’t say I agree. I understand Thurston’s passion. I read the lawsuit, putting me a step ahead of key WWE executive apparently, and felt it was important to address in some form. But I also understand there are times in my career where I wouldn’t have had the freedom or inclination to do so.

Here’s an example—my first and only time covering the Royal Rumble, I traveled to Houston courtesy of Bleacher Report, constructing a story about the way WWE used the January pay-per-view to launch careers and make stars. I got perspective from legends like Steve Austin, contemporary stars like Seth Rollins, and, yes, Paul Levesque.

While WWE wasn’t doing press conferences routinely at the time, I wouldn’t have used my opportunity to ask anyone about the scandal of the day. That wasn’t the story I’d been hired to write and it would have been a disservice to my employer to get side-tracked. Bleacher Report was paying thousands of dollars to send me to the event and publish what was essentially a story about Austin. I wasn’t there to write about anything else, no matter how compelling.

Many of the media critics online lose track of the fact that a press event isn’t intended as a circus show where people try to establish their “journalism” credentials by asking questions no one is going to answer for an audience of hardcore fans who are going to be unhappy regardless. It’s a place for the working press to get the building blocks they need for their coverage.

Thurston is right that the McMahon scandal is absolutely a critical story. People should ask about it. But there might also be journalists there covering the Royal Rumble event generally, writing about a specific topic or athlete, or simply taking a more light-hearted approach to wrestling coverage. For people who work for larger outlets, there may even be someone else addressing the McMahon lawsuit, leaving the journalist at the presser free to hit other topics. They are under no obligation to sacrifice their own stories in order to ask about something unrelated to their angle of attack just to appease an online mob.

No one in the media is responsible to anyone but their employer and their audience. The McMahon story is a legitimate and important one. But so is a piece on Cody’s reaction to winning the event for a second time and what it means to see his family in the front row cheering him on.

If you don’t get that, maybe it’s best to leave the media criticism to people with a more holistic understanding of the job?

Jonathan Snowden is a long-time combat sports journalist. His books include Total MMA, Shooters and Shamrock: The World’s Most Dangerous Man. His work has appeared in USA Today, Bleacher Report, Fox Sports and The Ringer. Subscribe to this newsletter to keep up with his latest work.