LionDen
03-25-2015, 04:03 PM
Triple H on getting back in the ring for the first time: 'It felt like my body exploded'
https://usatftw.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/screen-shot-2015-02-23-at-11-49-00-am.jpg?w=1000
WrestleMania 31 is just five days away, and while it’s hard to predict what the best match of the night will be (Undertaker’s return? A seven-man ladder match? Lesnar vs. Reigns?), Triple H and Sting could easily steal the show. Sting, a WCW legend who made his first appearance in the WWE at Survivor Series last year, will wrestle his first WWE match against The Game, and there’s a very high probability that baseball bats and sledgehammers will be involved.
For The Win spoke to Triple H in February prior to his induction into the International Sports Hall of Fame, and the WWE executive vice president opened up on the insanity that is WrestleMania week and how he’s preparing to face Sting.
FTW: How hard is it to wrestle a match after such a long layoff, especially considering your WrestleMania matches are typically half an hour long. What do you do to shake off the ring rust?
Triple H: I got in the ring for the first time the other day and fell down for the first time and it felt like my body exploded when I landed. It takes a little bit. You can train, but its one of those things where ‘experts’ of our business that have never done it will say ‘oh if they gave guys time off it would be better for them’ or whatever, but it’s honestly, having done this for 20 plus years — time off is your worst enemy. It really is, it makes it so much harder to do this.
When you’re doing it all the time it’s like a callus, you’re doing it and it doesn’t bother you. You’re functioning and you can do it every night. when you haven’t done it, getting in there and doing the simplest thing, you’re like ‘oh my God, why am I doing this again?’ You’ve got to get yourself back in the process of getting back in the ring, and the hardest [part] of doing that is… it’s easy to go through that stuff when you’ve got 80,000 people screaming at you, it’s not so easy when you’re in a warehouse with a ring set up all by yourself. It hurts a whole lot more.
FTW: When did you start training for your match with Sting?
Triple H: Well I train all year round. One of the things I found, five years ago or so, I needed to make my training more functional. So I train with Joe DeFranco, Joe’s known as kind of the combine killer for guys in the NFL. I train with Joe and he keeps me in pretty good shape. I’m a gym rat anyway so I like doing that, but once WrestleMania comes around, whether I know I’m going to be working or not working — which every year I have been, but I never really know until it comes closer. I usually start around 16 weeks out, so somewhere around the holidays or right before the holidays I start really tightening up my diet and gearing myself up towards getting back in the ring.
FTW: On the night of WrestleMania, how do you balance preparing and performing in your own match with all the other work you do behind the scenes as an executive?
Triple H: That is the hardest part. WrestleMania week for me, logistically, from an executive to a talent standpoint is crazy I did a DVD a couple of years ago called Thy Kingdom Come and they documented a little bit of it. It’s literally like one minute I’m speaking at a business partner summit, where I’m speaking to our business partners from all over the globe as an executive talking about all the things that we’re doing, and literally coming off stage, changing my clothes as fast I can to jeans and a leather jacket because I have to go do an autograph signing.
They drive me over there with a police escort, I’m eating on the way, I’m signing autographs for two hours and meeting the fans and having to be on as a performer, finishing that and running backstage, changing in the car while I’m on my way to go have a meeting with a bunch of international clients. And that’s all while my department itself, talent relations, completely controls everything WrestleMania from a talent standpoint. Which, we just did the numbers this year today and I think we’re at like 850 appearances and we’re still almost five weeks out. Logistically, trying to get talent to 850 appearances, probably close to 1,000 by Mania over the course of that week. Usually if we do our jobs well nobody’s late, nobody misses an appearance. But it’s just… insanity. That’s the best way to describe that week for me.
FTW: You went to Super Bowl XLIX with your wife Stephanie McMahon earlier this year. Is there anything you took from that experience and implemented it into WrestleMania?
Triple H: Absolutely. I walked through that whole weekend with my eyes wide open looking at everything they did. [Asking] ‘how does this compare to what we do,’ in every way. From the moment I was landing, [seeing] what kind of presence is the Super Bowl putting out, from signs to banners to advertisements as you’re walking through the airport. All the way through to the moment I left. Every component of it I looked to think ‘what could we do differently? Or better? Or do we do this better now?’ I’ll throw it out there now, if Katy Perry wants to do WrestleMania next year we’re wide open. We’re working on a giant golden lion right now, not sure if we’ll have it done in time.
FTW: Is that going to be how you top last year’s entrance?
Triple H: It might be, I’m trying to see. Maybe she’s selling it? I might fly out of a lion’s mouth at WrestleMania.
Original article can be found by clicking here (http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/03/wwe-triple-h-sting-interview-wrestlemania-31).
https://usatftw.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/screen-shot-2015-02-23-at-11-49-00-am.jpg?w=1000
WrestleMania 31 is just five days away, and while it’s hard to predict what the best match of the night will be (Undertaker’s return? A seven-man ladder match? Lesnar vs. Reigns?), Triple H and Sting could easily steal the show. Sting, a WCW legend who made his first appearance in the WWE at Survivor Series last year, will wrestle his first WWE match against The Game, and there’s a very high probability that baseball bats and sledgehammers will be involved.
For The Win spoke to Triple H in February prior to his induction into the International Sports Hall of Fame, and the WWE executive vice president opened up on the insanity that is WrestleMania week and how he’s preparing to face Sting.
FTW: How hard is it to wrestle a match after such a long layoff, especially considering your WrestleMania matches are typically half an hour long. What do you do to shake off the ring rust?
Triple H: I got in the ring for the first time the other day and fell down for the first time and it felt like my body exploded when I landed. It takes a little bit. You can train, but its one of those things where ‘experts’ of our business that have never done it will say ‘oh if they gave guys time off it would be better for them’ or whatever, but it’s honestly, having done this for 20 plus years — time off is your worst enemy. It really is, it makes it so much harder to do this.
When you’re doing it all the time it’s like a callus, you’re doing it and it doesn’t bother you. You’re functioning and you can do it every night. when you haven’t done it, getting in there and doing the simplest thing, you’re like ‘oh my God, why am I doing this again?’ You’ve got to get yourself back in the process of getting back in the ring, and the hardest [part] of doing that is… it’s easy to go through that stuff when you’ve got 80,000 people screaming at you, it’s not so easy when you’re in a warehouse with a ring set up all by yourself. It hurts a whole lot more.
FTW: When did you start training for your match with Sting?
Triple H: Well I train all year round. One of the things I found, five years ago or so, I needed to make my training more functional. So I train with Joe DeFranco, Joe’s known as kind of the combine killer for guys in the NFL. I train with Joe and he keeps me in pretty good shape. I’m a gym rat anyway so I like doing that, but once WrestleMania comes around, whether I know I’m going to be working or not working — which every year I have been, but I never really know until it comes closer. I usually start around 16 weeks out, so somewhere around the holidays or right before the holidays I start really tightening up my diet and gearing myself up towards getting back in the ring.
FTW: On the night of WrestleMania, how do you balance preparing and performing in your own match with all the other work you do behind the scenes as an executive?
Triple H: That is the hardest part. WrestleMania week for me, logistically, from an executive to a talent standpoint is crazy I did a DVD a couple of years ago called Thy Kingdom Come and they documented a little bit of it. It’s literally like one minute I’m speaking at a business partner summit, where I’m speaking to our business partners from all over the globe as an executive talking about all the things that we’re doing, and literally coming off stage, changing my clothes as fast I can to jeans and a leather jacket because I have to go do an autograph signing.
They drive me over there with a police escort, I’m eating on the way, I’m signing autographs for two hours and meeting the fans and having to be on as a performer, finishing that and running backstage, changing in the car while I’m on my way to go have a meeting with a bunch of international clients. And that’s all while my department itself, talent relations, completely controls everything WrestleMania from a talent standpoint. Which, we just did the numbers this year today and I think we’re at like 850 appearances and we’re still almost five weeks out. Logistically, trying to get talent to 850 appearances, probably close to 1,000 by Mania over the course of that week. Usually if we do our jobs well nobody’s late, nobody misses an appearance. But it’s just… insanity. That’s the best way to describe that week for me.
FTW: You went to Super Bowl XLIX with your wife Stephanie McMahon earlier this year. Is there anything you took from that experience and implemented it into WrestleMania?
Triple H: Absolutely. I walked through that whole weekend with my eyes wide open looking at everything they did. [Asking] ‘how does this compare to what we do,’ in every way. From the moment I was landing, [seeing] what kind of presence is the Super Bowl putting out, from signs to banners to advertisements as you’re walking through the airport. All the way through to the moment I left. Every component of it I looked to think ‘what could we do differently? Or better? Or do we do this better now?’ I’ll throw it out there now, if Katy Perry wants to do WrestleMania next year we’re wide open. We’re working on a giant golden lion right now, not sure if we’ll have it done in time.
FTW: Is that going to be how you top last year’s entrance?
Triple H: It might be, I’m trying to see. Maybe she’s selling it? I might fly out of a lion’s mouth at WrestleMania.
Original article can be found by clicking here (http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/03/wwe-triple-h-sting-interview-wrestlemania-31).