Triple H Talks Wrestlers Dying Young and Randy Savage

Real-life WWE Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and on-screen COO Triple H recently spoke with the Permission Granted podcast to discuss a multitude of topics regarding his job and WWE.

In particular, he spoke of wrestlers dying young, typically of a topic of taboo in the business:

“To me, everybody makes personal choices in their life,” he said. “Even some of my closest friends, my best friends, made personal choices of how they wanted to live their life that I never chose, that I never went down those roads. And I will put the physicality of my career up against anybody. The majority of those guys made personal choices to live a certain way and you can’t live that way forever. It’s a short run, it’s fast and furious, and it’s a short run. Did it affect me? Absolutely. I’ve watched a lot of guys that I was close to and that I was friends with… There’s a certain point and time when even as your friends, you try to stop them, you try to talk them into it, and there’s no… And that’s not just in our business, that’s in any business. People are responsible for their own lives, their own personal decisions, how they live their life outside of a sport or a job or anything else. We try to protect our talent now in a way like never before with our wellness programs and our ability to try to stay ahead of them to see if there are problems or they are headed down a path or anything, but the reality of it is people have to be responsible for their own lives. I’ve seen this company tell guys listen, we can’t work together unless you get some help or whatever and they say, okay, great, I’m just going to leave then and I’m just going to go because this is more important to me. You can’t live somebody’s life for them and it’s tragic, and I’ve had to come to terms in my with that with some guys that were close friends of mine, but that’s just the way it is, unfortunately.”

He also discussed the legacy of “Macho Man” Randy Savage, who now finds himself in the WWE Hall of Fame. Savage himself died before reaching the age of 60:

“One of the biggest stars ever in the industry,” he said. “It’s so well deserved and a long time coming. I think for a lot of fans it feels like a long time coming and they are just so overwhelmed that it’s happening and I know we are and his family is. It’s just a great thing to celebrate a career like that.”

More from the entire interview can be found below.

Editor’s Note

It’s terrifying that can become “part of the business” but it’s true. These young men and women have to look out for themselves and he hits a lot of it on the nail here.

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