Triple H on Winning the Title at Last Year’s Royal Rumble, Carrying the Load Into WrestleMania, Working as a Talent & Exec Simultaneously

Triple H recently spoke with WZ Live Tweeter Joshua Caudill of CraveOnline.com, to promote the new WWE animated movie “Surf’s Up 2”, and below are some interview highlights:

CraveOnline: We’re a little over a week away until WWE’s Royal Rumble, which you won last year and won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in the process. What did it mean to you to win the title at that stage of your career and did you feel a responsibility to carry the load leading into WrestleMania?

Triple H: It was a completely different experience. Last year was kind of out of the blue and given the circumstances of where we were talent wise, we had a lot of injuries and a lot of people moved positions, which changed a lot of things about the show.

Any time you’re put in that position, you put a lot of pressure on yourself. The pressure is less for me from a physical standpoint because I’m still in decent shape and I’m in this business every day so my mind is still fresh.

The pressure for me was trying to do my job and that job at the same time. With the things I operate on like live events, talent and creative, there’s so much to do on a day-to-day basis that it’s hard to get it done regularly.

In addition to that, it’s one thing to look decent, it’s another thing to be able to get in the ring and physically perform especially with an athlete like Roman Reigns. So you have to get back into the gym and train twice a day.

CraveOnline: How difficult was it to work as an executive and then be a performer during that title run last year?

Triple H: The common belief is that for myself and other guys are that we can’t step away from it or can’t let it go but I’d love to [laughs]. As much as I enjoyed last year, when the company asks if you want to go out and compete in front of 100,000 people, it’s hard to say no because it’s a piece of who you are. But at the same time, the workload it creates for you is so massive that it’s hard for you to enjoy it.

Even the WrestleMania experience, I spent my time going from a business partner meeting to trying to produce NXT Takeover to trying to oversee the television and if talent have an issue, my match is up in two or three matches and there’s a talent issue I have to deal with, I’m not out of the pocket. It becomes an intense workplace.