Last night at NXT TakeOver: In Your House, Tian Sha (aka Mei Ying) rose from her seat and attacked Mercedes Martinez. The character is, or at least believes herself to be thousands of years old and trained by dragons. Triple H and Shawn Michaels were asked recently about their approach to supernatural characters on the NXT media call.
“So, I’m a big fan of a variety within the shows and having things that are different. You know, different characters, when you can get them, different characters, different personalities, different sides of performers, all of that, but also different characters in general,” Triple H said when asked by Gary Cassidy of Inside the Ropes.
Triple H then continued to talk about supernatural characters using Tian Sha as an example.
“To have characters like Tian Sha, I think you have to handle them slightly differently so that you can make them sort of make sense in your world, right?”
He continued to say what it takes to make a character make sense in NXT is different than RAW and Smackdown.
“All the shows are slightly different. I feel like even there’s a slight difference between even just RAW and SmackDown as to what works on one show, what doesn’t on others. I feel the same way. So having that good mix is great, but also how you handle them and making sure that they fit within the sort of the universe that you’re existing in.”
Triple H then used Marvel as an example of a company that does this particularly well.
“Marvel does a really good job with it of having serious, almost dramatic movies and then having moments where, you know, this guy’s a god and the other guy’s a robot and this guy’s from outer space.”
Shawn Michaels then spoke about the Undertaker and how the supernatural character felt larger than life.
“For me, I guess I always looked at it is there are some people and some characters, or some groups, that have the ability to look larger than life,” HBK said. “I’d argue that about me. Taker was somebody who was a little bit more larger than life, so it was a much bigger production when he was coming out, as opposed to the Heartbreak Kid who was just music and silly dancing, you know what I mean?”
Bray Wyatt, Alexa Bliss and her doll Lilly are all current examples of supernatural style characters on the main roster. Undertaker, Kane, Papa Shango, Gangrel and many others have had such powers in the past. The Ultimate Warrior also demonstrated some supernatural abilities during his WCW run as well.
Learn more about the Tian Sha origin story with the below video:
