Triple H believes that WWE is in the business of selling emotions and performers such as Shawn Michaels and Sami Zayn are successful because of their ability to draw emotion out of people.
HBK was called Mr. WrestleMania for the longest time because of his incredible performances at the Show of Shows against opponents such as Bret Hart, Ric Flair and more.
Sami Zayn has been following in the footsteps of the NXT head. In recent years, he has earned praise for his WrestleMania matches against the likes of Kevin Owens and Johnny Knoxville. This year he gave another incredible performance against Gunther who he defeated to win the Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania 40 night 1.
In the post-show press conference, Triple H was asked to compare the two performers. The Game first explained how Shawn Michaels was successful because of his ability to draw out emotion:
“A lot of people would look at Shawn back then [or] even now, they would see Shawn as this spectacular performer, right? Like the moves that he did. All these spectacular things that he did. Shawn was doing a lot of that at a period of time maybe before everybody else was which is why I think so many younger talent resonate towards him because he’s so good.
But the thing that made Shawn so good was his ability to pull emotion out of you. It wasn’t the moves, the moves were like the special effects. Shawn is unbelievable at getting emotional out. When you hit Shawn, and he goes down and he sells, you feel bad for him.
You want him to do better and he just can get that emotion out of you. When Shawn begins to then make a comeback begins to fire up and begins to put that anger out or whatever it is, that aggression out. You believe it and you buy into it. He’s a Pitbull when he’s on you.”
We Sell Emotion: Triple H
Triple H then explained that WWE is in the business of selling emotion. Sami Zayn, like Shawn Michaels has found success in WWE because he is able to make people feel for him:
“It’s emotion. We sell emotion. We build stories and sell emotion. It’s not the moves, it’s not the spots. It’s not the sequences or whatever, however people want to say – it’s emotion. Yes, those things all lead into it. But without it, it’s just a video game. It doesn’t mean anything.
What you saw in Sami and Gunther tonight was two people that are geniuses at pulling emotion out of you. That’s Sami’s calling card. Yes, he does spectacular things. But his ability as a performer as an actor, whatever you wanna call it, to pull that emotion out of people. It’s awesome. It’s why he is in the spot he is, it’s why he is as good as he is.”
You can check out the full media scrum below:
If you use the quotes from the article please credit SEScoops with an H/t for transcription
