Triple H recently spoke with NBC Sports about the process of putting together the Mae Young Classic, some of the talents that stood out to him and more. The first four episodes of the tournament are set to be released on-demand on the WWE Network on Monday, August 28th. Here are the highlights:
Putting together the Mae Young Classic:
“I think the Cruiserweight Classic was easier from a sense of being able to find video and opinions on talent. There are cruiserweights working all over. The opportunities for guys at that level in our business is numerous While not lucrative necessarily, there’s guys doing it all over the place and all you need is a phone right now to post your stuff up, so you can find footage of people everywhere. It made it easy. The women is a lot different. The women don’t get booked on the independents nearly as much. That opportunity is very small and that was kind of the key about creating the Mae Young Classic. The thought about it in the very beginning was to create that opportunity. There’s a respect level that I have for these women and it speaks to the difference you’re talking about.
The cruiserweights were the guys that while they might have said ‘Oh I’m smaller, I don’t know if I would make it in WWE,’ you had some examples of smaller guys having success like Rey Mysterio, but there were still other opportunities. You could travel around and get booked all of the time. There was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow no matter how you were doing it. The ability to stay active was there. For the women, they got into the business for the same reason all of us did. They love it. They watched it one day and thought it was the greatest thing they ever saw and thought I have to do this. Except there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There was the opportunity for maybe a woman here or there and those were even limited. Even the bookings, if you go to any show in any little armory around the world there’s probably one women’s match on there, if you’re lucky. If one woman is on the show she’s usually someone’s valet. The opportunities are few and far between and when you’re trying to find these talents and see footage of them to make sure you think they’re going to be what you think they’re going to be and then be able to determine if they’re good enough to be in the product. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to be able to go do that. But, when we started to do it, I think that’s when we became pleasantly surprised.
When we first started this process, and I was the one who drove it for years until it finally got the green light, we thought this would be a 16 woman tournament because I thought it would be tough to keep the quality high enough to give the opportunity to women from all around the globe this opportunity. But when we started to dig, we started to find all of these diamonds in the rough. It quickly became where we could do a 32-woman tournament and quite honestly I could have done it a little bit bigger than that. I’m excited about that. It made the quality [of the tournament]really good and it speaks well to the future because the opportunity is there now and it will just continue to grow.”
Which wrestlers stood out to him:
“Jazzy Gabert from Germany was a real standout performer. I’d seen tape of her and was obviously aware of her, but when I saw her go in person, it’s one of those things where sometimes when people see talent in other places they’d say ‘Oh yeah we knew she was great too,’ but when you bring them up for a big opportunity it’s like the prizefighter that’s really good, but when he gets in the pressure of a world title match, he’s just not what he should be. That level of pressure is different. Some of these girls did better, some didn’t do as well, but certain ones thrived and Jazzy Gabert was one that really thrived. Bianca Belair, who hasn’t been doing this for very long, has a level of poise that just blew me away. Shayna Baszler is somebody that I’ve seen begin to make the transition from MMA into what we do and sometimes that can be a rough transition.
Xia Li is someone that a year ago didn’t even know what WWE was, but when I saw her perform I was blown away. When she came back [through the curtain]she was balling because I think she amazed herself.
So there were a lot of those stories. People who came in that you knew had the ability, but when you saw them in person, they just came into their own. Some have been doing it for a long time. Mercedes Martinez is another one who I knew was good, but when I watched her go I was thoroughly impressed.”
You can read the entire interview here.
