This August will officially make it three years since Vince McMahon's first retirement, which allowed Paul Levesque, aka Triple H, to move into the driver's seat and become WWE's head of creative. And while McMahon did briefly return to power in 2023, and was believed to be involved in creative to some degree, it's been Levesque's show since, something most fans had been happy about until recently. It's also created enough time for critics to get a sense of what Levesque does differently from McMahon's booking style.
On the latest "Wrestling Observer Radio," Dave Meltzer dove right into that, using a promo segment between CM Punk and Sami Zayn from "Raw," where Punk stated he'd win Money in the Bank and agreed to give Zayn a title shot after he won a title, as an example of what differentiates McMahon and Levesque.
"The difference between Vince and Levesque when it comes to booking is Vince's philosophy is 'Do not waste television time building up a match you're not going to do," Meltzer said. "That's his philosophy. Levesque's philosophy is [to] build up a whole bunch of stuff to make people think [it's happening]. Cause [if] they watch this segment, now they think Punk is winning for sure.
"So it's to ...I guess it's to throw people off. And since...because they've been trained with the idea that 'If you're starting to hype up a match, we're getting it.' And, you know, this was like an example. It's like, if Punk wins Money in the Bank and wins the title, Sami wants his title shot. Punk didn't even up qualifying to get into Money in the Bank."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Wrestling Observer Radio" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription
