There’s an NXT TakeOver event this weekend, which means a mid-week media call for the man in charge of the brand for WWE, Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
For the most part, today’s session (available in full on Fightful’s YouTube channel here) was fairly standard stuff. Levesque put over his entire team at Full Sail, sought to assure fans that TakeOver: XXX’s celebrity participant Pat McAfee was ready to “bring it” in his match with Adam Cole, and touted #1 contender for the NXT title Karrion Kross. He stressed the importance of live fans and the challenge of working without them, but said there are no plans for the black-and-gold brand to put at shows in WWE Thunderdome at this time.
While giving his usual answers about talent movement, Trips did confirm that a brand draft is planned for later this year. Beyond that he offered no details. The Game also hit on a couple of hot topics surrounding past and present NXT personnel...
Jason Powell of ProWrestling.net asked about WWE’s investigation into allegations against Velveteen Dream, specifically bringing up (but not naming) independent wrestler Josh Fuller’s claim that he was never contacted by the company to follow-up on his story, and Nia Jax’s reaction to Triple H’s comments earlier this week (replying to this Instagram story about them with a series of clown emojis)
“We take all of these things very seriously. Allegations, misconduct, of any nature, we take very seriously. I’ll stand by what I said on CBS - we looked into it, didn’t find anything there, um, in the manner that, that, you know, what we were looking for, and we’ve moved on. But it doesn’t change the fact that we take it seriously and if there’s something else there, we’ll look into it. That goes across the board for anybody, but, you know, uh, we’ve already talked about it, so I’d rather just move on to other topics.”
A short time later, Connor Casey of ComicBook.com asked about the news of Renee Young’s departure:
“I won’t comment on that status and will let Renee deal with that on her terms, but as far as her as a person, and as part of WWE, it’s been awesome, and she has been a large part of this. I’ve personally enjoyed working with her tremendously and it’s been awesome to see her do and attack different things with the company and try different roles and I thought she’s done an amazing job with all of them. So I’ll let her handle the rest of it. As far as her contributions, they’ve been awesome.”
One of those answers seems likely to be much better received than others. Neither was followed up on by journalists on the call.
The company’s position on Velveteen Dream seems clear. The question will be whether enough of NXT’s audience disagrees strongly enough with that position to impact WWE or their partners. A more thorough or public investigation may have changed the reaction to the situation, but Levesque’s answer here makes it seem even more unlikely that will happen.
There’s probably nothing Triple H could have done to keep Young in the WWE fold, so his gracious answer here at least leaves the bridge intact for them to do business again in the future.
TakeOver: XXX happens this Sat., Aug. 22 on WWE Network at 7 p.m. Eastern.