It took a bit during the post-Royal Rumble press conference for Paul “Triple H” Levesque to open things up to questions from the media. That’s not unusual, as he generally opens with some stats about the event that’s just ended and his impressions on what went down.
The difference on late Saturday night in Tampa is that this was the first time he was conducting a presser during a week in which Vince McMahon — his father-in-law, and until this week, executive chairman of TKO — was the subject of serious sex trafficking allegations in a new lawsuit.
Questions about Levesque’s knowledge of the events laid out in the lawsuit did come. But while he likely couldn’t comment on an ongoing legal matter anyway, his answers and non-answers were telling in their own way.
“I did not, I did not,” Levesque said when asked by Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics if he had read the lawsuit. “I think Cody [Rhodes] mentioned it that we all found out real time when you were, and that’s the truth.”
A few questions earlier, he was also asked by Jon Alba of Fightful what he might have known about the events detailed in the lawsuit during the time he was trying to vote McMahon out of power, and how the allegations might affect WWE’s relationships with partners moving forward — a relevant question since Slim Jim briefly pulled its sponsorship of Royal Rumble before returning after McMahon resigned.
“I’m gonna do exactly what you would expect me to do here,” Levesque said, “Look, we just had an amazing week. And I just said, a 10-year, $5 billion Netflix deal. Rock joining our board. We just sold out the Royal Rumble, put 48,000 people into Tropicana Field. I choose to focus on the positives.”
Levesque did, at least, offer some hope that WWE would change to prevent people in positions in power from taking advantage of those reporting to them, though he didn’t offer specifics.
“I’ll give you the most generalized answer that I can: everything possible,” he said to Cameron Hawkins of The Ringer. “That is a very important thing to us, very important topic to us. It’s as simple as everything possible.”
Cody Rhodes also answered a question about the lawsuit earlier in the press conference, and echoed Levesque’s assertion that he found out about it when most of the world did while also stating that he felt TKO took the allegations seriously and acted immediately.
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