Nick Khan and Paul Levesque reflect on John Cena’s heel turn at Elimination Chamber.
WWE is days out from their WrestleMania 41 event(s) from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 19th and 20th. Closing the show on night two will be Cody Rhodes defending the Undisputed WWE Championship against John Cena.
That bout was set up when Cena won the men’s Elimination Chamber match and after the bout, Cena attacked Rhodes and aligned with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. Also in the ring was Grammy-nominated artist Travis Scott. Scott delivered a slap to the face of Rhodes while he was on the mat.
WWE President Nick Khan and Chief Content Officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque discussed the moment while they were the focus of a discussion at The Ankler’s Business of Entertainment program at NAB Show. After the segment was done, Levesque brought it to Scott’s attention that his slap to Rhodes was a hard and they’d teach him how to rein it in a bit.
Scott responded and said Johnson told him to slap Rhodes hard or else people would think he didn’t have ‘it.’ Khan and Levesque laughed in response. Levesque said the only person who did not complain about the slap was Rhodes.
Khan: By the way, the Travis Scott-John Cena heel turn, what was that at Paul? In terms of social media impressions? Over 100?
Levesque: Oh no, it was a couple hundred million.
Khan: It was insane and Paul did tell Travis after, like, ‘Hey, you know, that was a pretty hard slap. We’ll show you how to pull your punches a little bit’ and Travis said, ‘Dwayne Johnson told me you better slap the sh*t out of him, or people are gonna think that you don’t have it. So I just did that’ and Paul chuckled and I chuckled. It was a pretty big moment for us.
Levesque: It was incredible. Ironically, the only person that didn’t complain about the slap was Cody Rhodes. He just wanted it to look good and so, like I said, Travis is like a kid in a candy store in that thing. He’ll be at WrestleMania, a lot of people will be at WrestleMania and there’s a saying here that everything in Vegas stays in Vegas but, this will be the one event that whatever happens in Vegas over WrestleMania weekend will be heard worldwide.
Earlier in the chat, Khan heaped praise onto Levesque. He called him the greatest business partner he’s ever had and dove into their collaboration and exchanging ideas about WWE creative and business.
Khan: I would say we talk anywhere from 14 to 40 times a day, and Paul’s the best business partner I’ve ever had. It’s anywhere from 30 seconds to long conversations. It’s an ability to share points of view with one another. We sort of have a saying like, ‘Hey, we’re not talking about each other’s children here.’ So, if I have a thought on our creative, if Paul has a thought on business, he’s as much across the business as I am and obviously, there is no business if the creative is not strong. So that’s what it all comes down to so we’re in constant contact with one another.
There is going to be audio and written coverage of WrestleMania 41 here on the POST Wrestling site.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit The Ankler Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
