Nick Khan Comments on The Rock Told Travis Scott to Slap Cody Rhodes at WWE Elimination Chamber 2025
A recent live episode of The Ankler Podcast at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nevada featured WWE President Nick Khan and WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque as the guests. One of the topics discussed included Khan and Levesque’s thoughts about how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson told Travis Scott to slap Cody Rhodes during the John Cena heel turn and attack moment at this past March’s WWE Elimination Chamber 2025 event.
Nick Khan – “By the way, the Travis Scott-John Cena heel turn, what was that at Paul? In terms of social media impressions? Over 100?”
Paul “Triple H” 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.”
Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com
Triple H Comments on Him Not Panicking If People Complain About His Booking Due to Him Believing in the Payoff to His Storylines
A recent episode of the Flagrant podcast featured WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Levesque’s thoughts about why he does not panic if people complain about his booking for certain moments in storylines due to him believing in the payoff to them.
“Sometimes you’re wrong, but the truth is, you can’t judge the story you’re being told by the moment in time you’re in and how people are reacting to it because, hopefully, if you’re smart, you know where the story is going. If you believe in the story and the payoff, you’re going to go through times where people are like, ‘This sucks. I don’t like this.”
Levesque also gave his thoughts about if he is okay with the criticisms over his booking of WWE.
“Yeah because most people are saying, ‘This sucks, I don’t like it, but I’m going to tune in next week and see if they fix this.’”
Levesque also gave his thoughts about how long they can stretch a story before the payoff.
“That’s the thing. I’m not going to say we’re always successful at it. Nobody has a 100% batting average, but I like to think we’re pretty good at it. You cannot panic. Rock says it all the time when he’ll come in, ‘That was stupid. Rock did this thing,’ he’s like, ‘Just shut up and enjoy the ride.’ We know where we’re going to get it to or we’re confident in the fact that we will get this to the place it needs to go. Sometimes, you’re in the build for something and people are like, ‘I wish they would have done this.’ We are going to do that. I can’t do it today, the thing isn’t for six weeks. I have to do it down here. You can’t give them the payoff week one.”
Transcript h/t: Fightful.com
Backstage Update on Jeff Cobb Leaving NJPW & WWE’s Interest
As noted before, Jeff Cobb will be leaving New Japan Pro Wrestling after this weekend and WWE currently has strong interest in potentially signing him.
Dave Meltzer reported in a special edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that his sources within WWE stated that Cobb will be starting soon in the company.
Meltzer reported that those spoken to stated that Cobb is not the person that WWE officials have planned to be Randy Orton’s mystery opponent for his match at WrestleMania 41.
WWE News & Notes
WWE recently announced that new Travis Scott x WWE merchandise will be available for sale at their WWE World superstore this week in Las Vegas, Nevada.
WWE recently released a new video to their official YouTube channel. This new video was a Director’s cut of the Undisputed WWE Championship Bloodline Rules match of Cody Rhodes vs. Roman Reigns (c) from WrestleMania XL.
WWE also recently released two new videos to their WWE Vault channel on YouTube. The first new video was a “The rise of John Cena at WrestleMania 21.” The second new video was a No Disqualification match of Ric Flair vs. The Undertaker from WWE WresstleMania X8.
WWE also recently released one new video to their NXT Vault channel on YouTube. This new video was the full September 18, 2014 episode of WWE NXT.
Former WWE and current indies talent Matt Cardona recently reflected on Twitter about the reports about WWE having no plans for his wife and current United States Women’s Champion to be part of this weekend’s WrestleMania 41 event. Cardona stated “I know not everybody can be on #WrestleMania and I’m biased because she’s my hot wife, but how is @ImChelseaGreen not on a 2 night Mania?!“
Paste Magazine held a recent interview with Rhea Ripley. One of the topics discussed included Ripley’s thoughts about how her time in Judgement Day helped her improve her promo work. Ripley stated “It helped me with my promo work, because I knew that, going out there with Dom and him not being able to talk because they booed him out of the bloody building every single time he went to talk, I had to take the responsibility of remembering my lines and his lines.“
In a recent interview with the High Performance Podcast, WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque gave his thoughts about his past disagreements with CM Punk in WWE. Levesque stated “I think a lot of times our disagreements over the years came down to bad communication with each other. I was the in-between guy of what the creative team wanted and what he wanted, but I was trying to smooth it all over and from his point of view, I was seen as the enemy. Then, he didn’t trust me, so I couldn’t get him to open up. I can’t collaborate with you if you’re not open. He would be closed down so I couldn’t collaborate with him.” Levesque also gave his thoughts about how he and Punk had stopped talking to each other over it. Levesque stated “Sort of. Probably a dislike of each other, but based on bad communication.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)
In a recent interview with the Bill Simmons Podcast, WWE President Nick Khan gave his thoughts about the internal reaction within WWE to Netflix’s Mr. McMahon docuseries. Khan stated “Episodes one through five, it was all fine. Episode six obviously had a lot of tawdry allegations in there. The most important thing in the company was, ‘Hey, this is not for us to spike it.’ That’s not what the deal was and the deal that was struck with Netflix was prior to me joining WWE on a full-time basis. So it was sort of trying to help everyone who was watching it stay calm, and ‘we’ll get through this thing and get to the other side of it,’ which hopefully we are now. It went everywhere from ‘Hey, it was phenomenally done’ to ‘Oh my God, this thing is not true, it’s not factual.’ There were people who loved it as an objectively told profile of a person, and people who were close to the subject who didn’t like it, which I would understand, and I think you understand.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)
In a recent premiere episode of The Demolition Podcast, Demolition Smash and Demolition Ax confirmed that they are currently under Legends contracts with WWE. Ax stated “Well, we really never got into the particulars (of our WWE Legends deals) but I think some of the things that they had mentioned before we had signed was possibly going up on some of the events, making live appearances. Of course, action figures are a big part of the deal. Call it merchandise. So it’s gonna give us an opportunity to have some new figures come out, do some signings and association with them and appearances with WWE. So we’re looking forward to it. It’s something that we didn’t have an opportunity to do under the previous situation. But things have changed for the better and I’m really looking forward to it.” Smash responded stating “The WWE is so huge. The talent they have, everything they have so, it’s pretty exciting to be able to sign a contract and be back with them again so, I’m just hoping they do come up with a lot of stuff for us.” (Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com)
Joe Hendry, Moose, & The Nemeths Announced for AAA Triplemania Regia 2025
Wrestling World Pays Tribute to Sabu
Tatanka Appearance & Lillian Garcia to Return as Ring Announcer for 5/24 WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event Show
