WWE: Triple H on Austin Theory’s Big Star Potential in WWE, Doudrop Health Update, More News

Triple H Comments on Austin Theory’s Big Star Potential for WWE

ESPN held a recent interview with WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque. One of the topics discussed included Levesque’s thoughts on Austin Theory’s potential to become a big star for WWE.

“It’s a nuanced feeling… once you see this guy’s a great athlete, I’m looking for their personality, their charisma. Austin Theory has it, and then some. Do I think he has all the potential to be one of the biggest stars in the business? Absolutely. What determines that? A lot of that is up to him now. You give him little bits of things here and there and he’s improving his game and he’s smart. He listens to the crowd, he listens to the people. He sees all the stuff that’s going on, and he adapts his game on a regular basis.”

Levesque also gave his thoughts on why he decided to give Theory back his full ring name.

“It’s a little bit hard to just refer to him as Theory, and even to me, it was a little awkward when he was announced, like ‘Theory!’ It’s weird. Is that Stone Cold Steve Austin coming in? Is it confusing for fans? I’m of the opinion that if you don’t know the difference between Austin Theory and Stone Cold Steve Austin, there’s already a problem, right? So, we’re fixing the wrong end of the problem.”

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Doudrop Reveals COVID Illness as the Reason for Her Current Absence From WWE

As noted before, Doudrop has been out of action from WWE since this past September due to her recovering from an unknown serious illness.

Denise Salcedo held a recent interview with Doudrop. One of the topics discussed included Doudrop provided an update on the serious illness she had been dealing with, which she revealed to be a bad bout of COVID-19.

“I’ll be around. In what capacity? I’m not going to tell, but I’ll be around. I’ve had some time off to deal with a health scare that I had. Luckily, that’s all it was, it was just a scare. Everything was always great, sadly, I got COVID real bad. The symptoms that I was having, they were concerned about my heart. God bless them, they took the best care of me, they got every test for my heart that they could muster, and every single one of them came back clean as a whistle. Much to some people’s annoyance, my heart is in excellent condition.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

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WWE News & Notes

As noted before, WWE released Mandy Rose this past December over issues related to adult themed content she had been posting on her FanTime account. In a recent interview with the New York Post, Rose stated that she would have considered the idea of dropping her FanTime account had WWE given her a prior warning over the matter. Rose also stated that she disputes what WWE considered to be fireable “racy” content in regards to a specific photo of her that WWE also posted to their official website. Rose stated “What’s the definition of racy? The photo of me with two titles – I was completely naked underneath, that’s considered a racy photo, right?”

In a recent interview with the Public Enemies Podcast, former WWE writer Chris Dunn stated that WWE’s original plans for the Women’s Royal Rumble match in 2021 were for Charlotte Flair to win the match. Dunn stated that WWE writer Ryan Ward was the person who managed to convince Vince McMahon to change the plan so that Bianca Belair would win instead since he argued that WWE was not making any new big stars if they went ahead with Edge and Flair as the winners of that year’s Rumble matches. (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

Big E reportedly recently traveled to San Antonio, Texas ahead of this weekend’s Royal Rumble 2023 event, according to PWInsider. Mike Johnson reported that this is believed to be Big E’s first major WWE event that he will be attending backstage in person since his neck injury this past March.

WWE recently announced that they have changed the start time of their scheduled fiscal fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 reports on February 2nd from its originally schedule time of 8:30AM EST to a new start time of 5:30PM EST.

WWE recently released a newly updated version of their annual Royal Rumble By The Numbers video on their official YouTube channel.

WWE Hall of Famers The Steiner Brothers, Rick and Scott Steiner, reportedly have recently been signed to Legends contracts with WWE, according to PWInsider.