Triple H reveals plans for WWE women's tournament to FOX Sports' Wrestling Compadres
WWE's United Kingdom Championship Tournament this past weekend was a resounding success, and it followed in the wake of the equally incredible Cruiserweight Classic in 2016.
With two fantastic one-off tournaments under its belt, the big question is where WWE goes from here — and FOX Sports has the answer. Prior to the UKCT, Triple H sat down with Dale Rutledge of FOX Sports' Wrestling Compadres Slamcast to talk about the UK, Seth Rollins, and much more.
Perhaps most importantly, the 25-time champion and WWE's Executive Vice President of Talent, Live Events and Creative addressed the rumors of an upcoming women's tournament, confirming to FOX Sports that the plan is to have such an event this summer:
DALE RUTLEDGE: Last time on the show, [Stephanie McMahon] mentioned an idea for the women's talent that you were working on. Has there been any further development on that?
TRIPLE H: So, that's another one of my big, big kind of passions, is to go do that, a women's tournament. And we're down the road a bit of — the harder thing now, in a changing landscape, I feel like sometimes in WWE, like, you know, Tuesday, I'm like, "Okay, so this is where we're going, right? No changing it? Yes!" On Wednesday morning, you have to call, it's like, "We're not doing that anymore."
So you look at the landscape and how much it's changed in the last year. NXT Takeovers now are attached to our "Big Four" pay-per-views. Raw and SmackDown have split brands and have pay-per-views of their own, but there's more pay-per-views. When you look at the big calendar of where do you stick an event, that's changed. And you have to look for the space where you go like, "Do it here! ... no, that's not good, you have a holiday." Right?
So it's really just been a process with the women of us finding the right time and space. This one worked out great with the little gap before Rumble here, to fit this tournament in and doing it in a shorter time frame, doing it live.
The women, we're probably going to do this summer, is what I'm hoping, and a lot of women performers just [reacted] when I said that, but that's the plan anyway. And you know, again, much like cruisers, it's to go scour the globe and maybe find the girls that are out there doing this that no one's heard of, that no one has seen, that are like these diamonds waiting, and bring them up. And let's see what they can do, and entertain people with the tournament, and let them be exposed to this new talent. And at the same time, just massively increase the opportunity and the talent pool for us, and for everyone, really.
