Road Dogg talks about the shift in creative direction under Triple H.
Recently, Brian "Road Dogg" James returned to WWE as the Senior Vice President of Live Events. Currently, Triple H is the Chief Content Officer of WWE, and Shawn Michaels is WWE's SVP of Talent Development as D-Generation X has gone from the anti-establishment to those in power.
Under the watchful eye of Triple H, WWE has seen many Superstars return to the company and those that were already within the company, are having elements of prior characters restored such as their full names. Speaking with Josh Martinez on Superstar Crossover, Road Dogg spoke about the changes under this new regime.
"I do think there's already a feeling of creativity is alive again. A lot of times individual creativity was squelched, due to the creative desires of the studio, I'll say, rather than say the creative writing team," said Road Dogg. "So it stifled a lot of individual creativity, but I believe the conversation should be had with all who are wrestlers or creative about wrestling going forward, about how we can make it the best. I feel like that conversation wasn't as welcomed under the last regime as it is under this regime, and I believe this regime just knows about collaboration."
Futhermore Road Dogg explains that with WWE allowing more creative freedom for characters, fans will begin to see more comfortable performances on television.
"Well, look, I think a lot of people get invested in their NXT character and I know this was not the question you asked, but I feel like that's where I went in my head," said James. "All these people come up, and they change their name, they change the character, and I feel that like it was problematic from the get-go. I was also blessed to be the Creative Director of Character Development down there in NXT, so a lot of those guys, I helped create the characters with their help, of course, it's always a collaboration. But then they come up to the main roster and they get their names stripped and they go 'Whoa, I can't do that anymore.' I think individually, it's a weight lifted off people's shoulders that they can sit there — look, they came up with this character because it was something they could sink their teeth into, and to have it stripped away when they come up to the main roster is gut-wrenching for them personally. I know that from just having conversations with several of them, it's going to feel really good. Several people, several talents are going to prosper. Because we're going to go back to old names, we're going to go back to old characters, you're going to see people get more comfortable with delivering their act because it's closer to who they are. I think that's where we'll be going in the future."
Since Triple H has come into power, Butch has been dressing and wrestling more like Pete Dunne, Tommaso Ciampa got his first name back, and names like Dakota Kai, Johnny Gargano, Dexter Lumis, Braun Strowman, and more have all returned to the company.
The latest name to return to the company is Bray Wyatt. He did so in dramatic fashion at WWE Extreme Rules 2022. Learn more here.
Road Dogg, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and X-Pac will all be in the house for the season premiere of Monday Night Raw emanating from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn New York on Monday, October 10. Learn more here.
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