Triple H Will Oversee WWE Creative Booking After Vince McMahon's Retirement

WWE creative now belongs to The Game.

The company announced Paul Levesque, better known to wrestling fans as Triple H, will take over the creative duties ceded by Vince McMahon last week. Levesque was previously announced as the new head of talent relations, replacing John Laurinaitis.

The departures of McMahon and Laurinaitis came after two Wall Street Journal reports that unearthed past acts of misconduct with female employees.

McMahon suddenly announced his retirement Friday after initially being defiant amid the reporting. Details on why the 76-year-old McMahon changed his mind have not been made public, but the reverberations around the wrestling world are expected to be significant.

Stephanie McMahon and Nick Khan were named as co-CEOs to replace McMahon on the corporate level.

From a fan perspective, Triple H's ascent to running creative will be the most important change. The 14-time world champion spearheaded WWE's most beloved creative endeavor of the last decade—the black-and-gold era of NXT—before it was rebranded to NXT 2.0 last year. Around the time of the NXT rebrand, Levesque suffered a "cardiac event" that forced him into in-ring retirement and led him to reduce his executive duties.

Now back at work full-time, he will have the most responsibility he's ever had running the company.

It's unclear how much creative will change. As a publicly traded company—one that will want to give a sense of calm to its shareholders—WWE is unlikely to change much in the immediate future. WWE will want to see through Vince McMahon's vision in the coming weeks, likely out of deference, before Triple H can begin reshaping the company.

That said, McMahon's outdated outlook on the business was often cited as one of the biggest frustrations with talent. Fightful Select reported there is a "general excitement" about having Triple H take over the creative direction.

One source also told Fightful that "this is an exciting change."

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