Triple H on Vince McMahon allegations: ‘I just want to focus on the positives’

Triple H didn’t have much to say regarding new allegations that led to Vince McMahon’s resignation from WWE and TKO.

During WWE’s Royal Rumble press conference, Triple H deflected questions regarding a new lawsuit filed by former WWE employee Janel Grant that accused McMahon of sexual assault and sex trafficking. Jon Alba was the first to ask Triple H what he knew about McMahon’s conduct prior to the lawsuit.

“I’m going to do exactly what you expect me to do here,” he replied. After pointing out other news stories of the week involving WWE’s new deal with Netflix and The Rock joining TKO’s board of directors, he said “I choose to focus on the positive. And yes, there’s a negative, but I want to focus on [the positives] and do that.”

When Brandon Thurston asked if Triple H had read the lawsuit, he replied that he had not, and again emphasized that he’d rather focus on the positives of the week for the company.

“I think Cody [Rhodes] mentioned it, that we all found out in real time when you were. And that’s the truth. I’ll go back to what I said before, this is an amazing week for us and at this point, I don’t even wanna get bogged down with the negatives of it. I just want to focus on the positives and where we’re going…I feel like we are in the middle of something that we might not be able to put our finger on now but five, ten years from now we’re going to be saying ‘wow, what a time that was’. I want to focus on that.”

Cameron Hawkins of The Ringer asked Triple H what procedures are taking place to ensure that employees feel safe and are not being taken advantage of.

“I’ll give you the most generalized answer I can,” he said. “Everything possible. And that is a very important thing to us, a very important topic to us. It’s as simple as everything possible.”

Earlier in the press conference, Cody Rhodes was asked by Nick Hausman about the allegations, agreeing with Hausman’s statement that a “dark cloud” hung over WWE’s big week of news.

“We were finding it out and reading about the same things you guys were reading,” he said. “You said a dark cloud? Certainly. As far as TKO, Nick Khan, and the board clearly took it very seriously, acted immediately. Looking at the future, I don’t know the answer to that and I think somewhere there’s a very basic tenant of just this crew, more than ever from a roster standpoint, is family…and perhaps that is the ingredient is everyone looking out for everyone, being accountable. I’ve been through dark periods in our industry before. And it might sound cheesy, but it’s very reinforcing if you’re in my position when hey, we got 50,000 people out there, I want to give them something else from this weekend that isn’t a terrible situation, terrible news. And obviously, as more news comes out we’ll be seeing it just like you do.”

McMahon resigned from WWE & TKO on Friday, while at the same time denying the allegations made in Grant’s lawsuit, calling them “a vindictive distortion of the truth.”