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During the call, I asked Triple H to explain the mindset of having current WWE NXT Women's champion Charlotte make her debut on Raw, feature her in a video feature and then have her lose to Natalya in about three minutes, since the entire idea for the appearance is to get Raw viewers to want to watch NXT, and subscribe to the WWE Network to watch the specials - an appearance that led to a lot of fan queries and complaints online.
Triple H responded:
"Yeah, you know, one of the difficult things about live programming is - it's live - and times are crunched; times are tweaked. Having been in a million different things going on that night, I can't speak to the exact amount of time that they were given, or had but the show is in flux; it's live. I am sure, I, just having seen what happened that night, I know they were given more time than that, but by the time they get there, things go over, things get crunched. We have a lot of responsibility to make within that show, commercials and it's not just, we can't just throw things on the air. They are what they are.
Would we have preferred to have given them more time? Hell, I would have liked to have given them the time I gave them at the NXT special and be able to showcase what they do.
As far as the decision of who went over, Nattie or Charlotte or anything like that - those decisions are heavily debated and made. It is what it is.
At the end of the day, for me, it's about promotion. When you look at what they have done in NXT and everyplace else, the amount of the people that see them there compared to the amount of people who will see them on Monday Night Raw with the whole world watching is, is - the difference is mind boggling, and just for them to be exposed in that vein is massive.
It isn't to get Charlotte...you know, a lot of people say, 'Oh, it was her debut and all those things.' Well, it was, in some ways. But, it's not like she's going to be on there again next week and by the time she's is back on Raw and ready to be competing on Raw on a regular basis and performing on Raw, you're going to see a different Charlotte and see it presented in a different way. It was really just exposure.
As far as what the outcome was, that can be debated. You know, I put out a picture of her and I last night because she was so emotional afterwards and came back and it was just such a positive for everybody involved. For Nattie. For her. They were just so excited for getting the opportunity and getting to do it the way that they did and you know, you can go back and pick apart bits and pieces of it, but when you overall look at it in the bigger plan, six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, whenever it is, no one is going to go, 'Well, they killed her on her debut.' The bigger picture is involved."
Later on in the call, Triple H also noted he was not as personally involved in setting up the Charlotte appearance as he had been with putting together the NXT Tag before the previous NXT Takedown special. With Charlotte, he told his team to make sure they had some promotion on Raw and a writer pitched the idea and they went with it, but he made it clear the appearance and segment were not personally his call.
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