Former WWE star Matt Riddle has offered an intriguing look into the creative philosophies of Vince McMahon and Triple H, drawing a clear contrast between the two men’s approaches to storytelling and fan engagement. Speaking on TMZ Inside The Ring, Riddle admitted he preferred McMahon’s more authoritative and long-term vision over Triple H’s more fan-responsive style.
“The one thing I loved about Vince is Vince was like, ‘This is my company. I run it. It’s my company.’ It didn’t matter. The fans were like, ‘Oh, we don’t like this.’ The storyline was gonna go as long as Vince wanted it,” Riddle said, highlighting McMahon’s trademark creative control.
Riddle illustrated his point with a metaphor about patience and growth. “It’s like a plant or anything else. If you give it everything you think it wants, just like a kid, they get slow, they don’t appreciate what they have. But just like a plant, if you let it starve a little bit, then you feed it, it gets stronger,” he explained. “And I feel like fans are like that too. You have to — if you give them everything that they want, you give them that dream match tomorrow, what are they going to tune into next week?”
He concluded his remarks with a direct comparison between the current and former WWE leaders — as well as AEW president Tony Khan. “I felt like Vince did a very good job with that a lot of the time, because he wouldn’t just give people what they wanted,” Riddle said. “I feel like Triple H bends a little more. Tony [Khan] definitely bends a lot.”
Riddle spent the bulk of his WWE main roster run under Vince McMahon’s leadership from 2020 to mid-2022, before working under Triple H’s creative direction until his release in September 2023.
