This really bothered Russo because Heyman’s lies were costing those talents an opportunity to earn big money, and in turn he wasn’t living up to the agreement he had made with McMahon. Richards mentions that Heyman was probably just doing what he thought he had to do in order to protect himself and his company, but cashing a weekly cheque from McMahon while he was lying to him like that was not good business.
Russo thinks WWE continues to make the same huge mistake when they debut talent from NXT. They just throw those guys onto RAW or Smackdown Live without any vignettes or background information, and he doesn’t understand why they do that. Richards agrees, and points out that the announcers are all made to look stupid, basically acting as an informercial every time a new NXT talent debuts.
Russo says that if Triple H is the guy who’s making the decisions on who gets called up from NXT, he’s a terrible judge of character. He assumes that McMahon is placing his trust in Triple H up to a certain point, and after a few weeks he discovers that these talents simply aren’t ready to compete on RAW and Smackdown Live.
Richards doesn’t understand how McMahon ever came to the decision to put his Titles on regular looking guys because when Richards worked for WWE, he recalls McMahon saying that he wanted his Champion to stand out when they walked through an airport. Triple H is also a ‘body guy’, so WWE’s decision to put the Universal Title on Kevin Owens really didn’t make any sense to Richards.
