Triple H made his surprise return to NXT programming during NXT Stand and Deliver on Saturday afternoon. Midway through the show Tommaso Ciampa faced Tony D’Angelo in what was heavily implied to be his final match on the brand. Ciampa lost and waved goodbye to the crowd inside Dallas’ American Airlines Center as they chanted “Thank you, Ciampa.” Suddenly “The Game’s” music hit and Triple H walked out to embrace an emotional Ciampa on the top of the ramp.
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Levesque recently confirmed that his in-ring wrestling career was officially over and went into detail about the near-fatal health scare he had last year. He also mentioned during his interview with Stephen A. Smith that he was back to working backstage for the WWE.
No no, my foot’s not off the gas. I suppose in some manner I have to step back a little bit. I’m still in recovery, and my endurance isn’t quite what it used to be before,” Triple H told Smith. “Right now I’m back, I’m at the office. I’m fully focused on recruiting and development of our talent in the future. Whether that’s building more performance centers. Whether that’s finding the next young stud that’s out there, male or female, like Gable Steveson. Recently two time NCAA Champion Gold Medalist at the Olympics right, his next step is in WWE and with us, it’s finding that, it’s creating that future, and that’s the biggest focus for me and as we move forward from there, it’s making sure that WWE is a success for generations to come.”
He also confirmed that, prior to his medical emergency, WWE had plans for him to compete at WrestleMania 38. His last match wound up being at a live event in Tokyo in June 2019.
“As far as in-ring, I’m done,” he said. “I would never wrestle again. First of all I’ve got a defibrillator in my chest, which you know, probably not a good idea for me to get zapped on live TV. But I was already in a place as far as my career in-ring where I was kind of…I was comfortable with being done, being finished.”
“If the right thing came along, I hadn’t really said much, but if the right thing came along and they wanted me to do it…I had had a conversation with Vince McMahon about doing something at WrestleMania this year in Dallas, which we had talked about and there were plans for. Obviously, when this happened, it shut all that down,” he added.
