Triple H Hints at Pat McAfee’s Future With WWE After NXT TakeOver XXX

Former NFL punter Pat McAfee made his WWE in-ring debut at NXT TakeOver: XXX and wound up blowing fan expectations out of the water in his match with Adam Cole. McAfee wound up losing to the former NXT Champion, but not before he managed to pull off some impressive moves in the 16-minute bout. Triple H was asked about McAfee during his post-show press conference and admitted he had no idea how badly McAfee wanted to become an in-ring competitor. Now the media personality wants to go all the way and become a WWE Hall of Famer.

“I think with Pat, one of the first times I ever met him, he looked at me and said, ‘I want to be a weapon for you to grab it and utilize. I want to be a talent.’ I thought he meant it as an announcer, but he didn’t,” Triple H said (h/t Fightful for transcript). “Pat has every intention of doing this and being not just an NXT superstar, but when the time is right, a WWE superstar. He has a lot of other commitments from his podcast to everything else he does. He has a lot of commitments across the board, but he’s very serious about this. We’ll see where it goes. When we first talked about this process from the in-ring, having the match idea, he said to me, ‘Let’s remember this phone call when you do my Hall of Fame speech.’ Pat doesn’t lack confidence.”

Check out the full results from NXT TakeOver: XXX below:

• NXT Tag Team Championship No. 1 Contender’s Match: Breezango def. Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch and Legado del Fantasma
• Finn Balor def. Timothy Thatcher
• NXT North American Championship: Damian Priest def. Bronson Reed, Cameron Grimes, Johnny Gargano and Velveteen Dream (Ladder Match)
• Adam Cole def. Pat McAfee
• NXT Women’s Championship: Io Shirai def. Dakota Kai
• NXT Championship: Karrion Kross def. Keith Lee.

WWE’s next pay-per-view, SummerSlam, takes place on Sunday night. Here’s the full lineup for the show:

• WWE Championship: Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton
• WWE Universal Championship: Braun Strowman vs. Bray Wyatt (Falls Count Anywhere)
• Raw Women’s Championship: Sasha Banks vs. Asuka
• SmackDown Women’s Championship: Bayley vs. Asuka
• United States Championship: Apollo Crews vs. MVP
• Raw Tag Team Championships: The Street Profits vs. Andrade and Angel Garza
• Street Fight: Dominik Mysterio vs. Seth Rollins
• No Disqualification, Loser Leaves WWE: Mandy Rose vs. Sonya Deville