Paul 'Triple H' Levesque talks NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn, Ring of Honor, EVOLVE, Apollo Crews and more

WWE executive Paul "Triple H" Levesque took part in another conference call with the wrestling media Wednesday to promote NXT Takeover: Brooklyn, which takes place Saturday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Levesque started off the conference call by touting the historic nature of the live special, as the event has sold more than 13,000 tickets, the most for any NXT live event in its short history.

Levesque said that he originally wanted a different venue besides the Barclays Center, which is home to the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA and the New York Islanders of the NHL.

The idea then came up to run the Barclays Center since it would already be occupied by WWE the entire weekend. Levesque admitted that he was initially against the idea of running a building the size of the Barclays Center.

"I was cautiously optimistic," Triple H said.

Levesque eventually green-lit the idea mostly because the Barclays Center could curtain off a good portion of the arena. At first, WWE made 6,000 seats available, but the demand became so strong that it decided to open up the entire arena.

"It's just massive," Levesque said. "It speaks to the brand. It speaks to the excitement around the brand, and to me, that just all speaks to the excitement of the future of the WWE in general."

After previewing the card for the Brooklyn event, Levesque said that every match scheduled to take place at the event entire will not be on the special itself. The matches before the special will be shown on the ensuing week of NXT television, which will be 90 minutes instead of the usual 60.

The live special itself will be two hours and will include the debut of Apollo Crews, Samoa Joe versus Baron Corbin and a NXT Tag Team title match, an NXT Women's title match and a NXT title match.

Levesque then announced a fan experience on Monday, Sept. 28 at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, where fans will be able to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Performance Center. It will be limited to 40 fans.

He then opened the call up to questions. The first was about whether WWE would adjust the NXT Takeover schedule to always coincide with other WWE events.

Levesque said that it's something the company is going to look at, but would rather keep it to the weeklong events such as WrestleMania and SummerSlam.

"If you remember back a few months ago, I said that 2015, to me, was going to kind of be a little bit of the year where we tried a lot of different things and find out what works for the brand," he said. "The brand is unique. It's not Raw. It's not Smackdown. I don't want it to become those. I want it to become an alternative. It fills its own bucket and I think that's important."

Later in the call, Levesque was asked about the recent call-ups of Becky Lynch, Charlotte and NXT Women's champion Sasha Banks and their progress on the main roster.

Triple H said that it's "awesome" to see them do well on the main roster and that he feels like a "proud dad" when he sees any of the former NXT prospects doing well.

"I believe that we put out an opportunity for the girls to perform at a level that they had never done or had been rarely seen before," he said. "They excelled at it and it sort of paradigm shifted the business, but that's on them. They were the ones that did it."

"It's exciting," he added. "I look forward to those girls main-eventing stuff and being as big a part of this business as anybody else."

Levesque was then asked about NXT potentially targeting Ring of Honor and cutting into its business by running shows opposite of it. He also asked about a potential partnership with Gabe Spolsky and EVOLVE.

"It's funny that people say that," he said. "Sometimes they read into things. Other than the fact that I know that various companies piggyback off of our pay-per-view or our business model when we go into markets because there are a lot of fans excited about the weekend and they piggyback on that. Why do they do it? Because it's probably a pretty smart business decision as far as you got a lot of fans and there's a lot of excitement about the brand. It makes sense for us to do the same thing in some ways."

"When we looked at doing the Texas run, it was solely based on we thought we could do good business, we had some buildings call us with some offers and we went in there to run the business," he added. "To be honest, in making that decision I was unaware that they were running there.

"When you go back and look at SummerSlam, the decision to be on Saturday was better business for the WWE. I don't want anybody to fail. I'm not looking to go after anybody. Contrary to anybody's belief, there's no targeting. There's no anything. I want our business to succeed. I want NXT to become as big as it can become and I'm going to position that business-wise in the best way for our business.

"As far as EVOLVE or Gabe [Sapolsky], it's looking for opportunities where there are people running quality events and shows that in some way can help support the business overall," he said.

Levesque was then asked of the company's reaction to the Brooklyn show selling out with more than 13,000 fans.

"I think everybody continues to be blown away by the success of it," he said. "We all expect it to do well now. It's kind of the expectation."

In the midst of giving his answer, Triple H said that NXT will be looking to run shows internationally, specifically in the United Kingdom.

"The Internet just exploded probably," he said.

The final question of the call was about his early impressions of Crews, who will make his NXT debut Saturday night in Brooklyn.

"I think he's awesome," Triple H said. "If I didn't think he was awesome I wouldn't have him working for me. He's impressive. He does amazing stuff and he's had incredible success around the world. I've had my eye on him for a long time and now we're able to work together."