On a recent conference call to promote Saturday’s NXT Takeover: Brooklyn III event, Triple H discussed Jinder Mahal’s success story. Triple H says that they always thought Mahal had the potential to be the WWE Champion.

On why Jinder Mahal received a push:

“He was one of the last two guys in the finals for me at the first, to determine the first NXT Champion,” Triple H recalled. “People forget that. I thought he had that ability. He came right up to main roster, things didn’t pan out the way we wanted them to pan out. You can talk to him about that, he’ll kind of give you his take on it too as well. Part of that’s him, part of that’s us, part of that being not ready for it.”

Triple H also explained the benefit of wrestlers leaving WWE and returning:

“Sometimes they gotta leave and go other places and realize the message that they’re hearing is right, or whatever. You know, you gotta rebuild, and, to me, if that’s an opportunity now as this system evolves of taking somebody that’s either not panned out on the main roster or has panned out even on the main roster but has been there for a long period of time and you say, ‘You know, look. You’ve done everything you can, kinda for now, and we’re gonna take you off.’ Rather than them not being here, it’s like, okay, we’re gonna bring you over to UK for a little while or we’re gonna bring you down to NXT and you’re gonna do a little run there, freshen you up a little bit, bring you back.

I think those opportunities are there in some way, for everybody on the roster, to be able to move around and be able to do the things that are meaningful. Whether main roster, whether NXT, whether localized some place else where they can go teach other people, learn themselves and sometimes taking a step back out of it makes you realize things that you had forgotten or that you [are like], ‘I don’t do that anymore at all. I gotta get myself back in gear.’ It’s real easy in this industry where you do things every single day over and over… Sometimes stepping out of it is the best way to realize you need to reinvigorate your passion and get back in there and dig in.”