During a recent appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque gave his thoughts on the company’s ongoing partnership with Saudi Arabia, a topic that has sparked debate since its inception.

McAfee: “WWE has been a massive piece of kind of transforming a country. I think as a whole, your relationship with them has been cool to watch. Now, at the beginning of that, that’s another thing. A lot of shots to the shins. ‘Oh, you’re going to work with…’ you know, and then obviously everything that’s ever happened in Saudi Arabia gets listed off in the article. Like, ‘This is the same country that blah blah blah blah blah.’ But I think the WWE’s mindset, from the people that I talked to that were actually in the room , yourself included , it’s like, ‘Well, how are they ever going to if we don’t?’ And it’s like, WWE the first time, I don’t think there was a lot of women on the card. Then the next time, I don’t think women wrestled or anything like that. And the way they had to dress… then you had a women’s main event with a woman ref, I think at one point over there. And it’s like the way they’ve kind of evolved as a country through the relationship with WWE.”

Triple H: “That’s been their goal since the beginning, I think , to change, to change their perception, to change how they are, to open up that umbrella for women and with the country. But it takes time. You can’t just do that stuff all at once, right? You alienate all the people that had a long-standing belief. So, you’ve got to do it over time. And I truly believe that to initiate change, you’ve got to be a part of it. You can’t just sit back on the sidelines and say, ‘We’re not going to participate, these people don’t do things the right way.’ You need to be there and be part of that change. And we’ve been part of that change since the beginning. Proudly been a part of that change.”