Triple H Announces His Retirement

[air_raid]

Ah yes, the feud that started as CM Punk vs Kevin Nash and ended up won by Triple H.

Triple H had a really weird career. I can’t be bothered going into detail but it feels like his best stuff was excellent but the stars had to line up just right, short of the 18 months between fighting Cactus and getting hurt. For every great pop for his MSG return, there’s six months of forgettable matches. For every stunner with Shawn at SummerSlam 2002, there’s an interminable Three Stages Of Hell or Cell match. When he had a hard hitting dramatic match with Taker at Mania 27 with a great setup which fooled me that The Streak was going and was an INCREDIBLY pleasant surprise, he had to tarnish it with the Cell match involving Shawn the year after which went way over the top, didn’t fool me in the slightest and was pushed as “The End of An Era” when nothing ended and all three guys wrestled again (in the same match).

Best example I can give of the frustration of HHHs inconsistency is right in the middle of his three years being champion forever and having long boring matches even with Shawn, you can find a hidden gem like the match they had at Taboo Tuesday which told a great story around Shawns (legitimate) bad knee, don’t outstay their welcome and serve up a great little forgotten match. But you remember the three stages, the interminable Last Man Standing from the Rumble, or the dogshit Cell match.

He had his moments but it’s tough to mourn his retirement when he wrestled everyone, usually many times, and almost everyone he wrestled you could give an example of one match that was good and one that was mediocre.

[Tommy!]

4 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Randy Orton was well on his way to breaking through as a genuine top level over main event act until Triple H cut his legs off by having an amazingly shit Wrestlemania main event

You can go back further than that, shafting him the night after summerslam 04 through to the rumble 05. It seemed like a hobby for him, dicking on Orton. 

I remember reading a story years ago about how Orton was being moved shows and when someone heard out HHH was moving too they went and laughed in his face and told him there was no escape. 

 

1 hour ago, FUM said:

He’ll always rub people up the wrong way because of who he married and I do wonder how much more credit people would actually give him had that not happened

I never cared about that, because it's a bit of a non issue. He wasn't with steph in 99 when he was bending ears to pull back on the rocks push so he could get a foot in the door. His shitty run in 03 would have still happened much like the politics of hbk, hogan et al went on without marrying into the family. He had it easier to pull strings but I've no doubt most of them would have still been pulled anyway.

He'd have still been a gassed up arsehole trying to make everyone else look shit if he could in 03 & 04 and he'd still have been a try hard desperate to be cool after that. 

[Carbomb]

17 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Arguably after Orton won the title from Benoit at Summerslam he was made to look like a transitional champion. I do think they only did that one to try and remove Lesnar as the youngest ever champion though. 

That's the thing about the Orton push. He was pushed too early; he really should've had the Batista slow-burn turn storyline, but they were in such a rush to erase Lesnar as youngest-ever champion that they pulled the trigger on Orton too soon. He was getting popular, but he still needed some time to really come to the boil.

My personal favourite Triple H match is one I've mentioned many times, and @HarmonicGenerator did a review of it in his "Summerslam Match A Day" thread: the DX/Legacy match from 2009. Just a classic tag battle that's beautifully paced, tells a great story, and everyone puts a shift in. I think it might've been Cornette who said the best, purest form of wrestling is a simple tag match; I disagree, and think it's still the singles match, but this one came very close to bringing me round to his point of view.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Carbomb

[Jazzy G]

There can be an extra layer of drama to a tag match with a real hot tag to signify the big comeback. I can see Corny's argument. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

1 hour ago, FUM said:

Triple H was always my favourite wrestler. He’ll always rub people up the wrong way because of who he married and I do wonder how much more credit people would actually give him had that not happened. To me, that was the biggest risk he ever took in his career and he was lucky to keep his position as opposed to being buried for it.

Isn't that the What If? Had he not married Steph would he have lasted there? What's to say he wouldn't jump ship to TNA when they started getting your Angles and Christians? He stayed because he was married into the family business and he was at the top of the card due to it. He would not have been a main eventer for anywhere near the length he was had he not been married in. He wasn't drawing gates or selling merch like The Rock, Stone Cold or Cena for example. 

[LaGoosh]

Thing is after Rock & Austin left, the path was clear for Triple H to step up and be the real proper top guy but instead he decided that was the best time to do his bad NWA tribute act which bored the shit out of everyone and ruined Raw for years.

I rewatched 1997-200 Raw a few years back and in hindsight it's pretty amazing they even gave him the big push in mid-99 as he was proper crap at the time. Just really bad generic heel snarling stuff from the 80s. That he managed to completely turn it around by the end of the year and go on an all time great run is pretty incredible.

Edited March 28, 2022 by LaGoosh

[BomberPat]

11 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

There can be an extra layer of drama to a tag match with a real hot tag to signify the big comeback. I can see Corny's argument. 

Yeah, when I used to be more involved with a wrestling training school, one of the ways I'd help people visualise match structure and psychology if they were struggling with it was to frame it as a tag team match rather than a singles - the extended heat on a babyface, followed by the very clear visual cue of a hot tag to say "right, now it's the babyface's comeback" is satisfying in a way that doesn't always land in a singles match, bar your "Hulking Up" type comebacks. 

[air_raid]

The real issue with Triple H’s reign of terror was that the show had no top babyface, so every time he defended against RVD or Kane or Booker T, it was Triple H against an upper midcard guy who goes back to the midcard when they’re beaten.

[Factotum]

18 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

I remember some story about a writer who came up with something along the lines of “HHH is over, so we don’t need to have him as the centre of the show, we can use half his time to get others over, not to the level he is but it will make new stars”. When it came to the production meeting, he walked in and HHH and Steph glared at him and gave him daggers throughout. His idea didn’t even get a mention and he was gone a week later. Does that ring any bells with anyone?

I think Pat Patterson said something similar and was gone in an instant.

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

The real issue with Triple H’s reign of terror was that the show had no top babyface, so every time he defended against RVD or Kane or Booker T, it was Triple H against an upper midcard guy who goes back to the midcard when they’re beaten.

The Booker T thing was odd for me - as someone who never really watched wCw, the first time I saw him he was presented as main-event level, coming out to interrupt The Rock, carrying his championship belt. It felt like they were telling us "this is wCw's equivalent to The Rock", especially as they allowed him to continue using the Book-End. It wasn't entirely surprising that, following the conclusion of the Invasion, they stuck him in the midcard, as it seemed like McMahon was set on humiliating nearly every non-WWF main-eventer now on his roster - at least, that's how it came across.

Sure, it turned out Booker probably wasn't WWF main-event quality at the time, but he was one of the most over guys on the roster, and he'd been presented as being at least a bit of a threat to The Rock previously, and it just didn't seem to make sense in an era in which main-event talent was sparse, to then stick him in the midcard before and after the Triple H run. 

The RVD run, from a locker-room perspective, made sense - he was too much of a liability with the leaf to risk putting the belt on him. If it hadn't been for that, I do wonder if he might have been World champ sooner; he was ridiculously over.

[Supremo]

Some great, fair write ups on Hunter’s career in this thread. When he on and he wanted to sell and make a superstar, he was great. The problem is that in a career spanning decades you can count the amount of times he actually did that on one hand. For every Batista, Ronda and Daniel Bryan, there are years and years of boring, plodding matches, constantly undermining and cutting people’s legs off and endless, exhausting television where the heel always wins and never gets his comeuppance.

Plus, for as much as everyone refers to his reign of terror whilst on top in the early 2000s, I think his more recent work is the worst example of how he did far more damage than he did good. For all the fruit baskets he got sent for creating the, “future of the business,” with NXT, everything he did on the main roster - including interactions with the very guys who propped up NXT - suggested he was forever more interested in getting himself over than actually creating the new crop of superstars like he claimed he was doing.

Remember that Survivor Series match with all the NXT guys where he and Shane McMahon murdered everyone? Or how Kevin Owens had to be inexplicably awarded the title by Triple H, rather than just win it? And how about both Roman and Seth being positioned as absolute knobheads leading into their respective Wrestlemania matches? It means fuck all lying down for three seconds at the end if you’ve spent weeks highlighting all their flaws and chasing cheap pops with crotch chops, cut-off denim and Metallica music videos.

Ultimately though, I think this is what his lasting legacy will be. The years and years of misery booking, where The Authority always won and there was never any type of cathartic or satisfying conclusion. And then better yet, whenever it was highlighted what a fucking slog this was to consume, and how it went against the basics of any successful story in the history of all time in all mediums, they’d just go out and slag you off for still watching.

Is it any wonder AEW managed to step up and so easily crush his e-fed by simply having a show where nice things happen and the good guys usually prevail in the end? The dickhead couldn’t have left a wider open goal. Go carry Bruce’s bags.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Supremo

[Onyx2]

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

the entire, awful, DX reunion run

I'm aware this verges on "Westlife are the best band of all time because £" thinking but this stuff sold a shedload of DVDs. And presumably merch too.

[Chest Rockwell]

Who can forget the Vince Loves Cock t-shirt?

[Keith Houchen]

41 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Who can forget the Vince Loves Cock t-shirt?

I had done, thanks for that, mate. 

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, Onyx2 said:

I'm aware this verges on "Westlife are the best band of all time because £" thinking but this stuff sold a shedload of DVDs. And presumably merch too.

Yeah, the DX reunion stuff is the sort of thing that goes over huge at house shows and at the merch table, because you get to trot them out to audiences that haven't seen DX before, or are nostalgic for their first run. But it also meant that Shawn Michaels spent half the time building up to his retirement match against The Undertaker by dicking around with Hornswoggle. It made money, sure, but it made for fucking awful television and the absolute worst of babyface Triple H.

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

The Booker T thing was odd for me - as someone who never really watched wCw, the first time I saw him he was presented as main-event level, coming out to interrupt The Rock, carrying his championship belt. It felt like they were telling us "this is wCw's equivalent to The Rock", especially as they allowed him to continue using the Book-End. It wasn't entirely surprising that, following the conclusion of the Invasion, they stuck him in the midcard, as it seemed like McMahon was set on humiliating nearly every non-WWF main-eventer now on his roster - at least, that's how it came across.

Sure, it turned out Booker probably wasn't WWF main-event quality at the time, but he was one of the most over guys on the roster, and he'd been presented as being at least a bit of a threat to The Rock previously, and it just didn't seem to make sense in an era in which main-event talent was sparse, to then stick him in the midcard before and after the Triple H run. 

There's a perception thing here that's similar to the question of whether Triple H belittling someone for an entire feud and then laying down in the match counts as "putting them over", around how Booker T was actually presented. Yes, he was WCW Champion, he debuted by attacking Stone Cold, and he entered into a feud with The Rock. But in terms of being presented as WCW's equivalent to The Rock, it was made immediately clear that we were meant to see him as a low-rent knock-off.

The things that stand out for me from Booker T in the Invasion, and which really soured me on The Rock, is that The Rock trotted out his "who in the blue hell are you?" catchphrase, maybe for the first time, against Booker - if The Rock doesn't know or care who his opponent is, why should we? It makes it pretty obvious they're not on the same level. It might have even been in the same promo that he said that Booker T holding the WCW Title didn't matter because "everybody gets a turn", and buried Booker T (and DDP for good measure) as being no better than David Arquette. 

Really, Booker T's time in the midcard served him better than his time as a "top star" for the WWF's version of WCW, because he wasn't being openly mocked and booked as a joke at every turn.