Paid Members air_raid Posted February 26 Paid Members Posted February 26 59 minutes ago, Chili said: I've not seen Unforgiven 1998 in donkeys. Is it worth a punt, I don't remember much. Yes. The first Austin vs Dude Love match is not as well remembered as the rematch and has a ropey finish but it’s very good. And the Inferno match is a noteworthy spectacle and less plodding than their Mania match. Also worth watching if you’re still horny for Sable 28 years later, obviously. Quote
TAFKA Jonny Vegas Posted February 27 Posted February 27 (edited) I don't think it's really up for any serious debate whatsoever that HHH never would have been right up there in the mix with the top guys if he hadn't married the bosses daughter. Mick Foley elevated him in their 2000 feud from being an undisputed nepo baby in law to feeling like someone who had any sort of legitimate claim to being in the position he was. In the next 20 years of his career I don't think he ever came close to that level and he always needed big stars around him to feel as though anything he was involved in was important. Below average in the ring, below average on the mic and in an industry full of people who are gigantic marks for themselves he must be very close to the top. Edited February 27 by TAFKA Jonny Vegas Quote
BarryOVega Posted February 27 Posted February 27 5 hours ago, TAFKA Jonny Vegas said: I don't think it's really up for any serious debate whatsoever that HHH never would have been right up there in the mix with the top guys if he hadn't married the bosses daughter. Mick Foley elevated him in their 2000 feud from being an undisputed nepo baby in law to feeling like someone who had any sort of legitimate claim to being in the position he was. In the next 20 years of his career I don't think he ever came close to that level and he always needed big stars around him to feel as though anything he was involved in was important. Below average in the ring, below average on the mic and in an industry full of people who are gigantic marks for themselves he must be very close to the top. You do know the wedding when Steph was unconscious wasn’t real right? I did always think it was weird why they were so obsessed with getting him over from day one though, he never got any crowd reaction pretty much up until the Goldust feud Quote
The Gaffer Posted February 27 Posted February 27 7 hours ago, TAFKA Jonny Vegas said: I don't think it's really up for any serious debate whatsoever that HHH never would have been right up there in the mix with the top guys if he hadn't married the bosses daughter. He was in main events and won his first title before any semblance of storyline with Stephanie started, so this has always been a poor reckoning. Vince was in heat for all the top guys in the kliq, of which Triple H was the only one left in his company at this point. They'd been in his ear for the better part of half a decade - a receptive ear - and though history might be overly favourable to their influence on the emergence of the Attitude Era, I don't think there's any doubt that Shawn and Triple H had the bosses ear already when it came to the company's creative direction. We're talking about a guy who was on the call when the screwjob was conceived, and played a lead role on egging it on as a suggestion. He was headed for the top of the card and there's no suggestion he wouldn't have stayed there. If there's any question to put that on trial, it's if his top run goes as strong as it went in the early months of 2000 had Austin not got shelved due to injury. That would have threatened Triple H's prominence as being anything other than an occasional main eventer/guy you can add to the mix foil far more than his marital status, and you can extend that all the way to WWE's more permanent exodus of its two top stars by the time you get to 2002. Nah, with the way the business was going I feel we were always destined for the reign of terror. Quote
TAFKA Jonny Vegas Posted February 27 Posted February 27 (edited) His first world title was August '99 and by early 2000 they were openly a real life couple. Chyna herself said she believed things had been going on for at least a year before it was public knowledge. She also claimed to have found a love letter from Steph to HHH and directly confronted HHH about an alleged affair which he responded by calling her paranoid and jealous. Chyna's perspective was that he cited her "paranoia and jealousy" as a reason to end their relationship before then publicly beginning a relationship with Steph - the very subject of her "paranoia and jealousy" with no or next to no space between whatsoever - textbook gaslighting really. I'm not saying he wouldn't have been involved or flirted with the main event picture at all or that he wouldn't have even been in and around it long term like Big Show or Mark Henry without his relationship with Steph but I don't believe he ever would have been suggested as being anywhere near being one of top guy's without her. I feel like in every major or memorable feud he was ever in, he was the Matt Hardy and they were the Jeff. Edited February 27 by TAFKA Jonny Vegas Quote
Awards Moderator HarmonicGenerator Posted February 27 Awards Moderator Posted February 27 How different might things have been if he hadn’t got such a huge reaction on his first night back from injury in January ‘02? That always felt like the moment they cemented him at the highest level where he pretty much stayed thereafter. Whereas before the injury he was definitely the number 2 of the ‘2 man power trip’. Quote
Paid Members air_raid Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 31 minutes ago, TAFKA Jonny Vegas said: I feel like in every major or memorable feud he was ever in, he was the Matt Hardy and they were the Jeff. That’s an odd comparison since Hardy vs Hardy was far from memorable. Both were the Triple H in that one. Quote
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 Looking back it's weird that they even gave Triple H the big push in summer 1999 as he had been mostly awful his entire WWF career at that point. He was very good at riding the coat tails of Shawn, Chyna, X-Pac and the New Age Outlaws but you'd of been hard-pressed to put together a Best of Triple H compilation at that point in his career. I guess they didn't have any other options at the time and Triple H was well in with the office. His initial top heel run is fucking awful up until the Vince feud in December where they throw literally everything at him to get him over. Personally, I think he's probably the worst top guy they've ever had. The small amount of genuinely good stuff in his career doesn't make up for the huge amounts of absolute boring cack and the damage he did to the company and so many other wrestlers. Quote
The Gaffer Posted February 27 Posted February 27 (edited) 38 minutes ago, TAFKA Jonny Vegas said: His first world title was August '99 and by early 2000 they were openly a real life couple. Chyna herself said she believed things had been going on for at least a year before it was public knowledge. She also claimed to have found a love letter from Steph to HHH and directly confronted HHH about an alleged affair which he responded by calling her paranoid and jealous. Chyna's perspective was that he cited her "paranoia and jealousy" as a reason to end their relationship before then publicly beginning a relationship with Steph - the very subject of her "paranoia and jealousy" with no or next to no space between whatsoever - textbook gaslighting really. I'm not saying he wouldn't have been involved or flirted with the main event picture at all or that he wouldn't have even been in and around it long term like Big Show or Mark Henry without his relationship with Steph but I don't believe he ever would have been suggested as being anywhere near being one of top guy's without her. I feel like in every major or memorable feud he was ever in, he was the Matt Hardy and they were the Jeff. I take your point. Though with the utmost respect to Chyna - as she had an incredibly difficult time of it and was unforgivably hard done by all parties involved - she was infamously an unreliable narrator of repute. I always thought that going on for a year timeline would have referred to 1999 - 2000, as from what I understand it wasn't until about 2001 that it was fully public/professional knowledge and acknowledged as such, though I could be wrong. There's next to nothing to corroborate that it was going on prior to their on screen angle getting going, by which point he was already in the main event picture. That's without going into the sort of bizarre othering I find in a lot of the arguments that just because you're sleeping with "the bosses daughter" you've got a ticket to ride. And yes, I'm painfully aware as I'm typing this that Triple H and Stephanie McMahon hardly need defending, but the whole thing threatens to take conscious agency from Stephanie as a woman, who would have been perfectly capable of making her own decisions both creatively and personally. Saying it's not up for serious debate whatsoever that he wouldn't have been in the mix with the top guys is too much of a reach, for me. I get that Triple H was never the guy but the guy needs a top heel to work with, and he was always quite upfront back then about the fact that top heel was very much the job he was after. Surely in wrestling headcanon that makes you a top guy, because the main event essentially just doesn't work without you, which is demonstrably the case when Foley and Rock both weren't for turning and needed somebody to dance with in 2000. Edited February 27 by The Gaffer Quote
Paid Members air_raid Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 21 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said: How different might things have been if he hadn’t got such a huge reaction on his first night back from injury in January ‘02? That always felt like the moment they cemented him at the highest level where he pretty much stayed thereafter. Whereas before the injury he was definitely the number 2 of the ‘2 man power trip’. I do think he was already earmarked for a return to the top. Remember, he’d already won the WWF title 4 times by the time he did his quad, and the original plan for payoff to the Power Trip story (regardless of WCW/Invasion shenanigans) was a split leading to heel Austin vs face HHH for the belt at SummerSlam ; with the writing on the wall for Rock they already thought that was the fresh dynamic at the top. When early plans for Mania XVIII were going round, part of Austin’s insistence he wouldn’t work Hogan was a shortlist he’d prefer which were Benoit if fit, Hunter or Angle, and concurrently there’s no doubt in mind they pivoted the Undisputed Title win onto Jericho because Hunter going for the belt against the man who “injured him” was the best story to tell. Plus they already scripted his first squabble back to be Angle before they knew what his pop would be like, setting them up as the obvious last 2 for the Rumble. I think Hunter as “the next guy” was already set in stone and only accelerated once Stone Cold flounced. Shame his popularity waned and we got the reign(s) of terror instead, with no genuine sustained top babyface until Cena and Big Dave got elevated. Quote
Paid Members BomberPat Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 12 hours ago, Chili said: I think he's ironically similar to Shane Douglas. A fair comparison, seeing as Trips nicked his entire gimmick. Never an original idea in his head. The thing with Triple H is that, yes, he always The Guy To Work With The Guy. I don't think anyone realistically disputes that he'd have floated around that spot for most of his career regardless of the Stephanie relationship, it's just about whether we'd have got the Reign of Terror, and the rewriting of history to make Triple H the third man of the Attitude Era, and one of the all-time greats, if he weren't firmly ensconced in the McMahon family. Maybe it would have happened through attrition - he was still around after Rock, Austin and Foley were gone, after Undertaker went part-time, and so on, so maybe WWE would have pretended he was that important regardless. But equally, he might not have stuck it out as long as he did without getting into power, or he might have ended up in the role that guys like Freddie Blassie, Ernie Ladd and Captain Lou had in the late Attitude Era, of occasionally showing up in the crowd and commentary telling us that they were huge stars and real legends of wrestling, because all of the real stars work elsewhere and Bruno's not answering your calls. The problem with Triple H being The Guy To Work With The Guy, though, is that he wasn't good at it. Your job in that role is to make your opponents look better, and to make potential new stars look like they've got what it takes. All the time in the world emulating Ric Flair and hanging off his coattails, yet he never learned that Flair's best quality was making his opponents look like world-beaters. I'd struggle to name anyone who had their best match with Triple H - the closest I can come up with is Ronda Rousey - and that's a damning indictment for someone in that spot. I can think of more people who had actively terrible, audience enthusiasm killing, stinkers with him than star-making classics, and more people he cut off at the knees than who he elevated to the next level. It's telling that the guy everyone points to Triple H as making look like a serious threat was Mick Foley, a guy who wasn't a threat because he already had one foot out of the door, and who ultimately did more to put Triple H himself over than anyone. What's most frustrating is that there were glimpses of Triple H getting it in his later career. During his feud with Daniel Bryan, he stooged big time for a baseball slide from Brie Bella. He put Ronda Rousey over massively in their tag match. For most of the match with Daniel Bryan, he was bumping all over the place and selling brilliantly for him. There was this brief window where it looked like he recognised that his role as the heel authority figure was to put people over, and to be outclassed and out of his depth once he got back in the ring. But for every match like that, even then, there would be another where he has to have a big "epic" entrance to show what a bad-ass megastar he is, and has to have people treating him like the biggest, scariest bad-ass that ever wrestled. That's his lasting legacy for me. A guy who claims to be this great student of wrestling history, but who never understood what his role in wrestling should be, and had the worst approach to kayfabe and consistency of any top level wrestler I've ever seen - he would be the evil authority figure heel on RAW, then the babyface cheerleader on NXT within the same week, then doing stupid prop comedy with Shawn Michaels for a DX reunion for a RAW anniversary the week after that. Quote
Paid Members Supremo Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 (edited) 12 hours ago, Chili said: I know we're all giving him a deserved shit kicking, but I don't think HHH is completely awful. But history is written the winners and until he's hilariously sacked one day, that's not changing. I think he's ironically similar to Shane Douglas. He’d probably be chuffed to read this considering how much he obviously plagiarised from Douglas in 1999. Don’t get me wrong. At no point am I saying Triple H was terrible. But what binging all these In Your House events has confirmed for me is that Hunter is the archetype of guys who got over in WWE primarily due to a prolonged, brute force push. I mentioned it in the Unreal thread recently. Due to the worked nature of the sport, a solid 75% of success in WWE is how the old weirdoes mark your card to begin with, then book to prove themselves right. Some lads have to work against the tide to miraculously still make it to the top (Bryan Danielson, CM Punk) and then other lads are given chance after chance, gimmick after gimmick, faction after faction, all designed to get them over the finish line (Triple H, Seth Rollins). Edited February 27 by Supremo Quote
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 14 minutes ago, BomberPat said: I'd struggle to name anyone who had their best match with Triple H Taka Michinoku. Quote
Chili Posted February 27 Posted February 27 (edited) 1 hour ago, LaGoosh said: Taka Michinoku. The Great Sasuke at Canadian Stampede is much better, but the Triple H match has the novelty of it being such a strange match and to his credit giving Taka a lot of shine and an absolutely brilliantly timed false finish. Another very funny comparison to Trips cribbing Shane Douglas's entire schtick was also the change in voice and 'The Game' and how that gimmick came about are almost literally the same. Edited February 27 by Chili Quote
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 My comment was in jest - I'm sure Taka has had loads of better matches in Japan I've never seen. Can't deny that it's an absolute cracker though. Quote
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