10 Things Everybody Gets Wrong About Triple H's WWE
Triple H: Creator or Destroyer? Read on-uh...
The Triple H era began in earnest at SummerSlam. To a degree.
There's no chance in hell that on a logistical level, Brock Lesnar's tractor stunt wasn't planned when Vince McMahon was still there. Also, it was more fun than anything Triple H had booked in the entirety of his NXT run.
Still, the rehiring, return and promotion that led to the formation of Damage CTRL was definitely a Triple H move. That was the first indication that change was actually happening. And change has happened, albeit slowly; the matches are better and longer, not that longer automatically equals better, the 24/7 Championship looks to be as dead and buried as most of his opponents in the 2000s, and the more wacky stuff, like Ezekiel, is a memory.
"Everybody" is of course a sweeping, sensationalised key word, but it's also accurate. Everything is a culture war. While it's actually very easy not to like AEW and WWE at the same time, because WWE was sh*te for a century, it's not a good idea to hate literally everything about a wrestling promotion. Get the dopamine where you can.
Every anti-WWE person gets it wrong as much as every pro-WWE person gets it wrong, as you'll discover in the following, balanced piece...
10. NXT Is Coming To The Main Roster
Rejoice!
Triple H is back!
That means the NXT you knew and loved is set to return, only in gigantic arenas every single week. Kick pad lads going 40 blistering minutes in blow-away awesome matches with a few too many kick-outs in hindsight, but f*ck your mother if you weren't swept up in the drama at the time. The coolest new names on the circuit being introduced without being called worse than sh*t. Old, desecrated forms of wrestling being Revived, literally, to a glorious level.
Except that was the version of NXT Triple H promoted when super-indie wrestling was in the zeitgeist - when some other promotions had the temerity to make money, when Triple H looked cool by acknowledging and endorsing it.
That version of NXT slowly faded when AEW thrashed it and subsumed its identity, between 2020 and 2021, and Triple H, desperate, experimented with supernatural gimmicks (Tian Sha), wacky comedy (The Way) and a Vince-adjacent top guy (Karrion Kross).
Don't expect a full NXT reboot, even if the match quality improves. Or don't expect the best NXT to return, anyway.