That Time Triple H Got His Hand Caught In The Cookie Jar
The cookie jar-uh!
Monday Night RAW, October 6, 1997.
We are deep into the fascinating onscreen adaptation of Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart’s toxic backstage feud. Michaels, Triple H and Chyna are not yet D-Generation X, but the opening 20 minutes is a transgressive, bratty segment of television, in which Trips and Chyna send Michael Cole into the rafters with a wedgie, and Shawn asks Vince McMahon if his father is “rolling in his grave” in paternal embarrassment.
“Come on,” Michaels said. “You were an ass long before I made one outta ya!”
Bret Hart interrupts. “Yes, Bret Hart,” Shawn says, searingly insincere. It’s hilarious. The Hitman is a marked man by this point; he drones on about being an upstanding second-generation professional wrestler, but, in an attempt to set his sights on the nomenclature of the day, he then unleashes a homophobic rant. Michaels destroys him in the ring with a non-verbal shot. Pretending to clutch at his pearls, he opens his mouth in a big ‘O’. His Kliq buddy hasn’t yet mastered the art; Michaels needs to literally nudge him into creating what would become an iconic TitanTron visual (see above). Hart says “I know what the HHH stands for in HBK,” totally flustered. “You’re nothing but a homo, and that guy there in the green shirt is nothing but a homo!”
‘HHH’, more Bret than Shawn here, not yet a main event talent, hasn’t yet learned to keep his cool. He grabs the microphone, refusing to laugh the jibe off as utter desperation, and immediately fires back with “Oh, I’m no queer!”
This is a distillation of Triple H at his most hilariously defensive. In the shark-infested waters of the nascent Attitude Era, there was always a sense that Trips, and this is ironic, was a B+ Player in contrast to the proper, unflappable stars of the present and the future.
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