10 Alarming Signs Over The Future Of The Pro Wrestling Industry
7. Triple H Is Yet To Face A True Test
A WWE fan might read all of this and roll their eyes: Triple H is booking the best or at least the most effective storyline in all of wrestling, and the upcoming Royal Rumble PLE has already broken the gate record of the event's impressive history. Things in an almost literal sense could not be better; the company is on course for another year of record revenues, and this trend will only spike higher deeper into the 2020s.
Still, the promotion still serves up rather a lot of dreck, and much of its 2022 played out like a study into its brand value. Put simply, if Impact Wrestling had signed much of the talent Triple H rehired, the online fans would have reacted along the lines of "LOL, of f*cking course Samuel Shaw is back", and not a single one of those talents would have made an appreciable difference to the perception of the company or its bottom line.
And yet, when Triple H brought back various names that all but vanished from a scene that had little use for them, he was greeted as the benevolent saviour.
What?
Those returns and the paltry reception to them indicate that, yes, Triple H is spent as a creative force and is stuck in 2020, during which time NXT became an awkward collision between wacky characters and blandly intense in-ring output.
He inherited the Bloodline saga, and to his credit made something more of it than Vince McMahon, but is yet to face a true test of his own creative prowess. What will Papa H do when the Roman Reigns character is dethroned? Does he have it in him to push a new character into that stratosphere?
Given that NXT is currently populated by anthropomorphic birds, sex pests and masked vandal poets, it's not looking great.