10 Biggest Regrets From Triple H's WWE Career
6. Vs. Booker T
There are no rules on how one builds a wrestling feud, but a good rule of thumb - in the year 2003, no less - would be to avoid using barely veiled racism as the impetus for a WrestleMania match. And to expand on that, if you must use racism as the building blocks for your story, at least have the victim win at the end.
Spring of 2003 saw Triple H in his pomp, firmly ensconced at the top of the card and with a tight grip on the World Heavyweight Championship. His WrestleMania programme was against Booker T, then a popular babyface and one of the few WCW guys to effectively make the jump to WWE.
The story saw Triple H and Ric Flair demean Booker for several weeks, attempting to pay him to carry their bags, telling him to dance, and saying “people like him” would never make it at the top of this company. They stopped short of any explicit racism, but really not all that short.
Logic would dictate that, at WrestleMania, Booker overcame the bigotry and seized the big gold belt from Hunter, thereby illustrating that hate doesn’t win. Nope. Instead, Triple H caught Booker with the pedigree and then, after an insultingly long wait, pinned him to retain. They don’t make it easy to be a wrestling fan sometimes.