10 Disastrous WWE Booking Decisions Triple H Has Already Botched

Is the “Triple H era” already past tense in WWE?

Vince McMahon’s weird and hostile return to power in January was supposedly to have no impact on ‘The Game’s role atop the creative tree, but Sami Zayn's failure at Elimination Chamber 2023 was moving many to suggest that his influence was stilling being felt.

The old clown puts the “control” and “freak” in control freak and it’s that mindset that will surely evemtually remove the prodigal son-in-law from the seat still impounded by McMahon’s everlasting arseprint. But the same man and his miserable quirks drove the company’s product into the dirt in the first place, and herein lies a problem.

The shows had been unwatchable drek under McMahon’s eye forever, and in Triple H, there was a guy who had briefly gotten television wrestling right once before. A guy who understood the compromises at play between WWE as a content production company and what a pro wrestling show actually is.

He brought some logic and common sense back, thankfully. But was there much else?

Ultimately, even those that adored NXT's golden era between 2014-2016 - your writer included - acknowledge that the weekly show was hyper-functional story progression that relied more on fastidious matchmaking rather than angles. Hunter has attempted to replicate that, and while the philosophy has sailed over the pathetically low bar left by his Father-In-Law in mid-2022, it’s not reinvented the WWE creative wheel. And when nothing really changes, too many things stay the same.

Including the not-insignificant problems…

The decision was a bad one to begin with, but bringing in Karrion Kross as a rival for Drew McIntyre and a potential opponent for Roman Reigns set the former NXT Champion up to fail in ways less obvious than Vince McMahon's 2021 character assassinations.

No, Kross wasn't in a daft red mask or robbed of his entire aesthetic, but he lacked any kind of agency in his gimmick and any impending success hinged on the quality of the matches above all else.

This isn't supposed to scan as cruel (not to Kross, anyway), but matches aren't really his strong point. Especially not WWE ones. He stole a victory over Drew McIntyre at Extreme Rules that played to silence and the apparent breaking of the space-time continuum in that it somehow only hovered around the 10 minute mark, then lost a cage rematch that 50/50ed the programme but gave the moral victory to 'The Scottish Warrior'.

Starting life as another wrestler's rehab programme marked his cards as an also-ran, as did a middling match with Rey Mysterio after a fun build that cast him as a bully. Mysterio getting injured in the contest didn't help, and a rematch between the two - and this is becoming a theme for Kross - lacked any spark the first encounter might have summoned.