10 Things I Hate About Triple H
8. The Revisionist History Of His Importance In The Attitude Era
“Everybody! ‘He's got the whooole world in his nose...’"
These days, the story of the Attitude Era and the Monday Night War has been rewritten to include the Game, Triple H, the cerebral assassin, the king of kings.
The truth is that Triple H was certainly never The Man in the way that The Rock was, or ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. In many respects, he wasn’t even on the same level as Mick Foley and the Undertaker during this period.
This isn’t a new point, and plenty of others have made it over the years: but Triple H was the guy that worked with the guys that drew money back in those days.
He’s a shrewd operator, as everyone knows - he made sure to surround himself with the right people, stand in the right places and share the spotlight with enough real stars to get himself in the yearbook photos.
During the Attitude Era proper, Triple H was upper midcard, the guy you passed on the way to the main event. People remember D-Generation X ‘invading’ WCW, sure, but let’s not forget that this ‘invasion’ amounted to little more than standing in a military jeep outside an arena shouting at people through a megaphone.
Mick Foley helped to cement Triple H as a bona fide main eventer in their seminal match at No Way Out in February 2000, when Cactus Jack put him over in Hell In A Cell.
That’s well over three years into the Attitude Era, and by then the Monday Night War was all over bar the shouting.