10 Wrestlers Better Off For Having Worked With Mick Foley

Triple H was already a main event star before the 2000 Royal Rumble pay-per-view. He had combated Steve Austin, The Rock, Big Show and Vince McMahon, even marrying the boss's daughter Stephanie and taking the reigns of Raw as one-half of the McMahon-Helmsley Regime.

But there was still an air of unknown surrounding The Game and whether or not he was a credible headliner in the same vein as Austin and Rock. He had wrestled some damn fine matches but was missing that one defining performance in that role.

Against Mick Foley, who had rediscovered the hatred necessary to evoke the Cactus Jack persona, he got it.

The Street Fight for the WWE Championship at the first pay-per-view of the new Millennium forever solidified Triple H's status at the top of the card, providing him with that one match that reassured management and the locker room that everything would be okay.

That he could carry the promotion as a villain around whom the entire show revolved.

On that night, Triple H showed the entire wrestling world that he could take an !*$%-whooping as well as he could receive one, giving one crimson mask in return for the one suffered.

Then, to really hammer home the depths to which he would sink in search of greatness and a successful title defense, he delivered a sickening Pedigree to Foley, face-first into a pile of thumbtacks.

That move, coupled with the incredible roller-coaster of a match the Superstars had just taken fans on, legitimised The Game. While he may have the masses believe he alone was responsible for his success, there is a very strong likelihood that he would have forever been perceived a step below his Attitude Era peers without the series against Foley.

Even dating back three years earlier, to 1997 and the first sustained rivalry he had with Mankind, Triple H always benefited from working with the deranged performer.

There was always something about working with Foley that inspired Triple H and pulled the absolute best out of him. Without those breakout showings, and the 2000 series that firmly entrenched him among the elite, the wrestling business as we know it may be extremely different from the one we know today.

None of this suggests that Triple H did not bust his !*$% to achieve what he did, because one cannot look at his body of work and suggest such a thing.

He simply needed that one guy to bring the best out of him and for him. That guy was the Hardcore Legend.