10 WWE Matches That Delivered On Their Massive Hype
3. Triple H Vs. Cactus Jack - Royal Rumble 2000
The classic 'Triple H Match' was structured years later, when Trips receded into older age having never recovered his physical prime.
His classic insecurity manifested as something far more palatable than would follow at Royal Rumble 2000. Unlike Randy Orton, Brock Lesnar et al., Trips did not subject Cactus Jack to a slog; he wrestled a Cactus Jack match. It was so good that you could accurately describe it as the Cactus Jack match; never before had this dangerous performer been presented as something this dangerous.
The WWF promised something grotesquely violent - "Your blood will stain New York City, I promise you that," Trips told Jack in the buildup - and we got it. That promise, while delivered, was brilliantly subverted; the 'Game' bled buckets in this ultra-violent classic in which he sold as bountifully as he bladed. This was as good as wrestling gets; Triple H entered a performance of sublime balance, in that he survived a massacre but was so repulsive in it that zero sympathy was directed towards him.
Respect, yes: sympathy, no. It wasn't 'all about the Game' - and was far better for it.