16 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Triple H
It's always been All About The Game in WWE. Now more than ever. As long as you forget about...
Triple H remains as divisive as he's ever been in his current role as WWE's Chief Content Officer.
Well-liked as a creative force by the market leader's broadly satisfied hardcore base, he draws less enthusiasm from an increasing number critics who can't quite fathom what exactly it is about his patient-but-milquetoast brand of booking that has connected so effectively since he took the job in 2022. And the television product is but one small part of analysing WWE in the post-Vince McMahon era too.
The company are included in the sex trafficking lawsuit that brought about the (second) disgraced resignation of the former Chairman, and Paul Levesque sits front and centre of the operation. It's the role he's seemingly spent the bulk of his career working his way towards, but heavy is the head that wears the crown even if the throne has been made of composite parts of his own big dumb logo since he used WrestleMania 22's main event to audition for Conan The Barbarian.
To reach the job he craved, he was industry's chief pariah more times than he was World Champion, which - for those that have been through enough therapy to erase the memories - was a lot. He might have been Sports Entertainment's creative saviour a couple of times across the decade, but pushed as many skeletons back into his closet as hard as he pushed himself throughout the much-maligned "Reign Of Terror".
He felt like the time at the top was overdue, of course...
16. His Disappearing DX Skits
More on how the Nation Of Domination parody in particular hasn't aged well elsewhere in this article, but there's yet more of those wacky DX hijinks that will struggle to see the light of day in years to come, and not just because they'd make born again Shawn Michaels blush.
Their cult classic state of the union address skit from early-1998 is wrestling attempting satire, but still can't make it through without the use of slurs. Their risible 2006 skits feature latent and blatant homophobia. The 1999 reunion featured a teased sexual assault of a panicked woman in a locker room, and even the moment that changed his life and career was drenched in the same inference. Stephanie McMahon and Triple H's drive-through wedding was presented - at least until the pair revealed the fix - as if 'The Game' assaulted the drugged 'Billion Dollar Princess' as she slept following their gimmicked nuptials. Even after the McMahon-Helmsley plot unfolded, it was left ambiguous if Stephanie was in on it from the beginning or simply came around to the idea the longer she was thrust closer to her new beau.
It wasn't the end of this sort of thing for the revived heel stable that month. In stereo with all of Triple H's misdeeds, X-Pac "won" possession of Tori from Kane for a weekend away that heavily implied existed for him to do as he pleased with her. This too ended in the female in the story favouring her abuser over the babyface. Different time, etc etc etc, but it's no surprise that the "tank" gets more play in the highlight reels.