20 Incredible WWE Ruthless Aggression Era Moments Nobody Ever Talks About
16. Triple H & Ric Flair Blow The Roof Off Survivor Series
The worst thing about Triple H in his Reign of Terror wasn't that he was boring, although he was slow, dull and somehow smug with it.
No, the worst thing was the sabotage. He made Scott Steiner look awful. He took 23 seconds to pin Booker T in what looked like a parody of the "gotta crawl to protect my finish" near-fall spot before racism actually won. He decided to work Goldberg like he was training him on his first day at Ohio Valley Wrestling. And, sure as sh*t, one of Goldberg's nuts might as well have been hanging out, for what it did for his aura.
If Triple H liked or respected you, you had half a chance of not looking like a complete has-been no-nothing loser, and he liked Ric Flair.
You'd think that Flair and Trips going 27 minutes might be as nightmarish an experience as holding a two minute conversation with Gable Steveson, but it was actually superb and well worth the run-time. It might shock you to learn that Flair, at 56, was really quite good at convincing people that he could not stand up under his own power.
That very real triumph drove the remarkable tension of a hidden classic, and Triple H was outstanding when he wanted to be. He was a precision killer in there, and in awesome spot, he blasted Flair, caked in blood, on the floor with a spinebuster. Flair's back was wrecked in his mid-20s, and he looked about 90 in Detroit that night.
This felt like transgressive, dangerous, terrifying pro wrestling - something Cody Rhodes might have studied ahead of AEW Double Or Nothing 2019.
- MS