20 Incredible WWE Ruthless Aggression Era Moments Nobody Ever Talks About
14. Shawn Michaels And Triple H DID Have Chemistry
Shawn Michaels and Triple H worked one great match together - their SummerSlam '02 war was a gripping, basic story elevated by Shawn's masterful selling - but elsewhere, they really took the piss.
There are few things worse than a wrestling match that tries too hard to be good, to be worthy. At Bad Blood 2004, Shawn and Triple H went nearly 50 minutes in Hell In A Cell. It might be the most pretentious match of all time. They took a core idea - the spaces between the moves matter more than the moves themselves - and tried to be profound by lying around and doing absolutely nothing. The exhaustion was meant to reach the people. It did, but not in the way intended: the crowd was bored sh*tless. It's quite funny to think of Triple H selling and thinking, smugly, "We got 'em". It was as tedious and attritional as Ali Vs. Inoki, and the two dumbasses worked it.
It says something about the absolute state of WWE in 2004 that, short of better options, fans voted for a rematch at Taboo Tuesday. Their bleak resignation was rewarded with a tighter, less masturbatory effort which, while not a classic, was basically SummerSlam 2002: This Time Shawn's Selling His Leg.
In this era of content-forward wrestling, a lot of modern guys should study how to actually work through a storyline injury. Michaels didn't just explode into a move and then clutch at his leg; he wrestled as if it was hanging off. The whole thing, mirroring his opponent's assorted quad tears, looked like a match that a wrestler forced himself to gut through when he was hurt for real.
That's how good Michaels was.
- MS