8 Things We Learned From Triple H On Stephanie McMahon's WWE Show

Pictured above is a beautifully sentimental piece of artwork created by one of Triple H's young daughters. It's based on her dad's decision to leave his boots inside the WWE ring at WrestleMania 38 in 2022, and it means everything to both 'The Game' and his wife Stephanie McMahon. On the latter's ESPN show, Hunter shared another piece of crucial behind the scenes insight on his opening segment that's never been explored before.

This sit-down was way more emotional than you might've expected going in. Yes, Steph and Hunter spoke in-depth about his early knockings on the WWF/WWE roster after jumping over from WCW, and there was a healthy chunk of time afforded to crafting the perfect entrance at 'Mania, but then the conversation turned to life and death.

Triple H's health issues have been widely reported, and the man himself has been candid about fearing he might lose his life in September 2021. That will always be a touchy subject for the family, but Stephanie and Trips were able to churn through some of that heartache here. You also won't believe how HHH himself looks at his heart problems.

He hit out with some hard-hitting wisdom.

As always, Stephanie's Places managed to get through a lot of content in a short space of time. Besides the gritty life and death stuff, there was also room for cool clips involving Motörhead, Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, Alexa Bliss and more. Triple H was showing off his leadership skills long before becoming the main man backstage.

Some might've been tempted to skip this episode thinking it'd be a mushy love-in between wife and husband. It wasn't. There was a surprising amount to learn throughout. Here's the best of it!

Admittedly, this has become fairly common knowledge amongst those obsessed by what WWE almost called various workers over the years. Steve Austin was very-nearly "Chilly McFreeze", and Bryan Danielson could easily have become "Lloyd Boner". That was actually Bry's own suggestion! Triple H definitely wasn't on board with what the-then WWF fancied calling him back in 1995 though.

They pitched "Reginald Dupont Helmsley". Stephanie screwed her face up at that like her husband was kidding on, but she’s surely heard this story before. Even so, he’s lucky that they went with Hunter Hearst Helmsley instead, because that led to his Triple H/HHH branding. Hunter says he didn’t like the Reggie name at all. In fairness, why the hell would he?! It had no ring to it.

At least Hunter Hearst Helmsley had potential to be shortened. What was ol' Reg gonna do - become RDH?

It's awesome that Trips had the confidence in himself to knock back anything when he first joined the promotion in the mid-90s. Saying no to the market leader was always going to be risky, but Hunter had already suffered through the indignity of being called Terra Ryzing early on in his career, so perhaps it's understandable that he put the foot down on being Reginald.

HHH was born. The earliest examples of Vince McMahon uttering that on commentary stretch right back to Raw in 1996, so it's clear that Hunter was keen to move away from the long form name towards something snappier. Looking back, it's somewhat shocking they didn't call his "Greenwich Blueblood" character something like, 'Snooty Von Snooterson'. 

MONEY.