How Good Was Triple H Actually?

Paul Levesque runs the world. The Chief Content Officer of WWE did what he set out to do when he wasn’t even over: on the creative end of things at least, Triple H won. His corporate career mirrors his in-ring days, in that the man is presented as a demigod. 

By the man himself. 

The King of Kings, the Cerebral Assassin, The Game: Triple H has always loved presenting himself as at the absolute pinnacle of the sport. His main event persona was built on reaching the top. This has always meant more to him than anything, and he spared no opportunities, ever, to remind you how successful he was. 

Now, overseeing the ‘Paul Levesque Era’, Triple H casts himself as the gigantic brain powering the machine on WWE Unreal. He points at the wrestlers he was clever enough to sign and gracious enough to promote for you. He soaks up pops by introducing the biggest WWE shows. (Vince McMahon, even under the guise of his egomaniacal Mr. McMahon character, never opened WrestleMania to tell you how great he was.) 

Triple H was - as a result of factors not necessarily related to his talent - pushed at the top of WWE for longer than everybody not named the Undertaker. He is a 14-time World champion in WWE. 

You’d think, then, that Triple H was nothing less than an all-time great. Triple H, to justify those decades spent in the main event picture, would have had to have maintained his glittering in-ring standards at an absolute minimum, or raised his level year-on-year. It’s highly unusual for any wrestler to have starred for as long as him. 

How good was he actually…?

Triple H passed the silhouette test, especially if he was standing sideways. 

He reached his final form in 2000, when he rocked one of the very best physiques in wrestling history. A hulking powerhouse, Triple H had oak tree trunks for thighs. His ab definition was immaculate. His waist was slim, which, next to his latissimus dorsi, made his torso look like a deadly cobra. He had wrecking ball biceps, stupidly big shoulders. Triple H’s main event body was both enormous and somehow lean enough, at the same time, to make him not look like a stereotypical 1980s muscle monster. There was still an athletic dimension to his look. He mostly maintained the outline as the years passed by, with one glaring and unsettling exception. When he made that MSG return, his shoulders looked weird, like he was wearing a pair of 2x4s for earrings. He was in fact so blocky that it inhibited his movement. It took a while for him to get back to normal and back up to speed in the ring. 

His presentation was iconic, even if his preferred iconography was highly questionable. He was allowed the advantage of multiple licensed entrance themes, where hardly any other WWE wrestlers past or present were permitted one. Triple H at various stages of his career entered the ring to no fewer than three Motorhead songs. Three!

If this was “cheating”, it worked, but it wasn’t essential. Triple H didn’t need Motorhead to be a star; he was at his most over when using Jim Johnston’s ‘My Time’. 

He owed much of his outside of the ring look to Shane Douglas. Many times, Triple H looked the part, but his leather and denim jacket was inadvertently funny. He took the two materials associated with tough guy jackets because he thought he was twice as tough as everybody else. 

Triple H did have presence, and a lot of it. As negative as many older cynics are about Triple H, they can’t in good faith deny that the guy changed the atmosphere in a room. He was able to elicit a big reaction - even if he often hushed it the longer he performed…

8.5/10 (might've been a 9, were it not for various hilarious WrestleMania entrances).