The Rise Of Triple H | Wrestling Timelines

May 7, 2019 - Likes Are Public

Twitter user Richard Gutierrez posts a tweet critical of Vince McMahon’s booking, citing the “confusing and pointless storylines” as a source of frustration.

Fascinatingly, Triple H likes it.

Perhaps it was a slip of the finger. Perhaps Levesque was simply scrolling through his app, saw that he’d been tagged in something, and endorsed it unwittingly. Would he really be so reckless as to admit his professional frustrations like this?

When parsing this narrative, there’s a lot to consider before one runs away with it. Vince McMahon is Levesque’s father-in-law. They’re buddies. Levesque - while subtracting stupid comedy, adding logic, and intensifying the action - runs the WWE playbook when scripting talent and telling stories.

Then again: surely, he cannot be thrilled by the frequency with which McMahon renders his acclaimed NXT talents unrecognisable.

For years, Vince has failed, catastrophically, to score the open goal of promoting NXT talents that are already over. Bayley, a spirited wholesome babyface, becomes a pitiful geek loser who is afraid of violence. EC3, who really only has mic skills going for him, is cast as a mute. Aleister Black is a disembodied head in a cupboard who asks fellow wrestlers to “pick a fight” with him every week. Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa are brought up to the main roster as a tag team in the midst of their blood feud.

In addition to being inept, McMahon has contempt for those who actually watch NXT. That, or he is completely oblivious.

In 2019, McMahon’s creative requires a new word to fully articulate how awful it is.