Freddie Prinze Jr. Recalls Pushing for Jeff Hardy to Become WWE Champion, Triple H Being Proven Right

– Previously, actor and former WWE writer Freddie Prinze Jr. spoke about a falling out with Triple H in WWE in 2008 when Prinze was the one who pushed for putting the WWE Championship on Jeff Hardy. Triple H was an outspoken critic of the idea at the time of the Armageddon 2008 event. Prinze had said on Triple H at the time, “The day of the production meeting of Armageddon, Hunter brought it up. Everyone else was cool and nobody said anything and I’m nervous. He said, ‘Are we really going to trust the championship with this guy [Jeff Hardy]?’”

Prinze spoke more at length on the issue on today’s edition of Wrestling With Freddie. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Freddie Prinze on how he pushed for Jeff Hardy to become champion: “So I start pitching why this is a good idea [in a production meeting]. I’m telling you, this is an honest story, we’ve done nothing but tell the truth. If he has a relapse, if he goes down again, you take the title off him. You’ve taken it off him before for stuff like that on smaller belts. I said we’ve taken it off of other people in a day. I said we can pull this off. You know, I’m giving this passionate plea, it’s about five minutes long, and then Hunter starts shooting it down, again. You know, I don’t want it to be a fight. I don’t want it to be an argument. I don’t want to have enemies in the company, but I don’t want this whole story that we’ve built up to let the fans of Jeff Hardy down.”

Prinze on waiting on the answer outside the meeting as Bruce Prichard, Kevin Dunn, and Triple H discussed the issue in private: “We’re waiting outside, we wanna know the answer. The production meeting on this day was on the same floor as a VIP cafeteria, so there’s like this empty cafeteria behind us. A lot of free space. I’m sitting there and looking at Freebird [Michael P.S Hayes] and I go ‘what do you think?’ and he goes ‘I don’t know, you did your best!’ He’s like trying to prep me for failure. So now I’m like shoot, man, this is not gonna happen. This is seriously getting killed right now?”

On how Triple H was ultimately proven right after Jeff got in trouble again: “Listen, again, Hunter was proven right at the end of the day. I mean Jeff got in trouble less than a year after this happened. They gave him the other belt after that, the other championship. And then he got in trouble and then got in bigger trouble and had to leave the company for a while. So at the end of the day, he was right, but all of a sudden the door swings open and only Hunter comes out, and he doesn’t even look at me. Right, and he walks by. So this now means two things; one, this dude doesn’t like me anymore or is probably going to work against me now, which is what happened. Or two, Jeff’s going to be the World Heavyweight Champion!”