wrestling / Columns
The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Triple H Losses
Triple H is one of the definitive icons of WWE, not to mention a generally respected power broker, responsible for the booking of NXT and 205 Live, and rumored to have been a big influence in WWE embracing talents from the indies in a way they hadn’t for years.
For all of the things fans admire about The Game, there remain stigmas from the past related to him politicking, refusing to do jobs, or benefiting from the nepotism of marrying the boss’s daughter. Indeed, the fact that he retained his world title at WrestleMania 2000, that he won his racially charged WrestleMania 19 feud against Booker T, and that he defeated Sting in his historic first match in a WWE ring all offer ample reason to question Triple H’s willingness to put over others.
While The King of Kings may not have an entirely balanced record, he actually does have a deceptively reasonable list of opponents he has put over in significant fashion, contributing the success of their careers, and arguably the good of the business. This week’s column take a look back at seven of Triple H’s most noteworthy losses. The primary considerations were the long-range impact of the loss on WWE and the individual(s) he put over; the quality of the match itself and the satisfaction of the moment itself were secondary concerns. As always, my personal opinion weighs heavily.
Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine Chris Jericho as anything but a main event level star. Back in early 2000, however, he remained a young talent who was over, but whom it was unclear would ever cross over to top tier status.
That Jericho pinned WWE Champion Triple H on Raw came with the great big asterisk that the title change was quickly reversed on a phantom technicality, and Jericho’s big victory wasn’t recognized with an official world title reign. However, Helmsley’s willingness to stay down for Jericho did allow him to collect the biggest pop of his career up to that moment, which was huge in substantiating the idea that Y2J could work on top.
#6. Ronda Rousey and Kurt Angle, WrestleMania 34
Mixed tag team matches can be fun, but aren’t typically known for being much good bell-to-bell, or making any meaningful history. WrestleMania 34 played host to one of the most shrewdly booked matches of this type ever seen, designed to establish, protect, and most importantly get over Ronda Rousey.
Yes, Rousey herself looked great, and her partner Kurt Angle offered exactly the steady veteran hand one would hope for. Stephanie McMahon performed well and took the brunt of Rousey’s offense. And Triple H?
If everyone in the match, The Game was the sure bet—the only one to have worked high caliber singles matches in WWE that decade, and a WrestleMania main eventer as recently as two years before. He not only wrestled quite well, but more importantly sold brilliantly for Rousey.
There’s a certain humility that comes with a male performer putting over a female performer, even in this day and age, but Rousey had the credibility and striking game to be believable in that role, and Triple H did a brilliant job of making her look like an absolute superstar when they went toe to toe in the late stages of the match.
#5. Shawn Michaels, SummerSlam 2002
Ask someone in 1997 if Triple H putting over Shawn Michaels would be a career defining moment for HBK, and it’s kind of laughable. At that point, Triple H was Michaels’s on-screen sidekick and real-life friend and mentee—he was in no way The Showstopper’s equal, let alone someone who could elevate him.
But Michaels retired from the ring in 1998 due to a back injury, and Triple H picked up the torch the very next night following Michaels dropping the WWF Championship to Steve Austin and disappearing. In so doing, The Cerebral Assassin declaring himself the new leader of DX and began in earnest a march toward the main event. His heel turn machinations with Chyna would be the biggest story of WrestleMania 15, and by WrestleMania 16 he was entrenched as the top heel in the company.
In 2002, Michaels came back to the ring, sober and healed, and only necessarily coming back for one match, opposite an opponent he completely trusted.
Triple H and Michaels tore the house down.
In a top five match for either man’s career, Michaels showed no ring rust, and Triple H combined a willingness to put his friend over without hesitation, while maintaining his brutal heel character. Had this match not been as good as it was, or had we not had that feel good moment of Michaels achieving the by-then-upset (at least in kayfabe) victory, we may not have gotten the second act of HBK’s career to follow. Based on the momentum of this win, though, Michaels was back for nearly eight years to follow (not to mention his current comeback), and elevated his career even further into rarefied air.
#4. Chris Benoit, WreslteMania 20
The build to WrestleMania 20 was complicated. Chris Benoit won the Royal Rumble and it would have been logical enough for him to have stayed on SmackDown to challenge long standing rival Brock Lesnar. He hopped to Raw, though (while Lesnar lost his title to Eddie Guerrero), positioning the Rabid Wolverine against Triple H. From there, things grew a step messier with Triple H’s top rival of the day, Shawn Michaels, interjecting to make the match a Triple Threat.
Benoit fans worried Benoit would get subverted by HBK or Triple H himself. Instead, having both men in the match with him helped elevate the bout to an all time classic, and the additional doubt of whether Benoit could prevail only added to the drama, and the satisfaction of him ultimately winning when he made Triple H tap out cleanly.
It’s a complicated thing to celebrate Chris Benoit’s legacy today. Nonetheless, Triple H deserves high praise for putting him over like this in this match.
#3. Daniel Bryan, WrestleMania 30
By now, you’ve probably noticed a pattern that a lot of the matches on this countdown come from WrestleManias, and that’s not incidental. While the perception is that Triple H protects himself and politicks his way to big wins, it’s telling that so many of his high profile losses have come at WrestleMania, where they’ll be best remembered from the biggest show of the year.
Daniel Bryan had been on the shortlist of best in-ring performers in the world before he signed with WWE, and had broken out as one of the business’s biggest stars over the summer of 2013, including defeating John Cena for the WWE Championship at SummerSlam. In this match with Triple H—the gateway to the WrestleMania main event title match—Triple H did what he was uniquely equipped to do. In terms of credibility, he gave Bryan one more career-elevating win. In terms of in-ring performance, he gave Bryan the best match available to him.
Bryan beating Triple H worked so well for not only keeping it simple and seeing through the underdog story with Bryan’s clean victory, but giving Bryan a dance partner who could complement him perfectly to deliver the match of the night right out of the gate. It remains to be seen if Bryan peaked (both in quality of performance and kayfabe accomplishment that night) but it was undeniably Triple H losing at his best—doing everything he could to get Bryan even further over that night.
#2. Batista, WrestleMania 21
There may be no star whom Triple H did more to get over as a top guy than Batista. First, the two were aligned in the Evolution stable, with Batista both in reality and in kayfabe sitting under The Game’s learning tree. Then there was the feud between the two, during which Helmsley dropped three straight one on one matches to The Animal. You can argue that the later matches in the trilogy were better, or more convincing in regards to making Batista as a worthy champion, but at the end of the day there’s no topping The Game losing cleanly to his protégé in the main event of WrestleMania.
Batista wasn’t the most polished all around performer, but the Evolution storyline and Batista breaking out on his own did capture fans’ imagination. Beating Triple H in this match set up Batista as very arguably the top star in the company—even if John Cena would usurp that spot over the months to follow.
#1. John Cena, WrestleMania 22
On paper, John Cena beating Triple H at WrestleMania 22 shouldn’t be able to compete with, let alone top, The Game putting over guys like Batista or Chris Benoit to give them their first world titles in WWE, or even putting over Chris Jericho, Shelton Benjamin, or Curtis Axel as largely unestablished stars who got a big rub off of beating him. Cena walked into this show already world champion, established for a solid year as a main eventer and arguably the face of the company.
However, the men Triple H has dropped world titles to at WrestleMania have carried a degree of inevitability with them. That doesn’t mean The Animal, Benoit, or even Roman Reigns didn’t deserve to get to beat him and win the strap, but it nonetheless felt like the end of a story we’d all read before. Meanwhile, those younger stars who stole wins enjoyed nice moments, but Benjamin and Axel in particular never rose any higher than that fluke win.
Cena came into ‘Mania a champion under siege, subject to a lot of booing, with fans ready enough to believe WWE was going to correct course with Triple H taking the title off of him. For King of Kings to not only lose, but do so with no controversy or extenuating circumstances, and submit clean as a sheet were all huge factors in shoring up that WWE was staying the course with Cena—not to mention that he could hold his own with Helmsley in a solid main event match.
What matches would you add to the list? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.
