wrestling / Columns
Right Move/Wrong Move 07.02.10: Triple H Defeats Steve Austin at No Way Out 2001
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Before I get to this week’s article, I want to clarify a comment I made last week that may have been taken the wrong way. I said that as a reader that I did not want some 19 year old writing about how WrestleMania IV sucked. Honest to God, that was not a shot at any fellow 411 writer or staffer and was made purely out of my own personal opinion. I had no idea (at least not until reading the Contentious 10 this week) that some readers thought I was taking a shot at another writer. I was not doing that in any way, shape, or form. I honestly don’t know if Aaron Hubbard ever wrote a poor review of WMIV, nor was I aware of his age. I can assume that some readers felt I was taking a shot at him because I made reference to a 19 year old. So to Aaron and all my readers, I apologize for the confusion. The point I was trying to make was that I will not review, analyze or recap a wrestling moment from a time that I was not following the sport without telling you so. I made the WrestleMania IV reference out of the blue because that has been highly criticized over the years and made a reference to a 19 year old because anybody that is 19 years old in 2010 obviously wasn’t alive to follow WrestleMania IV. It is my personal opinion and feelings that I don’t want to read an article where a wrestling moment is analyzed or critiqued from someone who was not watching during the live airing of said moment. I won’t sit here and talk about how Willie Mays was better than Ken Griffey, Jr. and visa-versa because I never saw Willie Mays play. Sure, I can rent old tapes and watch old games/matches and have my opinion, but there’s nothing like being in the moment. Some things just don’t transfer on replays and videos. Again, this is just my opinion and all of you are entitled to yours. This isn’t to say that “Unless you were alive when Hogan fought Warrior in 1990, then you shouldn’t talk about it!” It is fine to talk about it and write about it even, but I was mostly making reference to the type of column that I write. I give a lot of personal opinions and detailed accounts of what happened leading up to these particular moments, so if I hadn’t lived through it, I would not remember all of this information. Unless you watched as a fan during the times when these moments took place, it would be difficult to convey the proper story to the readers. But that is what my column is based on. Not every article needs the writer to have “lived through it”, but I think the fact that I have “lived through it” gives an added bonus of integrity to my pieces. Like me or not, you can know that I watched all of this like many of you did, live as an avid fan. I have made mistakes and I will again, but I just wanted to clear that up. If I ever do review a moment that I did not follow live, then I will disclose that up front and be ready to take the heat for it. Until then, let’s get back to the moments…
It was one of the biggest matches of the entire year with anticipation dating back to the fall of 1999. This match took place at the height of the Attitude era and featured two of the WWF’s biggest stars. The following month’s PPV would feature two bigger stars and would arguably go down as one of the best WrestleManias in history, WrestleMania X-Seven. Before Austin would face The Rock for the WWF Championship, however, he needed to close out his feud with The Game, Triple H.
Triple H defeats Stone Cold Steve Austin in a 3 Stages of Hell Match at No Way Out 2001.
This will be both Steve Austin and Triple H’s first appearance in any of my Right Move/Wrong Move segments, and as I have for other superstars, I will focus solely on the portion of their careers that were surrounding this match. Both men’s careers spanned three different decades and while Austin’s career may have been winding down in February of 2001, Triple H had just started to hit his stride.
PARTICIPANT #1
First let’s look at the Bionic Redneck…
Austin had been the flag bearer of the new, edgier product being put out by the World Wrestling Federation over the past 3 or 4 years. His neck injuries are well documented and they almost sidelined the company’s biggest star before his feet got off the ground in late 1997. Austin continued to wrestle despite being told by several doctors that his career was over. From a physical standpoint, Austin was far from the peak he had been only a year or so earlier, but from a storyline perspective, he had never been hotter. Fans all across the world were buying “Austin 3:16” merchandise at a record-setting pace; there was no way Steve Austin was going to retire now. He wrestled in the main event of nearly every Pay Per View from January 1998 through October 1999 until his neck injury had reached the point where he needed to have surgery.
Prior to the real-life surgery that Austin had gone through in the fall of 1999, he was involved in a feud with new mega-heel, Triple H. Austin had been the World Wrestling Federation Champion throughout most of 1998 and 1999 and had recently lost the title at SummerSlam 1999 to Mankind in a triple threat match that also featured Triple H. In a move many have since criticized Austin for, Austin did not do the job for Triple H at SummerSlam and instead dropped the belt to Foley, who then dropped it to Triple H the following night on RAW. Some say that Austin was asked to do the job to The Game but refused to do so, others say that was not the case and the reason Austin did not lose to Triple H was because that would have weakened their upcoming feud. Regardless of the real reason, the two started off into a program with each other following Triple H’s post-match attack on Austin’s knee at SummerSlam ’99.
Austin was less active in the ring over the next couple of months and with Triple H as the new Champion, Austin worked as the challenger when he did compete in the ring. The two met in their first Pay Per View match at No Mercy in October 1999. Triple H was once again WWF Champion and his title was on the line. The two men wrestled in a No Disqualification match that resulted in Triple H retaining his title after The Rock had interfered and accidentally hit Austin with a sledgehammer that was intended for Triple H. This set up another triple threat match for the WWF Championship, this time at Survivor Series and involving Austin, HHH and now The Rock.
With Austin’s neck getting worse and worse, he had finally decided to have the surgery and was written off of TV following the Survivor Series. He had put it off since suffering the injury in August of ’97 and time had caught up with him. The WWF needed to do an angle that would explain Austin’s absence for nearly a year, given the lengthy amount of time he would need to recover and rehabilitate the neck. So on the night of Survivor Series 1999, a scene was shot in which Austin was hit by a speeding car and left on the ground, unconscious. The driver of the car was not revealed. Filling his spot in the triple threat main event would be the eventual winner, and next WWF Champion, The Big Show.
Austin was now off television for the next several months and Triple H was put into programs with other top stars such as Mick Foley and The Rock. Austin’s feud with Triple H wasn’t able to be concluded and the WWF had a ready-made “Whodunnit?” storyline for when Austin was ready to return to the ring. Austin made an appearance at Backlash in April 2000, helping The Rock to win the WWF Championship off of Triple H, but he was still months away from being physically ready to return to the ring. By the time he was ready, many things had changed in the WWF. For one, his arch rival, Triple H, was now playing the role of a tweener (in-between babyface and heel) and had been flirting with a full-out face turn. Another change was that Austin was no longer the company’s definite top babyface, as during his absence The Rock had reached arguably an equal, if not slightly higher, level of popularity. Some other notable changes: Foley had retired, Undertaker had returned from injuries himself and was once again a babyface but with a new biker gimmick, and Mr. McMahon was also acting as a tweener whenever he did appear on WWF programming. And while The Rock and Triple H had carried the WWF’s top feud of the year on their backs for most of 2000, a new superstar had entered the mix and was making a name for himself. He was the 1996 Olympic gold medalist, Kurt Angle.
Austin returned in October 2000 and of course he resumed his role at the top of the card. His first match back was against Rikishi, the man who had driven the car that hit him just under a year ago. Many wrestling fans felt that Rikishi being announced as the mystery driver was a disappointment. While Triple H was the obvious suspect, Rikishi’s involvement in November of 1999 made little sense until it was explained on RAW and SmackDown! that Rikishi did it “for The Rock”. Playing on their Samoan ancestry and close relationship, Rikishi took out Austin so that The Rock could be the one to benefit from his absence. He claimed that many other mega-stars of the past, Bruno Sammartino, Hulk Hogan and now Steve Austin, had been pushed instead of Samoan wrestlers such as “High Chief” Peter Maivia and “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka. Forget the small little fact that Rikishi had only made his debut (or his return, if you remember him from his Headshrinker Fatu, Fatu Make A Difference and/or The Sultan days) that Saturday before Survivor Series ’99. While there is technically nothing “wrong” with that, are the fans really supposed to believe that a new wrestler with little hype or build would have been involved in such a heavy role of taking out Austin? Usually, you had to build upto something like that, but I digress… It was obvious the WWF was trying to go the less-obvious route of having someone not named Hunter be revealed as the driver. Although they initially chose Rikishi, they gave themselves an out when they added the accomplice into the mix once they realized Rikishi had been a letdown.
The feud between Austin and Rikishi did not last long as shortly after their match at No Mercy in October, it was apparent that Rikishi had an accomplice in taking out Austin. In fact, not only was it revealed that he had an accomplice, but this new mystery helper had been the mastermind of the whole operation. Over the next few weeks on Raw, Austin was seen suffering numerous blindsided attacks in the backstage area. The “big reveal” came when Austin took on Rikishi and Kurt Angle on the November 6th edition of Monday Night Raw in a handicapped match. Eventually he was on the receiving end of a double-team beatdown by Rikishi and Kurt Angle. Angle had been involved in a feud with Triple H over the adoration of Stephanie McMahon and just when it seemed like Austin couldn’t take any more punishment from the two men, The Game’s music played and he was on his way to the ring. It seemed as though the odds were about to be evened until Triple H took his sledgehammer and, instead of nailing Angle or Rikishi, used it on Stone Cold.
In spite of the disappointment of Rikishi’s involvement, the swerve by Triple H came off very well. It accomplished many different things all at once: it cemented Triple H, once again, as the top heel and because of the way in which he teased a babyface turn, made him even an even hotter villain. It also tied up any loose ends in the “who ran over Austin?” storyline that may not have been answered with Rikishi being named the assailant and put the main responsibility back onto Triple, the original suspect. Finally, it resumed the Austin/Triple H feud from the previous year that had been cut short due to Austin’s neck surgery. Despite The Game scoring a tainted pinfall victory over Austin at No Mercy ’99, there had not been a clear winner in their feud since the angle was dropped, or at least paused, due to Austin’s injury. Though not on the lines of what the WWF fans would be treated to a little later in March of 2001 with Austin/Rock II, the Triple H/Austin feud had been over a year in the making and drew lots of hype.
Their first major match since Austin’s return took place at the 2000 edition of Survivor Series, but the match ended in a No Contest and nothing was settled. The next month they continued their feud as part of the Armageddon Hell In A Cell Match also involving The Undertaker, Rikishi, The Rock and Kurt Angle for Angle’s WWF Championship. Neither Austin nor Helmsley man walked out with the title and they both had different opponents scheduled for the following month’s Royal Rumble.
Prior to the 2001 Rumble, Austin was given a one-on-one match against Kurt Angle for the WWF Championship on RAW. Having been off of television for a few weeks before, Triple H made his return that night by costing Austin the match and, consequently, the title. Austin then entered the Royal Rumble match itself with the intention of winning the contest, going onto WrestleMania and getting back the WWF Championship that he had not possessed since August of 1999.
Austin entered at 27 and went on to win his record-setting third Royal Rumble, outlasting The Rock and Kane. He was on his way to WrestleMania, still unsure of his eventual opponent, but that would be determined at next month’s PPV, No Way Out. No Way Out would also feature the long-awaited and heavily hyped payoff to the Austin/Triple H feud. It would be a 3 Stages of Hell Match which was a two-out-of-three falls match, but with a twist. Each fall would have its own stipulation: the first would be a standard wrestling match, the second would be a street fight and if needed (and 95% of the time, it is!) the third fall would be inside a steel cage.
So to break down the outcome of the match it went like this: Austin won the first fall via pinfall around the twelve minute mark with the Stone Cold Stunner. Triple H fought back and won the second fall via pinfall after using the sledgehammer on Austin followed by The Pedigree. A bloodied Helmsley and an exhausted Austin were preparing for the final fall as the cage was lowered. Towards the end of the fall, Triple H was able to hit the Pedigree again, but Austin kicked out at two! Austin then hit the Stunner again, but The Game also kicked out at two! Both men struggled to reach their feet, grabbing their respective weapons in the process: Austin with the barbed wire 2×4 and Helmsley with Sledgie. They both connected and in a great finish, both men fell to the canvas, but lady lucky was with The Game as he landed on top of Austin for the 3 count.
I look to this night as the changing of the guard in the WWF. Many people point to WrestleMania X-Seven as the turning point in Austin’s career, and I won’t argue against that. But I think an equally compelling argument can be made for the previous month’s match in which he was defeated, and lost a feud for the first time since turning babyface back in mid 1997. The WWF was not done with Austin, not by a long shot. But they were establishing newer stars, and they had two gems to hitch their wagons to: HHH and The Rock. Austin lost his match to the Game at No Way Out and later in the night The Rock defeated Kurt Angle to regain the WWF Championship. This setup the classic match between Steve Austin and The Rock the next month in Houston and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Austin/Helmsley match at NWO2001 and, more importantly the outcome of this match, had many subtle effects on the WWF storylines going forward. As we all know, Austin “sold his soul” to Vince McMahon to win the WWF title the next month at WrestleMania. In pre-match promos, Austin would say things like “Rock, I need this more than anything you could ever imagine” and showed a never-before-seen hint of vulnerability. Kayfabe, he was once the most confident performer in the business and now, after losing to Triple H, we started to see signs of doubt. His pre-Mania promos showed the slightest signs of paranoia, but after the heel turn, it made sense. He wasn’t sure if he was the best any more and he knew that in order to beat The Rock at WrestleMania that he would have to be. Even so, he wasn’t certain he was able to without the help of Mr. McMahon. Austin did what he needed to do to ensure that he left WrestleMania 17 the World Wrestling Federation Champion. Beyond WrestleMania, he joined forces with the very man that had just bested him – Triple H – to form the Two Man Power Trip. It was another sign in the change of his confidence and showed even more paranoia, a characteristic he would go onto display fully later that Summer. Austin had always gone at it alone, but now you could see his mental weakness (If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?)
The Austin/HHH match is not nearly talked about as much as Austin/Rock II from the following month, but its effects were felt around the World Wrestling Federation for a very long time. In my opinion, the WrestleMania X-Seven main event is not remembered nearly as fondly without the Austin vs. Helmsley main event of the previous month.
Steve Austin was the biggest star in the company when he battled Triple H in February of 2001. Despite losing the match, he went onto recapture the WWF Championship for a fifth time by defeating The Rock at WrestleMania X-Seven just one month later. He turned heel and shockingly aligned himself with Mr. McMahon to do it. Though Austin would go back and forth between heel and babyface a couple more times before his career came to an end, this match was truly the last hurrah for babyface Steve Austin as the focal point of the company.
PARTICIPANT #2
Time to play The Game…
Hunter Hearst Helmsley. The Game. Triple H. King of Kings. HHH. The Cerebral Assassin. Whatever you want to call him, he got his start, his real start as a main event level talent, at the end of the Summer of 1999. Coincidentally, Steve Austin suffered a major setback in his career around the same time. While Austin was out healing from neck surgery, Triple H picked up the slack and worked feuds with Big Show, Mick Foley, The Rock and Kurt Angle all throughout 2000. Backstage politics aside, Triple H was a magnificent worker and put on some of the best matches of the Attitude era.
As mentioned earlier, many fans and insiders, including former WWF Champion Shawn Michaels, criticized Steve Austin for not putting over Triple H at SummerSlam ’99. Shawn, being a longtime friend of Triple H, felt that the right thing to do for the business was for Austin to drop the strap to Helmsley, not transition the belt through Mankind. Looking back now it’s easy to say that, but at the time, it wasn’t definite that Triple H would be a solid, consistent main eventer. Sure, he always had the potential, but so did many other superstars that never made it. So if Triple H wasn’t motivated before, he sure was after SummerSlam. He had been the Grenwich Snob, the Blue Blood, the Prankster Sidekick, the Prankster Leader of Heel DX, the Fun-Loving Leader of Face DX and he had a pretty good spot. But he wanted THE spot. He wanted to be THE man, and he threw all of that away, risking failure, to take his shot as being The Game. He would get his chance to be the main event.
Not only did Triple H prove that he was deserving of being in the main event, but he was soon headlining every major show put on by the WWF. In reality, he began dating Stephanie McMahon which certainly didn’t hurt his push, but he was still putting on classic matches month in, month out. He was involved both on-screen and off-screen with the boss’s daughter and once Austin had reappeared, Triple H was a mainstay at the top of the card.
By the time Austin returned to the WWF, Helmsley had been a multi-time former WWF Champion and was teasing a face-turn in the wake of his feud with home-wrecking Kurt Angle. As discussed earlier, Helmsley was eventually revealed as the mastermind behind the Austin attack of November 1999 and their feud had been re-ignited.
Before the two would meet again, however, Triple H, like Austin, would receive a shot at the WWF Championship. At the 2001 Royal Rumble, HHH wrestled Kurt Angle. In a true act of poetic justice, Triple H had Angle beat and the title won when Steve Austin interfered, just like HHH did on a recent edition of RAW, and he gave Helmsley the Stunner, costing him the match. This would be the final straw between the two men and their match was signed for No Way Out.
Not many people expected Triple H to come out of this thing as the winner. Forget their year-long feud and the fact that Triple H already had a pinfall victory over Austin and think about the scenario in which Austin lost. The company’s #1 babyface had just returned from a year-long injury-driven hiatus and just one month prior, won the Royal Rumble. During his absence, the company saw the rise of another mega-star who had supplanted Austin’s role as top babyface, whether you argue temporarily or permanently, in The Rock. Clearly the WWF was building to a face vs. face WrestleMania main event between the company’s top two stars ala Hogan/Warrior at WrestleMania VI. And right before they’re set to square off, one of the stars LOSES?!? And to a heel?! And he loses without interference, I dare say, cleanly (given the stipulations)??!?!? That is unheard of! Could you have seen Warrior losing to Earthquake on Saturday Night’s Main Event right before WrestleMania VI? Or how about Michaels losing to the Bulldog three weeks before WrestleMania XII? The only thing somewhat comparable would be Bret Hart’s loss to Owen at WrestleMania X, but that served a different purpose. Owen went over that day to further their feud and lead into a long program with his brother culminating in a steel cage match at SummerSlam ‘94, which ultimately saw Bret win. This match at No Way Out was the payoff match to the entire Austin/Helmsley feud. Sure, the WWF was probably planning another match of Austin vs. Triple H: The Two Man Power Trip Explodes somewhere down the line if Helmsley hadn’t torn his quad. But this decision of Austin losing to Triple H wasn’t to setup another match between the two or to continue their program, quite the contrary; this was the end of it. And Triple H came out on top. The bad guy won and he defeated the best good guy in the company. That sort of thing just didn’t happen and it certainly didn’t happen before the main event of the biggest show of the year. Any future feuds between the two would be based on another set of factors, and most likely with a different dynamic (heel Austin vs. face HHH, heel Austin vs. heel HHH, etc.). This just goes to show you how monumental this outcome truly was.
Following No Way Out 2001, Triple H went on to become the ninth victim of The Undertaker at WrestleMania, but rebounded rather well from that loss the following night on RAW. In what would prove to be The Rock’s last match before leaving for Hollywood to film The Mummy, the People’s Champ received his rematch against Steve Austin in a steel cage the night after WrestleMania. The Rock was being pummeled by Mr. McMahon and the new WWF Champion until Triple H came down and looked ready to make the save. Only, he didn’t save The Rock, he added to the beatdown. We had seen this before. In fact, it was about five months earlier that Triple H made a similar entrance, appearing to come to the aid of Steve Austin, only to turn on him shortly after hitting the ring. Ironically, this time it was Austin he was joining and Rocky he was attacking. Many fans remember this day as the day the Two Man Power Trip was formed, and although that is certainly memorable, something else occurred that was much bigger and had much more long-term impact. Within 24 hours, culminating on this episode of Monday Night Raw, the WWF had lost its two biggest babyfaces. The WWF went from having two of the biggest babyfaces in the history of their business main eventing a sold out Houston Astrodome to having zero. Austin was now a heel. Rock was now a movie star. The company’s top babyface was…who? Although both men would eventually return to their babyface and wrestler roles, respectively, Austin and The Rock were never the same after this night. Rock would make short-term appearances in between filming movies, but it was always a matter of time before he would be gone again. Until, WrestleMania XX when he left for good. Stone Cold would remain a heel until the fall, and then leave the company only a few months later after run-ins with the writing team. Injuries and time once again caught up with Steve as he eventually settled his differences and agreed to return to the WWF, but wrestled his last match to date at WrestleMania XIX. He lost cleanly to The Rock for the first time ever at WrestleMania.
Following WrestleMania X-Seven, Triple H would feud briefly with Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit, and would win the Intercontinental and Tag Team Championship. The Two Man Power Trip held the WWF, Intercontinental and Tag Team Championship, collectively, before Triple H tore his quad in May of 2001. This would end the Two Man Power Trip prematurely and put The Game on the shelf for almost nine months. It is safe to say that his victory over Steve Austin in the 3 Stages of Hell Match was his biggest win of his career upto that point as it cemented him as one of the, if not THE, best wrestlers in the business. Like defeating Hulk Hogan in the 80s and 90s, it was no small feat for a wrestler to defeat Steve Austin and to do so in the fashion that Triple H did it during 2001. It just goes to show you how extremely over Steve Austin was that even with him losing the war with Triple H, he was still able to bring the kind of attention and anticipation into his match with The Rock the very next month. That isn’t something most people would have been able to pull off, but then again we’re talking about Stone Cold Steve Austin. Furthermore, there aren’t many other wrestlers that would have been chosen to go over Austin the way in which Helmsley was. That said a lot about how far Triple H had come and says even more about him today when you consider the career he has had. Though Austin may have been criticized for not wanting to put over Triple H in 1999, he made up for that in 2001.
PARTICIPANT #2 WRAP-UP
Triple H tore his quad shortly after the birth of the Power Trip and any future plans involving the Two Man Power Trip-le H had to be scrapped. The Invasion started soon after his departure and by the time The Game returned, the failed angle was over with and he was welcomed back a babyface.
