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Sheamus On Getting Heat Over Working Out With Triple H, People Getting Angry About His 2009 WWE Title Win

July 8, 2020 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Sheamus WWE Image Credit: WWE

On the latest episode of After the Bell, Sheamus recalled how much heat he had when he came into WWE in 2009. Sheamus had been signed with WWE since 2007 and made his debut in June of 2009. He was put through a few feuds before in December he earned a shot at John Cena and the WWE Championship, which he won in what was at the time the third-quickest rise to the WWE Championship ever.

At that time, the perception had quickly spread due to reports that Sheamus was benefiting from being friends with Triple H. Sheamus noted that the whole thing came due to Triple H offering to help him a bit during a tour of Australia and that the whole thing led to him getting a lot of heat with people. You can check out highlights of the discussion and the full audio below:

On getting heat over his association with Triple H: “There’s a lot of people, from day one I was etched in with a black mark about you know, who I am. So when I first started, Triple H was there and he took me under his wing. And he was just like, ‘Listen.’ We went to a tour in Australia. And I didn’t know anybody because I was on Smack-\down, but got switched to a tour of Raw of Australia in 2009. And he said, ‘Listen, you don’t know anybody. So if you want to go to the gym and work out, you know what I mean? And I’ll watch your matches and give you any feedback.’ And I was blown away. If you do that now, everybody in NXT does that now, right? And there is not one peep said about it, right? They all go online, you see Finn Balor and everybody, and Tommaso Ciampa and Adam Cole talk about Triple H. When I got help, and I never went out there and pushed it out there.”

On the perception that he got everything because he was Triple H’s friend: “It was like, I went to the gym once or twice — maybe two or three times we had a workout — and apparently I was Triple H’s workout buddy. I got blasted by everybody who was in contact with dirt sheets … I got absolutely blasted, man. And it was like, oh, I was up Triple H’s ass, I’m a kiss-ass and this, and this. So no matter what I did in the first couple years to like, achievement-wise, it was blacklisted. I only got that because, ‘You know, he’s up Triple H’s ass … all this sort of stuff. Not alone in the fact that I bust my balls, I was doing five or six shows a week, I was driving to shows I didn’t have to be just to go there and learn. I was going to FCW when I could have been sitting at home to keep learning. None of that really mattered. The only narrative that people saw was I was a kiss-ass. So right off the get-go, man. It was just like, ‘Boom.’

“Especially when I won that title off John [Cena] in 2009 at TLC. Bro, so many people, fella, were so mad! They were so mad! Saying ‘Who the f**k is this guy coming in here? Who is he? Where did he come from?’ I’ve been here six years, I’ve been here eight years. I’ve never been WWE Champion. He’s here five minutes, and he’s WWE Champ!”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit WWE’s After the Bell with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.

article topics :

Sheamus, Triple H, WWE, Jeremy Thomas