
Part I
I didn't watch the show last night but while reading the recaps someone noted that there was a "TRIPLE H FEARS DIVORCE" sign displayed prominently from the audience.
I left off the last post trying to figure out why Ric Flair is so certain Triple H could've drawn money and been successful in the territorial era. His ring work is solid but rarely memorable to my eyes.
Yet he's always put in the same breath as people like Shawn Michaels, the Undertaker and Bret Hart by WWE brass, but whereas I can think of at least 5 incredible, unforgettable matches off the top of my head that those guys have been a part of: Triple H...nah, not really, despite main eventing every card since 1981. As I've said I can recall 2. I watched matches between him and Chris Jericho recently, and his cage match from 2003 against Kevin Nash. These matches weren't bad, they were even entertaining at times, but were they the work of a "legend" at his peak? Absolutely not. Were they pieces of wrestling history like Shawn and Undertaker's Hell in the Cell match, or Steve Austin and Bret Hart's "I Quit" match? Not even close.
Does Triple H honestly have a match like that on his resume? I don't think so.
Would he have used his sterling mic skills and infectious charisma to get over in the territorial era, say in Mid-Atlantic?
I mean, Triple H comes off as so overwritten, forced and stiff. To be fair, though, Mick Foley and Ric Flair have both complained that everything on WWE is overwritten these days.
But going back to charisma and microphone skills, Triple H is average at best, eye-rollingly terrible at worst.
Again, I can't think of single Triple H promo after thousands of hours of mic time over the years that was funny, emotional, intense or even memorable 5 minutes after it was over. He was, of course, in the infamous WWE necrophilia skit that Linda Mac has somehow successfully explained away in her bid to win the Connecticut Republican Primary and a chance for Chris Dodd's Senate seat.
Those DX skits from their last 2 incarnations were the epitome of pitiful "comedy" the current writers are so devoted to. The only reason DX ever even got over initially is because Shawn Michaels was in his prime and capable of a 5 star match every time he got in the ring. Triple H was a hanger-on/mid-card diversion, but then the big hook-up happened and all of a sudden "the baddest man of the planet" emerged and has plagued us ever since.
Wrestlers can get over with either great in-ring work or a great personality that they can express on the microphone. Some, like Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels, have both.
By that criteria I just don't see how Triple H, without the McMahon Machine behind him, could have gotten over completely on his own like Ric Flair insists, and I really don't see what the difference between someone like him and Christian or Hardcore Holly would be if he wasn't a McMahon.
This is not to say he wouldn't be successful in the wrestling industry at all. Of course he's talented enough to make a living in wrestling. My argument is that without certain advantages I seriously doubt he'd have earned the status to headline multiple Wrestlemanias and I'm certain that without those advantages and their reach we wouldn't be constantly hand-sold the fiction that he's a "legend."
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