So, what do I want to talk about this week? Well, it’s one man, and it’s also a kind of response to LG’s challenge on the Smash columns board for every writer to write about one man that changed the business. I’m going to write about one man, and it might not be pretty, but it needs to be said. That man? Triple H...
Yes, Triple H, the man that like him or not, has been at the top of the ladder since the turn of the millennium, and that includes his more recent injury prone incarnation also. The Triple H of 2000 was deservedly the top of the ladder, he was a class above anything else in the WWE at the time, and HHH2000 would have chewed up and spat out HHH2003 without even losing sweat... except for one thing.
The run Trips had in 2000 enabled him to wield no end of backstage power, and his budding relationship with Vince’s little princess Stephanie can’t have done him any harm either. Now, I can hear all the Trips die-hards screaming at me that I can’t possibly know that he has all this pull backstage, and that it’s all exaggerated, and blah blah blah... Like it or not, pretty much all of the WWE’s behind the scenes activity is portrayed pretty accurately on the Internet for my money.
Reputable people like Dave Meltzer, Dave Scherer, and Bob Ryder to name but a few haven’t made a career, and reputation, out of peddling lied and made up rhetoric over the years. They have nothing to gain by fabricating stuff like this, and everything to lose. So, for the purposes of this column, I’ll assume that Trips does basically have Vince’s ear and can more or less do what he wants.
But the surefire way of proving what Trips can and can’t do backstage is by looking at his win/loss record since this millennium began. Starting in January 2000, and yes, I did do the checking on this, if you look at Trips in singles matches on free TV only, do you know how many of those matches he’s lost clean in just under 40 months? Absolutely none. Not a single match has he lost clean.
Every match he’s lost has either been a disqualification, a count-out, a screwjob by the referee or interference from someone else costing him the match. Even allowing for his near 8 month absence from our screens in late 2002 with that horrific quad injury, I find that quite incredible. We’re not even talking about him working against midcarders, or jobbers here (with the matches against Maven, TAKA Michinoku, or Spike Dudley etc. that he won easily excepted) with this stat - he’s worked against the cream of the WWE, WCW and even ECW.
To me that’s an incredible record to maintain, and to be honest, his work since his return in January last year hasn’t merited that sort of protection of his record in any way, shape or form... which means he must have some pull backstage to be allowed that sort of luxury.
Even if you look at PPV... since Royal Rumble 2000, he has lost just 2 singles matches cleanly - 1 of which was to his well known friend and Clique accomplice Shawn Michaels on his much vaunted comeback, although he did claim that win back in a 2 out of 3 falls match within 6 months, just in case. The other clean loss? Against The Undertaker at WrestleMania X7 - and the Undertaker is one of the few guys that will have the pull to score a clean win over Trips, let alone at WrestleMania!
To be able to escape with just 2 clean losses on PPV in just over 3 years stuns me. It shows to me that if you bust your ass (as he did in 200, without a doubt) you can manoeuvre yourself into a cushy position in the company and free wheel along after that, without really raising your game (pardon the pun) any. Of course, the added bonus of becoming a McMahon-to-be does have a lot of influence as well.
To be honest, if any one of us had the chance to do what Trips does now, to be more or less guaranteed to remain at or near the top of our chosen career with little effort, just because of how you’re connected, I doubt anyone of us (me included) would turn it down, and I’m not going to criticise him for what is essentially human nature. But at the end of the day he is hurting business at the moment by remaining so untouchable.
He’s not a pull as Raw’s Champion, his ringwork is nowhere near what it used to be, or should be now, and he does seem to be somewhat injury prone. The bulk he added for his comeback in January last year could well be pointed to for 2 of those problems, but that’s his concern, not anyone else’s. You have to wonder though - what if Chris Jericho, or Rob Van Dam, or Kane, or Booker T, or anyone else that’s hovered around the top of the card over the past 18 months had been given the chance to run with the title...
Would they have been allowed to survive the debacle that was the Kane/Katie Vick feud unscathed? Would they have been allowed to perform at a level so far below what is expected of them? Wouldn’t they have been told that their run as champion failed because of the lower ratings? Even given the fact that the wrestling industry is in a slump right now, Raw’s ratings are vastly lower than what’s expected.
I’m not saying all of that is solely Trips’ fault, but having a guy that is more or less guaranteed to win, or at least not lose properly to his opponent, and do nothing more than attempt to siphon heat off them and to himself doesn’t inspire people to keep coming back for more. Even on the Smash Forums, hell, even amongst some of the staff, you get the feeling that the WWE is in real danger of losing their hardcore fans, the people that have been following them for years and years... when that happens, surely something is wrong.
For the right reasons or wrong, Trips has changed the business... I leave it up to you to decide if it’s for the better...
Until next time, have fun, go mad.
