Where do you rank Triple H all time?

[supertrekker]

X-Pac was the litmus test if you were coming in the E back in the day. If you couldn’t have a good match with him, you couldn’t have a good match with anybody

 

[Brehcepticon]

Not even in the top 5,000

 

[Switch]

Why does Steph look so evil?

 

[Golayitdown]

Why does Steph look so evil?

And that’s her sweetheart face

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

fukking steamboat and Owen over Triple H are you crazy? I love Owen and he’s probably in my top 15 personal favorites but over Triple H is insane

Lol what do you mean am I crazy? Owen Hart and SteamGOAT are both clearly better ring workers and have more great matches than Triple H. Dragon also was one of the most over faces ever and was definitely more over than Triple H ever was.

 

[Peter Parker]

Lol what do you mean am I crazy? Owen Hart and SteamGOAT are both clearly better ring workers and have more great matches than Triple H.

I wont debate Owen with you because I agree he was better in ring than post-quad tear HHH, but body of work? It's unfortunate but its like debating Big L or Jay, he don't got the body of work to stand up to HHH

 

[Jmare007]

Last time I did a top 100 was like 6 years ago and had La Nariz at 92

I wont debate Owen with you because I agree he was better in ring than post-quad tear HHH, but body of work? It's unfortunate but its like debating Big L or Jay, he don't got the body of work to stand up to HHH

I thin body of work in wrestling is overstated. There's only a very few examples of longevity goes in hand with consistently to a point that it's actually a plus in a wrestler's resumen. Peak years and how those were worked >>> being 20 years in top programs (were politics played a huge part) with only 1 or 2 of those years being a legit stand out period.

 

[Golayitdown]

If we're talking about all-time rankings, a theoretically expansive all-time list that encompasses what we can currently watch of wrestling going back to the 1920s/10s/whatever, even Top 50 might be pushing it. I'll give him Top 100, but beyond that is going to require some seriously close examination. This in no way means that he was a bad wrestler (he had his moments of unwatchability, but he also had legitimate moments of greatness), just that when you stack him up against legitimately, unimpeachably great wrestlers in all-time ranking arguments, he seriously pales in comparison.

Let me put it to you like this: I recently watched two Triple H matches that reminded me of a Bret Hart quote from a while back (I promise I'm putting my hatred of Hunter aside here). One of them was his Summerslam 1997 steel cage match against Mankind (right around the time he got Chyna as a bodyguard, right after he won that year's King of the Ring, still doing the New England elite gimmick, shortly before they hook up with Shawn Michaels and Rick Rude to form DX) and the other was his first RAW match against Shelton Benjamin (side note: if you ever needed an argument both for and against Shelton's star potential, this is the match for you). The Bret Hart quote was:



(Had to give the whole quote in case you all decided to not watch the video: )

You can say that Bret's lionizing a certain type of wrestling or an ideal of what wrestling should be, but there's an essential truth to what he says here. Hunter is often a guy who's just good enough to be a part of great matches, and is also a deeply uncreative, derivative wrestler.

Quick, think of your favorite Triple H match. Now, think of the best parts of those matches. In any of those examples, is Triple H actually the driver of the spot? Is what he does your most prominent memory of the moment or the match? Often times, the answer is no. Most everything good that Mankind match involves Hunter as a secondary player. Mankind is the guy the crowd's invested in, the guy taking the risk, the guy all of the heat is on. The crowd could barely give a fukk about H, and he's about to be placed into a main event stable in three weeks or so. Whenever he is in any way the most memorable part of the match, or the person putting the match together, it's because of the second point.

Triple H is a fukking ripoff artist as a wrestler. This isn't a bad thing; some of your favorite wrestlers are shameless ripoff artists (see: Ric Flair, who jacked the entire structure of the Nature Boy gimmick from Buddy Rogers). But that Shelton Benjamin match is damn near a carbon copy of Flair's matches with Sting. The entire concept of Evolution, down to the very month to month booking of the stable, was ripped from the Four Horsemen. Hell, his NWA fetishism in general. But he's an incredibly uncreative wrestler, and this is often why his long matches can be so dull at times. He also gets a significant amount of mileage out of that well, and many of his best ideas as a wrestler and administrator come from that well, but it's been well-worn. Sometimes, we need something new, not an homage.

Bret has the absolute correct take on Hunter as a wrestler: A good worker who had an excellent career, but also wasn't really as great as he or everyone else wants us to believe because he was lacking in the attributes that makes someone a true all-time great.

Let me put it like this: John Cena is better and and someone who is probably a lock for a Top 50 all-time spot, and it really isn't even an argument to me.

Just made me hit backspace on my whole post

Nothing but facts posted here.

When I really sit here and think about it, top 50 is a stretch. He isn’t near the 10 or 20 guys you typically hear on the Mount Rushmore list. Realistically, he isn’t head and shoulders better than the vast majority of guys he faced. He was never the guy you tuned in for in any of his feuds.

It’s even worse if you the list guys who are either all time greats in the ring or on the mic. His name doesn’t come up anywhere on either list for a long time.

Bret’s point about what have you really done is key because yeah he worked with Rock and Austin but anything they touched got over (catchphrases, backstage interviewers, etc.). When it was his time to shine after they left, there was a noticeable drop in quality from what we as fans had come to expect from the top guy in the company. There’s a reason they had to run to make another traditional top guy in Cena (which is another issue in itself).

Most of my memories of HHH and the content I absolutely know he is responsible for ranks as some of the absolute worst shyt in history (Katie Vick, the Booker T incident, the trash DX reunions). Some of it ( such as the reign of terror burying guys who could have definitely been champ, trash 20 minute promos that was the start of raw falling off a cliff for years, and inserting himself in the CM Punk and Bryan pushes that each could have sparked a new era) is still felt today.

His whole B+ program with Bryan was so applicable to him. He was never the best at anything or the guy you came to see. He was a guy who worked with the guy and when he knew his role and just did that, he was above average.

 

[El Cocodrilo]

I get why people hate him but I would still say he's in the top 100 all time.

He's not in my top 25, but I gotta give the devil his due.

Now if he's in the 30's, 50's or the 90's I'm not sure without going through and ranking 100 names which I'm not doing

 

[Roid Jones]

I knew HHH weren't shyt when he lifted Shane Douglas' whole style

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

Hhh was the type to latch on to whoever was hot to keep himself relevant.

He slurped off shawn Michaels until he retired.

He was leader of dx but was one of the least popular in the group.

Hhh slept with the boss daughter so now all of the sudden its the McMahon- hemsley era which was just an extension of the fued vince had against the rock or Austin.

Both austin & the rock leave so now he turns raw into the hhh show where talks about how great he is for 20 mins before the real program actually begins.

During that time he single handedly kills the momentum of every wrestler from the main event scene who people came to see.

Fast forward a few years later & we get a cheap dx reunion where he attempts to be cool & edgy one more time.

He tries to be vince McMahon with the authority COO that nobody asked for.

He kills off one of the hottest angles & turns it into another hhh show.

Doesn't work mania now unless it's in front of 70,000 people & he gets a 10 min king of kings cerebral assasin ass kicker theatrical entrance.

He has it now where everybody who wins the nxt title have to come backstage after the match & slurp him off on camera & tell him how much he inspires them & worship the ground he walks on.

Hhh got 20+ years in the business & if you cut off the fat he got MAYBE 5 good years to him.

Ok. Like I said I haven’t really watched wrestling since about 02 but the responses in this thread confirm my suspicions that Triple H’s career since 2000 is a 20 year-long version Jeff Jarrett’s WCW push in 2000.

 

[Switch]

Hard to rank him, great heel but he’s been involved in so much bullshyt from 2003 onwards

And some of the most forgettable Wrestlemania main events

 

[BrehWyatt]

He didn’t do anything at an all time great level. He was just consistent. He’s kind of like the Drake of wrestling. He’s better than most people doing it, but he’s never done anything that made you say “he can’t top that, it was too good”

Consistency is a good thing.

If there were a top 25, he'd be in it. In CFB terms, he's basically Wisconsin. You know what you're getting. Always gonna be solid. Occasionally, you get flashes of greatness/excellence. He's a perennial/consensus top 20 guy on accolades alone. Depending on the year/person stating the case for him? Top 10.

But I really wish people would stop using the Steph shyt against him. He was already a multi-time WWF Champion before they even became an item on OR off-screen Does he get 14 without her? Probably not. But he probably gets 5-7. That's still HOF.