Triple H made his triumphant return to the WWE on Sunday at the Royal Rumble, gaining retribution over Roman Reigns for physically assaulting him at the TLC PPV. The Game would throw Reigns over the top rope, eliminating him from the Rumble match.
Oh – by the way, Triple H himself would win the Rumble as well as the WWE World Heavyweight title.
So for the fifth straight year, the main event at Wrestlemania is going to have a part-timer in the ring. In effect, WWE hasn’t found the guts to move on to a new set of stars who can carry on the baton from the golden generation that led the company through the Attitude era and the decade after the same.
Aren’t guys like Bray Wyatt, Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, Dolph Ziggler, Kevin Owens and a ton of other stars down at NXT capable of carrying the company to a new dawn? Would it have made a difference had C M Punk and Daniel Bryan been in the active roster right now?
Don’t get me wrong, putting legends in the ring for a few final hurrahs is not a bad idea. The fans want to see guys like the Undertaker, Sting , Triple H and Chris Jericho coming over for ‘Mania.
But having a guy like Triple H, who has already moved on to a new age Mr.McMahon like persona, being the defending champion at the grandest stage is a sure fire way for the ratings to go further down.
However, much of the fans loved the Rock coming back to main event two straight Wrestlemanias, and it cannot be denied that his being there denied the opportunity that the actual wrestlers of the roster needed to become the next true superstar.
CM Punk stole the show with his WWE Championship match at Wrestlemania 27 and the most popular wrestler of the time had to settle for the consolation prize that was a loss to the Undertaker the very next year. Nobody can blame Punk for walking out of the company when he learned that Wrestlemania 30 would have Batista – who had signed the shortest of all short-term contracts – battling Randy Orton in the main event.
Punk moved on to other things and not even the ‘Yes’ movement could prevent the WWE from putting the title on Brock Lesnar the following year heading into ‘Mania.
Now then, Brock has been booked great throughout his second run with the company, but the one thing he does not want to do is to be on the show every night, wrestling. Understandably, Brock vs Reigns at Wrestlemania 31 had a pre-match build up with as much intensity as a Rob Schneider movie.
The fans got tired of the WWE Champion not showing up for weeks and the prestige of the title took a nose dive.
There is no reason to expect that Triple H’s fourteenth reign will be any different. He is definitely not going to lose the title at Fastlane and he certainly won’t be involved in wrestling matches leading up to ‘Mania. In short, there will be more of those typically boring Authority promos and Reigns having to battle the usual heavy odds stacked up against him.
HHH might be great on the mic, but when you are the WWE World Heavyweight Champion going into the biggest match of the year, you are supposed to build the match up with your fists, not your tongue. Expect the WWE title to become even less relevant in the coming months!!!
HHH’s title reign reaffirms the suspicions that the over-milked Authority angle is going to go on for a very long time, much to the chagrin of a majority of the wrestling fans.
There is nothing wrong with a heel stable comprising of oppressive authority figures – Mr.McMahon made the biggest Pro wrestling draw in history with such an angle against Stone Cold; however what is wrong is the lazy writing where Stephanie and Triple H are booked to always stand in the ring, getting the last word over active wrestlers.
I believe Stephanie has never come out of a promo segment on Raw without having the last word and burying the talent she stands across the ring from – except for one time when Reigns said he would put Vince McMahon in the hospital.
The loud cheers that accompanied that comment instead of the usual mixed reaction that a Reigns promo would gain should have turned the heads of the WWE Creative – But hey, that would mean utilizing common sense!
Even Seth Rollins – who by all means, should have been the dominant heel for the better part of last year – got pushed into the background while aligning with the Authority. Giving him Triple H’s Pedigree as the finisher and booking him as a cowardly chump is definitely not the way to produce the new breakout star.
I will not even get in to how Randy Orton was forced to transform from his Viper persona to becoming nothing more than the Authority’s favorite tool during his time as the champion a couple of years back.
WWE has been at pains to point out how the nWo’s creative control clause eventually led to the demise of WCW. Marketable superstars like Goldberg were pushed to the background as Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash booked themselves to have one World title reign after another.
Look a little closer and you see the very same trend developing in the WWE as well. Crib about a near 50-year-old Hulk Hogan winning the WCW title in 1999?
Sixteen years later, another 50-year-old superstar with creative control and close ties to the management - or even worse, who is part of the management himself – has won the WWE World Heavyweight title.
No wonder, people want the WWE to bring back the Attitude era – at that time, with WCW breathing down its neck, the WWE had to give the fans what they wanted or risk going out of business. With no credible challenger in sight, WWE management might think that the fans have no choice but to go along with any vanity production that has been force-fed to them.
Learn a lesson from the history of WCW – a bigger fall is coming!
What makes Sting special? His first AEW opponent opens up RIGHT HERE.
