Paul “Triple H” Levesque is one of the greatest wrestlers to have ever competed in the WWE, and he has remained at the organisation after his retirement, now in an executive role.
However, he has recently revealed that he almost walked away from the sport due to being forced to work with one wrestler early in his career.
In a recent appearance on Andrew Schulz’s “Flagrant” podcast, the 14-time world champion described the problematic match that led him to have a heated confrontation with the then WWE Chairman Vince McMahon.
Triple H threatened to quit the organisation after his match in 1997 with Ahmed Johnson as he called into question McMahon’s booking decisions, with this being the only time he directly challenged the former chairman about this.
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He said: “The only time I went to him and bitched was when he put me in a match with a guy that was almost impossible to work with. I was wrestling a guy that was just terrible. They wanted me to have this long match with him.
“They gave me the worst referee, which a referee can help you work around people’s inabilities. Such as if I need a guy to do something and he’s not doing something right, I can’t just go over and tell him, but I can tell the referee, and he can go over and tell him."
Triple H did not rate Johnson, singling out one area in particular as a huge issue leading to his confrontation with McMahon.
He said: “It was a guy named Ahmed Johnson; he was just terrible. He was hurting people, and he was just big, and you couldn’t understand him, and he had an attitude problem.
“When I came back, I was pissed, and I went to Vince and cut a promo on him and said, 'Hey, f**k it. If you’re not going to allow me to have the chance to succeed, then fk that, I’m out of here. You can’t put me in a position where I cannot f**king succeed and can’t even do my job. If you put me in that position, I have no choice but to go.’”
However, surprisingly to Triple H, McMahon appeared measured and calm with his response to the outburst.
He explained: “I thought he was going to go off on me, and he didn’t. He was like, ‘That’s fair, that’s fair’. And I said, 'Well, OK then, f**king don’t do it again,' and he just walked out.”
Johnson only fought in the WWE for three years, between 1995 and 1998, and this short stint seems to make sense due to the criticism he has faced from other professionals for his stiff working style, despite being positioned initially as a rising star.
Brendan McGilligan