The Greatness of Triple H
If you’re into podcasting, and wrestling, Talk is Jericho is about as good as it gets. (Jericho is such podcasting gold that his episode on the Nerdist podcast was absolutely the best interview Chris Hardwick ever did. Even better than the Mitch Hurwitz episode.) In two recent episodes, Jericho has a long interview with Triple H. I cannot possibly recommend it enough.
Some thoughts:
* How great is Jericho? He plays the audio of one of Triple H’s first on camera interviews, when he had just been handed the gimmick of French heel Jean-Paul Levesque. His French accent is atrocious. And Jericho says he sounds Manuel from Fawlty Towers. Gold.
(The bow on top of this incident is that as he’s getting ready to do the spot, Triple H notices that the interviewer, Gordon Solie, is totally hammered. One of the crew members whispers to Triple H, as he’s walking to the camera, “If he collapses, try to clothesline him so you can draw some heat.”)
* Triple H has long been my favorite modern-era wrestler. (Modern era, for me, meaning, guys I watched primarily as an adult and not a kid.) I don’t know that he’s the best talent of his generation–though he’s certainly top five. He was just my favorite. Now I understand why: He’s a normal guy.
I don’t mean normal in the sense of being just an average joe. He’s clearly not. But while most wrestlers have junior varsity rock-star lives, Triple H seems to have approached his profession like any high-achieving, ambitious guy in other industries, might: He focused on the wrestling business early, knew he wanted to work in the WWE, and set about learning everything there was about the company and its history. Then, when he got hired, he showed deference to elders and waited his turn while working hard. He was the first guy at the office and the last guy to leave. He hung around waiting for the bosses to ask him to do stuff and when they did, he said yes. That’s how you make yourself indispensable. And how you succeed. You say yes. You get into position so that when the boss tosses you the ball, you’re ready to catch and run. But you never demand that they throw it to you. That’s for diva wide-outs and office d-bags.
Where most wrestlers approach their jobs as a lifestyle, Triple H seems to have approached it like a career.
Whether you want to be a doctor or a writer or anything else, this is a pretty good formula for success. (And it’s a formula that’s anathema to most of the Millennials I see who want to start their careers in upper-management and then work to start co-opting ownership straight away.)
* In a weird way, Triple H has lived the wresting equivalent of Charles Murray’s Curmudgeon’s Guide.
* Not really being a Shawn Michaels guy, I never fully understood how influential Michaels was to late-’90s wrestling. I guess he really was The Man.
* Triple H tells a story about his first night out with the Kliq. Whoa.
I’ll leave you with this: The tag-match in which Triple H tore his quad muscle, but finished the match anyway. The last four minutes of this is one of the best bits of storytelling I’ve ever seen in the ring. Epic.
