5 WWE Superstars and what happened when they first met Triple H
From 1995 to the present day, Triple H has been among the most prominent in-ring competitors on WWE programming. Granted, in recent years he has drastically cut back on the number of matches he works per year, but he always finds himself in a featured one-on-one match when WrestleMania comes around.
Off-screen, “The King of Kings” is the patriarch of WWE’s increasingly popular NXT ‘developmental’ brand, transforming the FCW system and turning it into an NFL-worthy process which allows men and women with little-to-no wrestling background to work on their characters and become the Superstars that we see today on Raw and SmackDown Live.
Given the power that HHH wields, it is only natural that Superstars can easily recall their first meeting with one of the most influential people in the wrestling industry. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five people within WWE – some past, some present – and find out what happened when they first met the 14-time world champion.
#5 Samoa Joe
Samoa Joe debuted in NXT in May 2015 and he quickly established himself as one of the most dominant Superstars on the brand. He won the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic with Finn Balor in October 2015 and he became NXT champion within his first year on WWE television.
Since then, he has become a two-time NXT champion, while he has gone on to feature in PPV main events against established names including Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns, and he won his first singles title on the main roster in March 2019, when he dethroned R-Truth as United States champion.
Although Joe has had success on Raw and SmackDown Live, he revealed in a ‘WWE Chronicle’ documentary in 2018 that Triple H was brutally honest with him during their first meeting and he doubted whether a “late 30-something” would make it beyond the NXT system.
“He said, ‘Hey, you know, you coming in here, it will be a great help to NXT and you can do your own stuff, and I think we can have a good working relationship. But I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think Vince [McMahon] is looking to put a late 30-something, you know, looking to promote him up to the main roster. That was said within the first few sentences of us meeting.”