"And the crowd turned on me" - Ex-WWE star recalls wrestling Triple H
The in-ring career of WWE legend Triple H spanned across three decades. During this time, The King of Kings wrestled so many big names and quite a few stars that don't exactly fit that bill.
In an unusual scenario that happened back in 2004, Triple H's feud with then-World Heavyweight Champion Chris Benoit deviated to the former facing Eugene in a singles bout at SummerSlam.
Recounting the moment, Eugene detailed on Steve Fall's Ten Count that Triple H was favored by the crowd in Toronto, Canada, despite The Game being a despised heel at the time:
"Main event guy [Triple H]. And the crowd turned on me. Toronto turned on Eugene big time. Big time," Eugene recalled. "In my head now, looking back, I should have thrown a temper tantrum, and told him to shut up, and started feeding into it."
However, being one of the top names in WWE at the time, Triple H was the one that led the match, and Eugene revealed that he did not want to overstep his boundaries. He continued:
"But I was kind of in between because I'm in there with Triple H. It's his match. He's calling the match. I'm following him. I don't feel like I need to break off into, you know, but it was still a good reaction, although it wasn't the reaction that I got in the previous months, you know, in the build up." [From 16:20 to 16:56]
Triple H won the match in 14 minutes. On the SummerSlam fallout edition of RAW, Evolution turned on Randy Orton, a moment now looked back on as one of the best of WWE's flagship show. The Game went on to win the World Heavyweight Championship at the next pay-per-view.
Meanwhile, Eugene wrestled another top WWE star at SummerSlam the following year, Kurt Angle.
After sporadically competing on the main roster and on Heat, Eugene was finally released by the company in September 2007.
Triple H allegedly did not want to wrestle the former WWE star at SummerSlam
On an episode of the Cafe de Rene podcast, Eugene spoke to former WWE Superstar Rene Dupree about what he heard before the bout. According to the former, it was Vince McMahon's idea to book him against Triple H at SummerSlam in what was their blow-off match:
"Someone had said, I don’t know if this is true, he [Triple H] didn’t feel like Eugene was the right guy he probably should have wrestled at SummerSlam. But Vince was like, 'No, this is the blow-off, we need a pinnacle here.' I don’t know, but Triple H definitely had fun with it because all of a sudden he’s got a guy who can work a different character."
Who remembers triple H vs Eugene https://t.co/bQimC4JVPy
Triple H and Eugene's feud concluded three weeks after SummerSlam, with The Game once again defeating his rival on the September 4, 2004, episode of RAW.
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