Triple H Threatened To Quit WWE Because Of A Former Champion
Triple H hated working with a former champion in WWE so much that he nearly quit the company.
The career of Paul “Triple H” Levesque was celebrated at the 2025 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony, as the WWE’s Chief Content Officer was able to step back from running the company creatively to discuss his legendary run as a wrestler.
Early in Triple H’s WWE career, he was involved in something called the MSG Incident. During a live event at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1996, a group hug took place between WWE Champion Shawn Michaels, Diesel (Kevin Nash), Razor Ramon (Scott Hall), and Hunter Hearst Helmsley. As the story goes, some WWE officials were furious about it since Michaels and Ramon were faces while Diesel and Hunter were heels, but it was also the end of Diesel and Razor’s run in WWE before going to WCW.
The four friends wanted to have a special moment in the ring, even though it likely confused the fans, as they broke character to do the group hug.
Due to their actions, Hunter was penalized in terms of his spot on the card and lost a significant number of matches for the remainder of the year. Meanwhile, WWE decided to take a different direction with the King of the Ring that year. Instead of Hunter winning the King of the Ring 1996, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin got the win, which led to the iconic “Austin 3:16” promo that Austin conceived on the spot. As for Michaels, he was the top babyface WWE Champion, so he wasn’t punished at all.
During an appearance on Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant podcast. Triple H spoke about what it was like being in WWE’s doghouse. Hunter spoke about standing up to Vince McMahon when Hunter was frustrated due to the in-ring performance of another wrestler.
“Over time when I was punished, I think Vince liked the fact that he threw all this s**t at me and I never blinked. The only one time I went to him and bitched, in all of it, is because he put me in a match with a guy that was almost impossible to work with and then gave me the worst referee that we had. The whole setup was bad.
It went really badly. I came back, and I went off. ’F**k it. If you’re going to not allow me to have the chance to succeed, then f**k that, I’m out of here. You cannot put me in a position where I cannot f**king succeed or cannot win and can’t even do my job. If you put me in that position, then I have no choice but to go because I can’t overcome that.”
Triple H Thought Ahmed Johnson Was Terrible
While he continued to discuss his frustrations, Triple H admitted that the wrestler he was referring to was Ahmed Johnson, a former WWE Intercontinental Champion.
“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. A referee can help you work around people’s inability because I can talk to the referee.
If I need a guy to do something, and he’s not doing something right, I can’t always just walk over there and tell him. I’m like, ‘F**king tell him to stop doing that’ and the referee can tell him. I have enough experience to where guys will listen. Sometimes, you need the help, especially on live TV or even taped TV.”
At that point, Triple H finally mentioned Johnson by name.
“Ahmed Johnson. He was terrible. He was hurting people, and he was just big. You couldn’t understand him, and he had an attitude problem. It was one of those things and when I came back, I was pissed.
I went to Vince, and I cut a promo on him. I thought he was going to go off, ‘I told you if you don’t like it, f**k you, get out of here.’ He was like, ‘That’s fair. That’s fair.’ ‘Okay, f**king don’t do it again.’ Walked out.”
As we all know, everything worked out because Triple H went on to win King of the Ring in 1997. Two years later in August 1999, he won the first of his 14 WWE World Titles and he would go on to become one of the greatest WWE superstars of all time.