Triple H Recalls Scary Incident Early In WWE Career – “I Thought I Killed Him”

Triple H was very concerned for his opponent after hitting a Pedigree early in his WWE career.

The WWE Hall of Famer and Chief Content Officer, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, is considered by many fans

While his career as a wrestler ended several years ago, Triple H will always be thought of as a wrestler first and an executive second.

In his wrestling career, Triple H had one of the coolest and most protected finishing moves ever known as the Pedigree. It’s a move where Triple H puts his opponent’s head between his legs, hooks the arms on the back, and then drives that opponent’s head into the mat. It’s a bump that looks like a double-arm DDT, but it’s executed differently.

On the June 1, 1996 episode of WWE Superstars, Triple H was wrestling Hunter Hearst Helmsley in the early part of his WWE career. His opponent that night was Marty Garner, who also wrestled as Champ Pain. At the end of the match, Hunter hit a Pedigree that saw Garner get spiked on the top of his head, as you can see in the image below.

Triple H Admits He Got Lucky Against With Botched Pedigree

During a sitdown conversation for Variety with fellow WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels, who is Triple H’s best friend, The Game recalled what happened with the Pedigree that night with Garner.

“It’s funny, when I first came in here, I had started using a version of the Pedigree in WCW and they wanted me to do — I think they had seen (Diamond) Dallas (Page) do the Diamond Cutter or something and they wanted me to use that so I used it for a couple of matches on TV.

I didn’t feel comfortable using it and I felt like somebody else is already doing it and I said, ‘Well, I have this other move that I did before’ and I did the Pedigree and I remember Chief (Jay Strongbow) coming to me like, ‘Well, why didn’t you do that the whole time?’ I was like, ‘Because you guys told me not to.’

But, that kid that took the — I think his name was Cham Pain — was a friend of The Hardys. He came in to do an extra, and he’s a good hand and all that stuff. We just talked about it beforehand — doing the Pedigree — and when I went to do it, he went straight up and down and I tried my hardest to hold ‘em up. Because I was like, oh, I can piledrive him and he landed–I thought I killed him.

I was like, ‘Holy s**t.’ I was like, ‘Are you okay?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’ When I walked back through Gorilla (Position), everybody was staring at me like, ‘What’d you do?’ I was like, ‘He said he’s fine.’ It’s not like I threw him up there. He just jumped up there and he was totally fine with it so, we got lucky…” (H/T Fightful)

When Marty Garner was asked about it a few years ago, Garner actually felt like he made the mistake because of how he took the Pedigree.

“When it happened, he said, ‘[Goddamn,] are you alright?’ ‘I’m good, bro.’ When I came to the back, he was like, ‘Dude, that looked really good. I just want to make sure again, are you okay?’ ‘I’m great.’ He goes, ‘Bro, wow.’ He just shook his head like he couldn’t believe I was living and standing there talking to him.”

“I wasn’t proud of that, really, because I messed up. It was a video of shame for me for a long time and then I just accepted it. I made a mistake, mistakes happen, I was trying to impress somebody and it didn’t work out quite right. It is what it is.”

It’s yet another reminder that being a pro wrestler is easy and mistakes can happen in the ring at any time, but thankfully, Garner was okay after that Pedigree from The Game.

Also Read: WWE Star Trusting Creative Process With Triple H In Charge