100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 64 - Roman Reigns vs. Triple H

WWE World Heavyweight Championship - Wrestlemania 32

Aug 06, 2023

This is the first move of the match. You’re in for a long, long night.

This is a story of a man’s ego, his hubris, his unwillingness to learn and accept defeat and who he is.

There’s a lot of competition for a Triple H Wrestlemania match on this list. Hell, there was a time when I didn’t even think this was his worst match against a member of the Shield. There’s a lot of talk about low-hanging fruit that is easy to bully in a list like this, like Big Show in 2006, or anything during the pandemic. But for the most parts, those are extenuating circumstances that can be easily justified. Triple H at Wrestlemania may feel like low-hanging fruit, but it is an entirely self-inflicted wound

There’s a lot to be said for wrestlers that don’t try and be what they aren’t. After all, not everyone can be a, say, Eddie Guerrero or Terry Funk - the sort of once-in-a-generation versatile well rounded wrestler that can have any sort of match against anyone in any promotion and it’ll probably be damn good. A prime example is Jerry Lawler, one of my favourite wrestlers ever and also a guy that knows exactly what he does exceptionally well, but perhaps more importantly, knows what he doesn’t do well.

Triple H, maybe more than any wrestler that has ever competed in a major American promotion, has no concept of what he can and can’t do. The fact that we are here, Wrestlemania 32, during what is his third main event Wrestlemania match that has bombed because it was a dull, overly long, and heatless affair is a testament to that fact. This is the last of 7 Wrestlemania main events he would wrestle in. When you consider that an inoffensive but largely mediocre match with Batista at Wrestlemania 21 would be his third best main event match at Wrestlemania, it is not easy reading for fans of the Game. The frustrating thing is that he falls into the same trap every time - trying to be someone he isn’t, and having a match he isn’t capable of having. In fact, the only two Wrestlemania main events Triple H had that I’d consider above “good” were one where he’s carried off the weight of one of WWE’s best ever crowds (Wrestlemania 22), and another where he’s the third part of a match featuring two of the best wrestlers ever (Wrestlemania 20).

This time he’s paired against Roman Reigns. Fresh off one of my favourite matches of all time against Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania 31, WWE decided not to coronate him there presumably due to fan backlash, and instead hold off for another year while Seth Rollins took the championship instead. Since the 2015 Royal Rumble, Roman has been less than popular with the fanbase as his transparent push along with his miscast goodie-too-shoes character rubbed people the wrong way. Many have likened it to John Cena from the 00s, but the difference is that for every hater John Cena had, he had a fan that would be willing to bat for him. Roman never seemed to have that momentum, and arguably never would for the entirety of his babyface run. I’ve made no secret I’m a fan of Roman - I think he’s a tremendous wrestler, as a lot of the rest of 2016 would show. But he’s also a guy that especially at this time needs the right guidance, circumstance and opponent.

I’ll start with some positives here. The pre-match video package here is pretty hype. It’s been said a million times, but whatever WWE pays their video production team isn’t enough. They’re even able to make this Austin vs McMahon from wish.com feud into something that looks epic.

But I know what everyone really wants to talk about in this review …

Well, I’m happy to say this is certainly an upper-tier Triple H Wrestlemania entrance. It starts off with Stephanie McMahon coming out and saying “After 10,000 years I’m free! Time to conquer the earth”. Or something along those lines. She rants how she and Hunter are rich and powerful (albeit with a much better thesaurus than I have), and we are all poor losers and suckers. Well we are the ones paying to watch this match, so she has a point. She makes sure to take an uncomfortable amount of time to sound off every one of Triple H’s multiple nicknames. Meanwhile a bunch of suited up skeleton masks line up on the ramp. If I have one critique of this one, it’s that Triple H doesn’t have any props for himself. No mask, no motorcycle, no sledgehammer, no Conan the Barbarian, no Terminator gear. In the scale of Triple H Wrestlemania entrances, it’s certainly below the unironically cool-as-shit Wrestlemania 30 entrance featuring the NXT women, and below the ironically hilarious and definitely not cool-as-shit Wrestlemania 31 Terminator entrance.

Roman doesn’t get a special entrance, because he isn’t the star of this match. He does get some mistimed pyro, which should be a sign of things to come.

The match starts similarly to John Cena vs Triple H from Wrestlemania 22, where Triple H is making his opponent look like a little bitch and schooling him on the mat. Two problems with this. The entire Cena vs Triple H feud was predicated on Cena not being a great wrestler, and him having to prove himself and ultimately out-wrestle HHH to win. This feud is essentially a hate-filled blood feud so it doesn’t make sense to start out in such a heatless way (hey, remember Wrestlemania 25?). The second problem is that Cena and HHH were playing off a rabid Chicago crowd and making them the star of the show. Roman, for all his positives, is not John Cena as far as handling a crowd - at least not at this point. Maybe in 2023 Roman Reigns can handle a crowd that hates him, but not in 2016.

This is around the time when WWE were taking extreme liberties with their Wrestlemania lengths. When the pre-match promo starts, it is about 10pm local time after the fans have been watching a show for 4 hours previously - not even counting the 2 hour pre-show plus the stress of travel and troubles a lot of fans had getting into the arena for this particular event. Imagine being in this crowd, after a day of travel, sight-seeing, then you come in and have to struggle into the arena because the stadium has fucked up. Then you sit through a 30 minute Shane McMahon match, the blandest Brock Lesnar vs Dean Ambrose match imaginable, The Rock taking 25 minutes to do a 6 second match, Baron Corbin winning a Wrestlemania match, and all the nonsense in between. I say all this to say, it’s no wonder the crowd are bored out of their mind by this. Well, at least you can’t visibly see them leaving the arena during, so I suppose it’s a step up from Wrestlemania 18 in that regard.

To touch on Wrestlemania 31, that match could have been a disaster in terms of fan reaction, but because Lesnar and Roman wrestled a smart, brutal, intense, 15 minute match the fans loved it and it produced one of the best Wrestlemania main events ever. The last thing these fans wanted to see was Triple H grappling with Roman for 30 minutes when they’re already irritated and have no patience for one of the guys in the match.

This was also the time when WWE fans started to realise they could start hijacking shows if they don’t like stuff. Wrestlemania 32 comes the night after NXT Takeover: Dallas which, for my money, is one of the best shows ever produced by WWE. You can see the influence that has on this match as there’s a lot of “Ole Ole Ole”, “NXT”, “Nakamura” and even a small “heeeey heey Bayley oooh ahh” chants. Especially in the second half of the match when they realise this one is going long.

Perhaps most damning of all is that nobody learns a goddamn thing from this mess. I mean, I’d expect Triple H not to learn anything after shitting the bed in a main event match. Again. But consider for a second that the next year at Wrestlemania 33, these two had two separate matches that were almost identical to the one they had here. Triple H wrestled a former member of the Shield in an overly long heatless match where his opponent was woefully miscast and poorly presented - and also features a once-a-year Stephanie McMahon bump. Meanwhile Roman wrestled another guy years past his prime in an overly long match that was supposed to be his true coronation moment. Both Rollins vs HHH and Undertaker vs Roman were considered for this list, but both narrowly missed out because there was enough story and depth to keep them off the list, even if they were executed horribly. But more on them during the honourable mentions list.

I’ve written a lot here, but very little to do with the actual match. That’s because there’s nothing to this match. It is a nothing match, where there’s no heat, passion or energy from anyone involved. This match always tricks me because when I watch it I often think that maybe the match is decent and it just suffers from the lack of heat. But no, it doesn’t get better. It’s always the same. Outside of the spear to Stephanie, is there anything about this 30 minute match that you remember? And unlike the Miz vs John Cena, I actually had expectations for this. I can see a world where this match is quite good, but the bookers and Triple H just couldn’t help themselves. The finishing sequence is actually quite fun for this match, and if they’d condensed the match down they might have had a semi-enjoyable bout.

The finish sees the most obvious set up for a spot to Stephanie getting speared. It’s the only part of the match that the fans respond positively too, mostly because Stephanie at this time was the most protected character on WWE television who never made anyone look good. In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, you can see Stephanie smiling after just getting speared by Roman.