Match of the Day - Elimination Chamber #1

Shawn Michaels vs. Rob Van Dam Vs. Kane vs. Booker T vs. Chris Jericho vs. Triple H - Elimination Chamber match for the World Heavyweight Championship - Survivor Series (2002)

Whether or not you are watching Elimination Chamber, or No Escape as it's called in Germany, here is look back at the very first Elimination Chamber match from 2002.

The match includes HBK's hella god awful "returning after four years" ring gear, RVD destroying Triple H's throat from the first "top of the pod" shot ever performed, and an overall good first Elimination Chamber.

Match of the Day - Rosey feels the wrath of Triple H's "game rage"

Triple H vs. Rosey - Raw (2005)

Triple H takes out his raging aggression for Batista, who recently turned his back on Evolution (now just Haitch and Ric Flair), while the 400 pound superhero looks to avenge his fallen ally who had been taken out by the Cerebral Assassin a week before.

Let the burying began.

Minor fun fact: This is the match where Triple H makes that weird noise at the end when he holds up his World Heavyweight title and the sledgehammer - the sledgehammer he lodges into Rosey's gut during the unprovoked attack on the poor superhero after the match.

Match of the Day - The Marty Garner Pedigree incident

Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Marty Garner - WWF Superstars (1996)

Everything was going well and dandy in this 1996 Hunter Hearst Helmsley match against a ham & egger named Marty Garner to promote Helmsley's match against Jake Roberts in the opening round for the King of the Ring tournament. That was until the "Conneticut Blueblood" delivered his trademark finisher still used on a part-time wrestling basis, the pedigree to put away poor Marty Garner. Garner being the inexperienced  rookie that he was mistook the pedigree as something else (like a double underhook suplex or powerbomb) and therefore jumped as if he was going to be lifted up and flipped over. The result: the deadliest looking pedigree of all time!

Marty Garner "fun" facts: He is good friends with Matt and Jeff Hardy as he got his start with them in their North Carolina wrestling promotion, OMEGA as "Cham Pain". He also wrestled as one of the Dupp Brothers in ECW as Puck Dupp and was The Rock's assistant in Walking Tall according to IMDB.

Match of the Day - X-Punk whips Shane-O-Mac and HHH & Chyna join the dark side at WM15

X-Pac vs. Shane McMahon - European title match - WrestleMania XV (1999)

As a much younger, full time mark, I had a special best of WrestleMania DVD (one of the first DVDs I ever owned) that chronicled some of the best matches and events at the grandest stage of them all from WMI to WMXV. Whether it was the fact that my attention spend gave out right before the end of the video and I was getting antsy or that this particular WrestleMania was just the most exciting to my young brain, I remember always getting really amped up when this match was being recapped! 

And then there's the swerve: As X-Pac laid out Shane McMahon via the X-Factor and was about to cover him for the won, Triple H and Chyna come down to ringside and pulled Test out of the ring. Then Chyna distracted the ref while Triple H climbed into the ring and does the unthinkable. Triple H pedigrees X-Pac and drapes Shane-O-Mac over his unconscious friend, signifying that Triple H and Chyna had turned on their own team/stable and gone to the dark side: The Corporation.

Just one year before this, Triple H introduced the returning X-Pac as the new member of D-Generation X on Raw the night after WMXIV!

Theme results:

WrestleMania: WMXV

Match of the Day - Triple H's third match of the night on Smackdown! in 1999

Triple H vs. Mankind - Boiler Room match - Smackdown! (1999)

Flip back over to WWF in 2000 and you would see a lot of Triple H. This was at the height of HHH's push as himself and meant he was in the spotlight a lot. Some say it could be due to the lack of Stone Cold at times and others could say it was due to him banging Mr. McMahon's daughter, Steph, never the less, late 1999-2000 was all HHH.

On one Thursday night Smackdown! (remember those) in late 1999 though, There was a lot more Triple H than the normal Triple H show... See, Triple H that night would actually be in 5 matches! If he couldn't win 3 out of 5 of them that night HHH would not get his title shot he had won Yep, this was just his third bout here taking on his soon-to-be foe, Mankind in Mankind's specialty match, a Boiler Room Brawl.

A Boiler Room Brawl is when two competitors fight inside the confines of the arena's un-padded boiler room with the winner being the first person out of the room.

Triple H gets his second win of that night after escaping the boiler room unharmed thanks to someone pushing Mankind off of a high place for another Mankind super bump. I believe it was later relieved to be Chyna but I honestly do not remember when and how it was relieved...

Theme Results

Non-ring: a boiler room.

Match of the Day - WWF Champion Triple H vs. ECW Champion Tazz

Triple H vs. Tazz - Champion vs. Champion - WWF Smackdown! (2000)

Only a couple of days after defeating WCW's Mike Awesome for the ECW heavyweight championship in about 3 minutes in Indianapolis, Tazz appears on Smackdown! to take on WWF's champion at the time, Triple H.

Though no titles were on the line and Tommy Dreamer appears only to be left looking like a fool with his silly suspender pants on the ground, Tazz puts up a good fight againt Triple H.

Anyways, here's the ECW champion, Tazz taking on the champion of the McMahon/Helmsley era, Triple H.

Match of the Day - Triple H goes to boot camp with the commissioner

Triple H vs. Sgt. Slaughter - Boot Camp match - WWF D-Generation X: In Your House (1997)

The commissioner of the WWF at the time, Sgt. Slaughter comes out of retirement and puts his combat boots on to teach the young punk from Connecticut a lesson or two in a good ol' Boot Camp match at a PPV named after Triple H's newly formed stable known as D-Generation X.

What is a Boot Camp match?

Pretty much a Sgt. Slobber-type street fight featuring combat boots rather than wrestling boots.

Let the military honor begin, courtesy of The King.

Theme Results:

Jeans: Triple H

PS: The Sarge's theme music at this time was later used as Kurt Angle's classic "You Suck!" theme!

Match of the Day - Stone Cold takes on pre-Triple H and JR has some microphone troubles

Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley - WWF In Your House: Buried Alive (1996)

Long before Triple H hit Stone Cold with a car in an attempt to finally get the spotlight Stone Cold was robbing him of, Triple H was just Hunter Hearst Helmsley, a rich snob from Connecticut who was never going to get over as long as Stone Cold Steve Austin was around.

I don't know if this was ever true or not but rumor has it that Hunter was originally going to win the 1996 King of the Ring - but after losing to Jake Roberts in the first round, it was Stone Cold Steve Austin who would go on to win it all and begin his era with his famous Austin 3:16 speech. Triple H would go on to win the next years King of the Ring tournament but didn't really get over the way Austin did until he took over D-Generation X after another spotlight stealer, The Heart Break Kid Shawn Michaels lost his smile... I mean hurt his back or something... a few years later.

This is also at the height of Good ol' JR's "microphone difficulties" which eventually was worked into an angle where he blamed all the messy headphone activity he was getting at Vince McMahon as some sick joke. This then led to the short-lived JR heel-turn remembered mostly by the fact that he brought in Fake Razor Ramon and Diesel, but that a different story for a different day.

Here's the very first PPV match-up of HHH and Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Match of the Day - Rock 'n' Sock Connection are in grave danger!

The Rock & Mankind (c) vs. The Undertaker & The Big Show - WWF Smackdown! (1999)

In yet another interesting tag team confrontation, the ever-popular, Rock 'n' Sock Connection of The Rock and Mankind took on the ever-evil team of pony-tail era Big Show and The Undertaker in the very first tag team "Buried Alive" match. That's right! A tag team member buried alive match.

The first and only tag team Buried Alive match in WWF/E was unlike other specialty tag team matches like a tag team cage match or a tag team tables match in that only one man from either team needed to be buried AKA thrown in a rectangular hole and "completely" covered by dirt. This is contrary to the cage and table matches where both team members must escape the cage (usually, if they don't want to go for a dumb pinfall or something like that) or both team members must be put through a table for the win.

The result of the match comes out to be a shocking turn of events as super heel, Triple H hits The Big Show in the "back of the head", as Michael Cole puts it, with his signature sledgehammer but then buries Mankind by himself for the team of The Big Show and The Undertaker to win the match and Mankind and Rock's tag team titles. An Ambulance immediately appears at the dirt mound to pick up Mankind, but as Triple H goes to help the EMT's by opening the Ambulance doors for them - a real jerk, let the EMT's do their job - out pops the Texas Rattlesnake, Stone Cold Steve Austin! Austin then throws HHH in the back of the Ambulance and drives it out to the parking lot where Austin would then "commandeer" a semi and rams it into the Ambulance with HHH still inside...

Yeah, I know... all that on Smackdown!

This was back when SD! was essentially the blue version of Raw on Thursday nights.

Overall reaction: First, the bump that Mankind takes after being thrown from the stage to the grave looks super painful. Mick Foley was and forever will be known as the guy who could take the most punishment to his body and get right back up, but I honestly do not think that that poor man had to take so many falls to live up to the reputation he made for himself after Hell in the Cell #2. I mean we got it, Mick was unbreakable, but was repeatedly having him fall or thrown off of something really worth it at this point? Some may disagree. I however feel that Mick proved himself a worthy competitor even without the the scientific wrestling ability at this time in his career and didn't always need to be getting handcuffed and hit with a dozen chair shots or, in this case, taking a super hard bump for no reason. Yeah, no reason; the bump wasn't even necessary as the show was going to end with Triple H getting killed by Austin via vehicular manslaughter anyway.

Secondly, this is The Undertaker's first and only Buried Alive match where he is not buried alive. Undertaker, the only person who has wrestled in every one of this type of match in WWF/E (currently), was 1-1 coming into this match but thanks to HHH and only HHH, who wasn't even in this match to began with, buries Mankind for Taker's second win (believe it or not) and the only time Taker escaped un-buried.

Thirdly, no Buried Alive match has ever been won cleanly. What I mean by this is that almost every match out of the five Buried Alive matches that have taken place, an individual/individuals has interfered and buries the loser completely. In the first Buried Alive (officially won by The Undertaker but often forgotten), The Executioner played by masked Terry Gordy comes out to save Mankind from the grave and buries The Undertaker all the way to the top with the help of the heels (including HHH no less); in the second Buried Alive match, Taker vs. Austin, Austin gets help from Taker's baby brother, the Big Red Machine, Kane; in this Buried Alive match, Triple H buries Mankind (who was already buried in the first BA match) all by himself; in the 2003 Buried Alive match between Taker and Mr. McMahon, Kane (now unmasked kane) once again interferes and buries Undertaker whole with the crane digger; and in the last Buried Alive match at Bragging Rights 2010, Kane buries Undertaker for the third time with the crane thanks to the interference by NEXUS.

Just thought I'd spread a little history today, I guess.