Paul “Triple H” Levesque quietly retired from in-ring competition in 2022 and took over the WWE by storm as the Chief Content Officer later that year. Cut to 2025: he is the headliner of this year’s WWE Hall of Fame.
As a wrestler, Triple H has been part of some of the most significant storylines that made the company in its various eras. To wonder what WWE shows would have been like in the last three decades without The King of Kings is tough. However, he recently spoke about a time when he considered leaving everything.
Triple H Was Furious at Vince McMahon for Ahmed Johnson Fight
Triple H sat down with comedians Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh on their podcast” Flagrant” to discuss WrestleMania 41 this weekend and his WWE Hall of Fame induction, among other things. He revealed that at one point in his career, he nearly threw it all away.
“[Vince McMahon] put me in a match with a guy who was almost impossible to work with and gave me the worst referee we had — the whole setup was bad. [The match] went really badly. I came back and went off,” the 14-time World Champion recounted.
He informed the former WWE Chairman that if he is denied a real opportunity to succeed, then he would rather walk away. The Game articulated his dire-strait situation to McMahon, giving him an ultimatum. When the hosts asked him to explain further, he revealed that the mystery man was Ahmed Johnson, who was wrestling for WWE (then WWF) during its early Attitude Era days in the ’90s.
“[Who was the guy?] Ahmed Johnson,” Triple H revealed. “He was just terrible. He was hurting people, and he was just big, and you couldn’t understand him. He had an attitude problem. It was just one of those things; when I came back [after the match], I was p*****.
“I went to Vince, and I cut a promo on him, and I thought he was going to go off at me. [But] he didn’t. He just said, ‘That’s fair.’ And I was like, ‘OK, then f***ing don’t do it again.’ Then I walked out.”
Triple H’s program with Johnson was primarily between 1996 and 1997, with their most notable match taking place at the 1997 King of the Ring Tournament. The Game won the tourney and would later join Shawn Michaels to form the iconic stable D-Generation X, and the rest was history. He will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2025 this Friday, April 18.