Triple H is one of the primary decision makers in WWE and he got there by playing his own rules. Because after all, he is The Game so he makes the rules.
In 1997 Triple H won the King Of The King tournament and was given a cape, crown, and scepter as his prize. He also got a decent push but Vince McMahon wanted Hunter Hearst Helmsley to dress like a king.
On a recent episode of Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard, they were talking about the Canadian Stampede ’97 PPV and it was mentioned just how much Triple H loved that crown and scepter.
“It was hilarious how many times and how many different scepters that we had for Triple H from the [King Of The Ring] that he destroyed. He hated wearing the crown, hated the scepter, hated the cape. So he would just tear them up any time they’d get him a new one,” Bruce Prichard said referring to Triple’s disdain for his King Of The Ring garb.
“It was ‘hey man you’re the King Of The Ring, Vince wants you to wear the crown and the cape’ — ‘I don’t wanna wear it.’ And ‘it’s hokey, I’m not gonna wear that f-cking sh-t, it’s a f-cking plastic crown, it looks like sh-t. I’m gonna f-cking destroy it every f-cking night.’
“And so Vince said: ‘alright, get him a bunch of crowns and scepters!’ So Vince was determined on the other side. I’m gonna keep feeding him a crown every night until he wears the damn thing. And on the third one he finally — ‘f-ck it!’
“So yeah, it was probably three weeks worth of ‘Hunter you need to wear the crown. You need to go out and be the king.’ — ‘I don’t wanna be the king. I don’t wanna wear the crown.’ — ‘You need to wear the crown’ — ‘I’m gonna f-cking bust it up, I’m gonna break it.’ And somehow every match he would find some way to get the crown to either fall off his head, and accidentally get stepped on or used as a weapon.”
“And the crowning moment — and the shot is actually in the package [during Canadian Stampede ’97] is — I forget who the hell he was hitting. It was either Goldust or Mick [Foley]. But he hits it and you just see the plastic part of the crown just kinda flying away and it just looks so flimsy and so sh-tty that — ‘okay we’re done.’ So we do the scepter thing with Chyna nailing Mankind to break the scepter. And so now he no longer has a scepter so the crown is no longer — ‘okay, we’ll make a story out of it, f-ck it.'”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard with a H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription