Triple H has had many names over the years. Here is why he is called Triple H and the origin of his many nicknames in the world of the WWE.
Why Is He Called Triple H?
Triple H revealed where the name “Triple H” came from during his interview with Chris Jericho on “Talk is Jericho”. The 14 time world champion sat down with the former AEW Champion to discuss where he came across the name “Hunter Hearst Helmsley” and where the change from that to the initialising took place.
He revealed that Vince McMahon liked the character he had been playing in WCW – a stuck up, French aristocrat named Jean-Paul Levesque – but wanted him to be American instead. So he he tasked Triple H and a series of writers to come up with a new name for the character.
The first name suggested to him by JJ Dillon was Reginald DuPont, which he knew would never work as a main event character. He eventually settled with Hunter Hearst Helmsley, which Shawn Michaels eventually shortened to Triple H, the name he is known as to this day 27 years later.
“Vince liked what I was doing and the character, but he wanted me to be American. They had asked me to think up a bunch of names to give some input on it and I had a whole bunch of names in mind…and J.J. (Dillon) called me in the room and said, ‘We’ve got your name. You’re going to be Reginald DuPont Helmsley’ and I was like, ‘Holy cow! Here I am in the bad name category again!’”
“I was trying to come up with something that you could make initials out of,” “The next thing I heard, J.J. called me up and said, ‘Hey, we went with a little bit of your suggestions and you’re going to be Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Three H’s.’ and I was like, ‘Okay…I can work with that a little bit.’ So we went with that and then Shawn (Michaels) started calling me ‘Triple H’ from day one,”
Triple H stuck as a nickname and helped launch the former WCW reject into the upper echelons of the WWE. He went on to become a 14 time world champion, was one of the biggest stars of the Attitude Era and beyond and has had a hall of fame career to make most other wrestlers jealous (even if he will NEVER be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame). He now runs the WWE creatively after the retirement of Vince McMahon and hopes to steer the company into a new era, which he seems to have been doing in recent months.
The Game
Triple H explained to Loudwire’s Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction how he became to be known as “The Game”, revealing it was an unscripted line that he came up with which just stuck, and is used to this very day.
“I legitimately said it in a promo off the cuff, an unscripted promo with Jim Ross. We were backstage, it was an unscripted promo, Jim literally came in and said, ‘I’m gonna ask you these questions, answer how you want.’ It was right when I was turning, I was really becoming the hard edged heel. A big term then was being a student of the game. You really want to be good at this business, you gotta be a student of the game. Just like anything else. You want to be a great NBA player, you gotta be a student of the game, you gotta watch the people that came before you, you gotta study everything. All of that, it was said a lot in our business. And in that promo, I legitimately used the F word and they had to beep it out, the promo was so good that they were like, ‘We’re gonna keep it, we’re just gonna beep out the F word,’ but I didn’t think anything more about it than that. And then, following week on TV when I came out, there were signs that just said, ‘Triple H the F-ing Game,’ or ‘Triple H is the Game’ or whatever it was. The Game thing stuck,”
The King of Kings
The nickname The King of Kings was used by Triple H due to his theme song changing. He used the song “The Game” by Motorhead, but upon his return from injury in 2006 opted for another of the England band’s tunes.
He instead came out to the song “King of Kings”, something which he complimented by coming out in a crown and various other medieval “kingly” attire. The name was not supposed to be be a reference to Jesus Christ, and The Game has never claimed to be the Messiah.
The Cerebral Assassin
Jim Ross, the WWE Hall of Fame commentator who now works for AEW, proffered the name The Cerebral Assassin for Triple H. He first called him the name due to the mind games he used against his opponents, usually dastardly, and helped him win multiple world championships and becoming the biggest heel in the wrestling business for a number of years.