WWE fans are buzzing about the idea of Triple H wrestling again after his heated clash with Kevin Owens.
Paul Levesque, now WWE’s Head of Creative and Chief Content Officer, showed glimpses of his fiery old self when confronting the Canadian on Saturday night.
Owens had just attacked Undisputed Champion Cody Rhodes having already lost their main event match on the show, leaving the incumbent laying with the use of a brutal looking piledriver.
The beaten challenger then attempted to flee with the championship belt before being challenged by a furious Levesque, a pushing and shoving match ensuing before officials stepped in to intervene.
It was by far the most physicality fans have seen from the 55-year-old in quite some time, so it is understandable that many were quickly convinced that the King of Kings would be dusting off the tights and boots one more time.
“Time to play the game buddy,” one viewer commented on social media, another adding with the moneybags emoji: “Man…if HHH somehow has one more in him…”
Triple H is still widely regarded as one of the finest performers of his generation thanks to a glittering career that featured no less than 14 world title reigns in WWE and an abundance of accolades besides.
His battles with Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley and The Rock are the stuff of legend, but, decades later, any hopes he’ll be rolling back the clock to do battle again appear to slim at the very best.
Levesque emphatically retired from active competition in the wrestling ring in 2022, some three years after he’d last competed in the squared circle.
The icon revealed that, in a dramatic and near fatal brush with death, complications from viral pneumonia left him with fluid in his lungs and around his heart.
Suffering from heart failure, he rushed to hospital where the prognosis was troubling.
He explained in an interview at the time: “Basically, the way your heart pumps out, it’s 55 to 65 percent of your injection fracture is a good number. I was at 30.
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“I had a quick text message saying: ‘don’t take time, pack a bag, we’ll head to the emergency room. I’ll fill you in on the way.’ By the time I got to the emergency room, my ejection fracture had gone down to 22. I was in heart failure. Bad.
“By the next morning, [I] was setting in to get an MRI done and about to go in for a heart cap, my ejection fracture was down to 12. I was nose diving and at the one-yard line of where you don’t want to be.”
An understandably emotional Levesque then touched on his family and the perspective that helped to give him.
He went on to say: “For your family and your future… It gets real. We have three young girls; 15, 13, and 11. Suddenly, I come home and I’m a little bit sick, and their dad, who is strong, always, suddenly is in the hospital.
“I don’t know if they understood the consequences of it, but there are moments in there when they are putting you out for stuff and you think: ‘is this it? Do you wake up again?’ That’s tough to swallow.
“It makes you think differently about life. It doesn’t make you any less driven with the things you do, but it certainly makes you appreciate the things you have; your friends and your family.”
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Triple H hasn’t wrestled a major match since defeating Randy Orton at Super ShowDown in Saudi Arabia in June 2019.
He did feature in two further matches at non-televised events in Japan later that month, his final outing being alongside Shinsuke Nakamura in a tag team bout against Samoa Joe and Bobby Roode.
Put an emphatic stop on the idea of ever wrestling again, he added at that time: “As far as in-ring, I’m done. I will never wrestle again. I have a defibrillator in my chest, which it’s not a good idea for me zapped on live TV.”
Away from the ring, Levesque’s focus will be firmly on WWE’s high-profile $5bn switch to Netflix in the New Year.