With a bruising bout between Rhea Ripley and Becky Lynch officially out of the way, Paul “Triple H” Levesque turned to not one, not two, but 12 Superstars – plus a little extra support mid-match – to keep fans in Philadelphia in the WrestleMania 40 spirit, borrowing from the legends of ECW past for a Six-Pack Ladder match with the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships on the line.
Only, here's the thing very few fans knew before the match began, the same team didn't have to leave the match with both titles. That's right, with both sets of Tag Team Titles hanging in the middle of the ring, any member of any team could bring down one set of the belts and would thus become one-half of either the RAW or SmackDown Tag Team Champions.
Now how, you may wonder, did fans find out about this pretty major change? Well, by watching Grayson Waller walk up the ladder, unclip the carabiner holding the blue set of belts, and then being announced by Samantha Irving as the new SmackDown Tag Team Champion.
From there, Austin Theory attempted to keep A-Town Down Under Undisputed, but alas, it wasn't meant to be, as the duo quickly became targets and were iced out by DIY and the New Day, respectively. Judgment Day, the reigning champions who still had a chance to keep the belts alive, did their best to keep the party going, returning to Rhea Ripley with at least some of their belts by way of their secret weapon, JD McDonagh, but as had become common, McDonagh did McDonagh things, and before he knew it, he was laid out on the side of the ring, decimated by some high-powered offense made all the more lethal via the massive ladders in the ring.
No, in a true twist of fun, the match came down to R-Truth in the ring solo, with The Miz's partner, who attempted to get a pinfall victory earlier in the match, having to simply understand the rules of the match in order to leave South Philadelphia a champion.
*spoiler alert,* he did just that, adding his 63rd championship reign to his WWE resume – yes, seriously, just check Cagematch – while giving fans a fun ending to one of the more underrated storylines in WWE over the past six months.
THEY DID IT!!!@RonKillings & @mikethemiz just became the NEW #WWERaw Tag Team Champions in an AWESOME #WrestleMania moment! pic.twitter.com/aZz5KMsqkc
— WWE (@WWE) April 7, 2024
Triple H reminds fans that he's still retired from WWE.
So, with WWE in this new Renaissance Era and/or Triple H Era, would Paul Levesque consider getting back into “The Game” in order to feast on the fruits of his labor and prove to fans that, at 54, he's still got a little something something in the tank?
Well, Pat McAfee decided to ask Triple H that very question while he was a guest on his Pat McAfee Show, and as expected, his dream matches were dashed, as the 14-time Champion remains very much retired.
“No, I don't think so. I don't think I should be out there taking bumps. I have a jumpstarter. That's all good. That's a backup system if anything goes bad in your life, which could happen to anybody at any given time. I have a backup system. You don't want to unplug the wires,” Triple H told Pat McAfee via Fightful.
“It's funny, people will be like, ‘Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot you can't.' I'm totally good with that. I rode until the wheels fell off. Almost literally. I'm great with that. I was at a place where I should have been retiring anyway. I was at a place in my mind where I wanted to be done with it. The last year, right before this all happened, I was asked to be at WrestleMania for two days. ‘I need you, you can work with anybody you want.' I said, ‘I don't think I want to do it.' ‘Please think about it. Let's just do it. Please think about it.' I thought about it and was going to go back and say, ‘I'm not doing it,' and then I had to not do it. I was already there. I'm good with it. I have zero regrets.”
Would it be cool to see Levesque back in a ring once more? Yes. Would it be even cooler to see him enter into a feud with Cody Rhodes, going heel to let the “American Nightmare” know that, all of these years later, he's still bitter about smashing the throne in AEW all of those years ago? Frankly, that feud practically writes itself, but outside of a Ric Flair in 2024-level bump, it's safe to say that dream simply isn't going to happen any time soon, as, considering Levesque was almost “Game over-ed” by a heart issue that required surgery, he's probably just happy to be alive.
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