How Triple H Got All Those Nicknames: A Breakdown

On today’s Pardon My Take, Mr. Cat and Mr. Commenter ventured to the WWE Headquarters in Stamford, CT to interview a legend in the wrestling world: Triple H. But WWE fans have many different nicknames for the Hall of Famer, and that’s what we are breaking down today. How and why does Triple H have all these names attached to him? He went in depth with how he got a few of those. Let’s start off with “Terra Ryzing.”

Triple H: The Terra Ryzing one is either the best or the worst.

Mr. Commenter: Don’t you spell Ryzing in a cool, badass way?

Mr. Cat: With a Z, yeah.

Triple H: So, there’s a story to that as well. Very shortly after I started training, [former WWF wrestler Killer] Kowalski was going to have me do the first show, it was actually something that didn’t happen. It was a tour, he was gonna take everybody to South America that never materialized. He needed names and stuff for the cards, and I just started. I never had a live match yet. And so, he said I’m going to put your name on there.

Kowalski: What do you want your name to be?

Triple H: I was like, oh, I hadn’t really thought about it yet.

Kowalski: He said, I’m going to call you the terrorizer.

Triple H: The terrorizer? It’s terrible. To me it just sounded like the bruiser or the crusher, like so 70s wrestler. And I was like, can’t I just have a name, like a first name and last name? And in typical Kowalski fashion, he got very upset.

Kowalski: You want a first name and a last name?

Triple H: Then he took a magic marker and drew a line in the middle of the terror, rising. Then it came back and it was spelled wrong.

Hand up, I’ve never heard anyone call Triple H “Terra Ryzing.” And to the big WWE stans reading this, I apologize. However, this is a great story showing how he got this nickname. Nothing like an impromptu way to make your professional wrestling debut.

Of course, we have to highlight “The Game.” This is probably one of, if not the wrestler’s most popular nickname. And the way he got it is nothing short of awesome.

Triple H: So, what’s number one [nickname] for me? The Game. Just because one, it came from the fans, who kind of did it. It was [also] something that came up in a promo I did with [legendary WWE broadcaster] J.R. [Jim Ross]. It was at the time when we were just moving into the Attitude Era or really entrenched in the Attitude Era. I was known as Triple H by then because I didn’t want to change from Hunter Hearst Helmsley. I wanted to keep the value of what that name was but clearly the name wasn’t the best, and everybody called me Triple H backstage. I was cutting a promo with J.R. backstage and I said, everybody here is getting put into positions they don’t deserve.

You talk about success here, you’ve got to be a student of the game. I’m beyond that, man. You want to talk about that. Fuck that. I am The Game. And that week, there were a lot of signs, “Triple H is The Game.” And I was like, oh man, that resonated. So, then I just started calling myself that all the time and it stuck.

Anything that involves Jim Ross on the call immediately catapults itself to an awesome narrative. Any WWE fan has to get chills when that man gets in his groove in the broadcast booth. And the fact that he had at least some impact in Triple H getting this nickname is very cool.

The trio also listed off some of Triple H’s other nickname, including King of Kings, Cerebral Assassin, and Jean-Paul Lévesque. What is your favorite nickname of his?