24: John Cena vs Triple H – WrestleMania 22
And here is another Triple H main event. This time we’re a year after Triple H wrestled Batista, and quite possibly it was seen that Cena was the bigger prospect in the WWE so Batista and Cena swapped brands in time for the big event. Not to rag on Triple H too much, but the fact that the fans have long been split against John Cena started in the build up to this main event as a result of the heel Triple H criticising that John Cena couldn’t wrestle well. This was silly as Cena was a world champion and a successful main eventer, so Triple H questioning his ability to wrestle felt like it exposed the business more than anything. How did it make sense that Cena was this successful if he couldn’t wrestle well? All it did was highlight that Cena was in his position as a successful main eventer more because of office politics over his in ring ability and turned a portion of the fans against him for ever after.
The match itself ironically is better than the other Triple H matches already mentioned on this list because Cena is generally a better worker than Orton and Batista, and gelled better with Triple H as a result.
32: Triple H vs Roman Reigns WrestleMania 32
At the time of writing this Mania marks the last time that Triple H has been in a Mania main event, and followed Triple H’s win of the WWE World Title by winning the royal Rumble earlier that year.
Again this was a standard Triple H style match, with a mix of brawling on the outside, occasional holds and inevitable inclusion of a sledgehammer. Whilst Roman Reigns is at the very top of his career right now, this is still a relatively new phenomena as for much of his main event run has seen the fans turn on the face Roman, and this was in the thick of it. It’s interesting to see a heel Triple H, who the fans had once been against because of his real life relationship with Stephanie, by this stage be more accepted by the fans, whilst the face Roman Reigns is rejected by a large number of fans who saw him as undeserving because he was pushed whilst the fan’s pick in Daniel Bryan had been overlooked.
