We all remember the instant classic that was Shawn Michaels vs Triple H in an Unsanctioned match at Summerslam 2002, but I've always been curious what the intended road to that match was.
Think about the storylines going on months before the PPV that summer.....
Shawn had been brought back into the WWE fold as a member of the "new" nWo. They did their thing for a few weeks, and even went as far as implying that HHH would eventually join them. At the King of the Ring, before his Undisputed Title match with The Undertaker, HHH met his buddies backstage and they had a group hug.
Flash forward to that big tag match on Raw. Nash tags in, stampedes across the ring and tears his quad, putting him on the shelf for eight months.
The next week on Raw, Vince more or less sweeps the failed nWo-in-WWE experiment under the rug and it's forgotten about. HBK instead focuses on trying to get Hunter, a free agent who could pick to go to either Raw or Smackdown, to sign with Raw. HHH signs with Raw at Vengeance, and on Raw the next night, HBK tries to restart DX, which HHH answers with a Pedigree.
The rest, of course, is history. It led to the match at Summerslam and a great feud was just getting started.
But what were the original plans? Say Nash didn't tear his quad and the nWo angle was ongoing, what direction would things have gone? How would the HHH/HBK match be booked? Would it even have happened at all?
Just something I've always wondered.
Think about the storylines going on months before the PPV that summer.....
Shawn had been brought back into the WWE fold as a member of the "new" nWo. They did their thing for a few weeks, and even went as far as implying that HHH would eventually join them. At the King of the Ring, before his Undisputed Title match with The Undertaker, HHH met his buddies backstage and they had a group hug.
Flash forward to that big tag match on Raw. Nash tags in, stampedes across the ring and tears his quad, putting him on the shelf for eight months.
The next week on Raw, Vince more or less sweeps the failed nWo-in-WWE experiment under the rug and it's forgotten about. HBK instead focuses on trying to get Hunter, a free agent who could pick to go to either Raw or Smackdown, to sign with Raw. HHH signs with Raw at Vengeance, and on Raw the next night, HBK tries to restart DX, which HHH answers with a Pedigree.
The rest, of course, is history. It led to the match at Summerslam and a great feud was just getting started.
But what were the original plans? Say Nash didn't tear his quad and the nWo angle was ongoing, what direction would things have gone? How would the HHH/HBK match be booked? Would it even have happened at all?
Just something I've always wondered.
