HHH (real name Paul LeVesque) began wrestling for the
World Wrestling Federation in the mid 1990s after a completely unsuccessful run in
World Championship Wrestling.
He was known as first as
Hunter Hearst Helmsley, and his original
gimmick was that he was a stuck up
snob from
Grenich, Connecticut. He used aproximately four wrestling moves at that time...and one of them was a
formal bow. Not very exciting. He was given
Chyna as a
valet to try to pump some life into the character, but it really didn't work. He even won the
King of the Ring tournament in 1997, but still no one cared.
However, being part of
The Clique has it's advantages, one of them a constant push no matter how much you suck (hence why X-Pac still has a job). So, he was teamed up with
Shawn Michaels starting in 1997 to form a new group which would eventually come to be known as
Degeneration X--two guys (and
Chyna) who made a lot of
penis jokes, said "SUCK IT!" a lot, and generally acted rebellious. It worked, becoming hugely popular within a very short of amount of time. It was around this time that
Hunter Hearst Helmsley was shortened simply to
HHH (spoken as "
Triple H"), as he is known today.
Following
Shawn Michaels' departure in March 1998 due to a career-ending back injury,
HHH assumed leadership of
DX. He brought in
Sean Waltman (who had just jumped ship from
WCW) and the
New Age Outlaws as new members, and DX moved from being a heel stable to a babyface stable (they were actually tweeners for a while, but eventually became full-fledged
babyfaces).
HHH served in this upper-midcard role until March 1999, at which time he turned on the rest of
DX to become a
heel and join the
Corporation. He was in a
holding pattern for a few months until other angles worked themselves out, but this eventually translated into a
main event push for
HHH starting in the early summer of 1999. He won his first
WWF Championship from
Mankind (
Mick Foley) the day after
SummerSlam '99 and kept the belt for most of the next nine months.
In his role as
heel WWF Champion, he developed terrific skills on the
microphone and also greatly improved his in-ring ability to the point where he's considered one of the better workers in the
WWF. His feud with
Mick Foley in early 2000 was especially memorable, and two terrific
PPV matches with Foley really helped cement his role as a legitimate champion.