WWE News: How John Laurinaitis Has Successfully Set Up Triple H

Last week’s newsworthy edition of Monday Night Raw closed with a memorable image: John Lauirinaits stood on the ramp, shaking his head at disgust at COO Triple H, who was standing in the ring by himself after the entire WWE roster (and the announcers and production staff) had walked out, citing unsafe working conditions and a lack of confidence in HHH’s ability to gain control of a rapidly spiralling-out-of-control company.

Of course, despite, Lauirinaitis’ sombre demeanour as the show ended, we can be sure that WWE’s executive vice president of talent relations was secretly jumping for joy on the inside and suppressing the urge to do cartwheels right there on the ramp.

You see, the dramatic events of the evening played perfectly into the plans of the conniving Laurinaitis, who is quite clearly involved in the complex conspiracy to oust Triple H as COO. How do we know this? Well, since Lauriniatis emerged as a supporting character on Raw in the last few months, the WWE booking team have dropped several unsubtle hints that the toadying corporate drone is actively trying to sabotage HHH’s reign as COO.

In fact, the clues have been so patently obvious, that if the beleaguered HHH has simply re-watched some recent editions of Raw and pay-per-view events, he would have known ages ago that something was up, rather than just seemingly have figured out in the past few days that his scheming right-hand man cannot be trusted.

Laurinaitis’ suspicious behaviour started shortly after his boss, Vince McMahon, was sensationally booted from WWE on July 18^th edition of Raw following concern from the WWE Board of Directors over his increasingly erratic behaviour. Trying to fire WWE’s main cash cow, John Cena, was apparently the final straw for Vince and an emotional HHH came out to dramatically announce that Vince had been relieved of his duties—and that he had been chosen to take over in Vince’s place. 

“I…I… love you, Pops,” a guilt-ridden HHH wept as Raw went off the air, showing off some of those brilliant dramatic acting chops that made The Chaperone and Inside Out such huge box office successes.   

As soon as HHH tried to settle in as COO and make the transition between Vince and him as and smooth as possible, Laurinaitis started working against him. In fact, the night after Kevin Nash invaded WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view and viciously took out new champion CM Punk (leaving him vulnerable to Alberto Del Rio, who proceeded to cash in his MITB title shot and win the WWE Championship) Laurinaitis became strongly linked with him in the storylines.

A disgruntled Nash, who couldn’t understand old buddy HHH’s unfriendly attitude towards him, was approached backstage by Laurinaitis and asked to go back to his office for a “private chat.”

The details of the conversations were never shown on camera, but it was clear the corporate suit was up to something.

Sure enough, the following week he informed HHH that the Canadian authorities had contacted him to tell him that Kevin Nash had been involved in a serious car accident and was in the hospital. A panicked HHH immediately left the building to see his old friend. Of course, the entire story turned out to be a total fabrication made up so Hunter would be distracted and Nash could get involved in that evening’s main event between CM Punk and John Cena.

Laurinaitis simply had to know he was feeding HHH a line, and he has been manipulating HHH ever since.

Notably, he was involved in the Night of Champions main event between CM Punk and Triple H,  and was seen texting on his phone shortly before Nash stormed in to take out both competitors. He almost certainly had something to do with the events of the evening that served as evidence that the company was descending into a chaos and HHH was helpless to do anything about it.

Two weeks later, after fired wrestlers The Miz and R-Truth showed up at the beginning of WWE’s Hell in a Cell pay-per-views brandishing tickets, Laurinaitis was charged with escorting them from the building. He apparently didn’t do a very good job because the duo showed up twice more throughout the evening, taking out tag champions Air Boom backstage and then getting involved after the triple threat main event and brutally laying waste to everything in sight, including the innocent cameramen, before the New Orleans Police Department broke into the cell and arrested them.

There was another interesting incident at HIAC: During a Cody Rhodes promo, Laurinaitis came out and announced that HHH had decided that Rhodes would compete in a match with John Morrison. On commentary, Michael Cole stressed that this was clear evidence of HHH’s erratic and damaging behaviour as COO, and certainly HHH came off as rather petty for springing a match on the unprepared Rhodes.  

But the plot thickened: In a backstage segment with Laurinaitis and HHH later that night, the puzzled COO clearly had no idea about the title match that had just been made, and scolded his employee for ordering the bout without asking him.

Obviously, Lauriniatis is on a mission to make HHH look too unreasonable and unfit to be a good COO.    

As noted, HHH, who seemed for a while to be blind to fact that Laurinaitis was sabotaging him, has finally picked up on this fact too. On last week’s Raw, after a shame-faced Lauriniatis went to apologise to HHH for dropping the ball with Miz and R-Truth the previous night, an irate Hunter refused to hear it. He grabbed the head of talent relations and menacingly growled, “I’m afraid that the guy closest to me is undermining everything I do.”

In this uncertain time, this may be the only thing HHH can be sure about.