During his candid appearance on the latest episode of FLAGRANT, Paul “Triple H” Levesque opened up about a rare moment in his early WWE career where frustration pushed him to confront Vince McMahon over what he felt was an unwinnable situation.
Triple H explained that he had been booked in a match against Ahmed Johnson during the late 1990s—an opponent he described as extremely difficult to work with. To make matters worse, the referee assigned to the match was, in his words, “the worst referee we had,” which further complicated an already volatile in-ring dynamic.
“The only one time I ever went to [Vince] and bitched in all of it… it was because he put me in a match with a guy that was almost impossible to work with,” Triple H recalled. “The whole setup was bad, and it went really badly. I came back and went off. I said, ‘If you’re not going to allow me to have the chance to succeed, then f**k that. I’m out of here.’”
He went on to explain how critical referees can be in protecting a match and working around inexperience or miscommunication. “A referee can help you work around people’s inabilities. I can talk to the referee if something isn’t working. But I didn’t even have that in this match.”
Triple H didn’t hold back in naming Ahmed Johnson as the source of the issue. “Just terrible. Hurting people. Big, hard to understand, with an attitude problem,” he said bluntly. He explained how frustrated he felt being put in a position where success was nearly impossible.
After the match, he confronted Vince McMahon, expecting backlash. Instead, Vince listened.
“I got a promo on him,” Triple H said. “I thought he was going to go off on me, like, ‘If you don’t like it, fk you, get out.’ But he didn’t. He was like, ‘That’s fair.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, well then don’t fking do it again.’ And I just walked out.”
The story offers a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into the creative tension and backstage politics during WWE’s late ‘90s boom, and how even future executives like Triple H had to fight for fair footing early in their careers.
