Triple H and Mick Foley are responsible for one of the most memorable matches in WWE history.
It came 25 years ago, kicking off the Road to WrestleMania, when the pair went to war in a Street Fight at the Royal Rumble in 2000.
For nearly half an hour, Triple H and Cactus Jack (Foley’s hardcore alter ego), beat the living hell out of each other in a match for the WWF Championship.
And the crowd inside Madison Square Garden absolutely loved it.
The pair battled inside and out of the ring and hit one another with a range of weapons, before taking their fight through the audience.
With the ringside area resembling a war zone after 20 minutes of action, Cactus Jack even tried to spike Triple H’s head off the floor with a piledriver through the announce table.
But the most iconic moment came when the two bloodied warriors made it back inside the ropes, and Jack spilled a bag of thumbtacks onto the canvas.
His plan backfired, with Triple H first sending him back-first onto the tacks. The Game then connected with his Pedigree finishing move, resulting in a near-fall.
A visibly frustrated Triple H followed that up with a second Pedigree, this time onto the thumbtacks, to win and retain his title.
After the match, the champion was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled away from the ring, but Jack wasn’t done with him there.
He caught up to emergency staff as they left the ringside area, turned Triple H’s stretcher around, and shoved him back into the ring.
Jack then smashed his rival in the face with a barbed wire bat, leaving Triple H a bloody mess on the floor as he played to the crowd.
The match – and its finish – is undoubtedly iconic and still fondly remembered by fans to this day.
In fact, footage of the pair backstage after their brutal battle 25 years ago has resurfaced and gone viral.
The 40-second clip begins with shocked WWE staff watching Foley walk around, a little worse for wear.
It then cuts to Triple H, who is sprawled out on a stretcher, asking for water.
Cameras focus on a horrific wound he sustained to the back of his left leg, before zooming in on his bloody face.
The footage was shared on X on Monday (February 17) and has been viewed more than 2.5 million times in less than 24 hours.
“Golden era,” one person wrote, responding to the video.
“The ‘wrestling is fake’ crowd needs to see more of this,” another said.
“Looks like he’s dead,” a third said of Triple H.
The pair went on to recover from their brutal bout, continuing their feud in the build-up to WrestleMania, where Triple H defeated Foley, The Rock and Big Show to defend his title in a fatal four-way elimination match.
But even that ‘Mania match isn’t quite as iconic as the one that preceded it at the Royal Rumble.
Foley has since opened up about the punishment his body took all those years ago.
“If I did it without any crowd, TV camera, it would be one of the worst feelings in the world,” he said last September, recalling the match.
“But when you get that response, the exact response you’re looking for, It can anesthetize the pain to a great degree.”
He also revealed that ahead of time, WWE had told the pair not to use thumbtacks in the match.
“We were under a strict edict, no thumbtacks,” Foley continued.
“Triple H said, ‘You have the tacks?’ I said, ‘They’re already under the ring.’
“We went with the ‘it’s better to do it and ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission’ and the match was such a huge success that we didn’t even get yelled at.”
