10 shocking moments from WWF (WWE) 1995

#8 Triple H makes his WWF debut

The birth of a star

With many of its former employees leaving Vince’s side in the mid-90s, the WWF responded by signing young, hungry athletes in an attempt to build for the future. While WCW might have convinced a veteran like Luger to join them, a relatively unheard of star under the name ‘Terror Rising’ ended up going in the other direction and became a WWF superstar for the first time in 1995.

At the time, if you wanted to make it as a WWF superstar, the best thing you could do was get in with The Kliq, a real life group of friends consisting of Shawn Michaels, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Sean Waltman. For one reason or another, these four had the ear of the owner and convinced him to put them in the main event of PPVs. Shawn was being lined up for Championship glory at the time, so things were due to get even cosier between the Kliq and the McMahon family.

Luckily for Terror Rising, now known as the ‘Connecticut Blue Blood’ Hunter Hearst Helmsley, the Kliq took an instant shine to him and invited him along for the ride. Helmsley was given a lot of the mid-card focus, feuding with superstars like Goldust and Mark Mero initially. Helmsley’s luck would eventually run out a year later, but in 1995 his fortunes were very much on the up.

Sometimes it is worth taking a chance with an unknown superstar, rather than just rely on name recognition. Given the central role the man went on to play for the WWF, the signing of Helmsley was certainly a prime example of this.