#6 Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H – European Championship match on Raw 1998
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Sometimes a match does not need to be a technical masterpiece for it be remembered fondly. This was certainly the case when fellow D-Generation X members Shawn Michaels and Triple H met on Raw for the European Championship back in 1998.
During the height of the first incarnation of DX, Shawn and Hunter would consistently make Commissioner Slaughter’s life a living hell. Getting in his face, mocking him for how much he used to spit on people while talking, and generally annoying everyone in a position of authority, the back and forth between the three of them made the latter part of 1997 thoroughly enjoyable TV.
Slaughter thought he had finally come up with a plan to get his own back on the pair when he announced that Michaels would be forced to put his European title on the line against his partner. Slaughter obviously hoped this would cause friction between them, and this is certainly how it looked initially. Throughout the show, they would cut back to Shawn and Triple H sitting separately backstage with Chyna attempting to calm them both down. When it came to the match itself, everyone thought a split might be on the cards.
In a hilarious sequence of events, however, the match was a complete farce. The two men circled each other for a short amount of time before Shawn fell suddenly on his back. After running the ropes for nearly a minute, Triple H would eventually jump on Shawn, lazily cover his best friend and win his first ever European Championship in the WWF. The mockery of the situation would continue, with Shawn pretending to cry in the corner and Triple H quoting Rocky II while holding up his belt shouting ‘Hey Sarge, I did it!’.
The two of them have had some classics over the years, but this match in particular summed up everything about DX back in 1997 and paved the way for a new type of WWF product into the 90s and beyond.
