Hoo boy. That was some Summerslam, huh? Couple great matches, some good storytelling, a swerve to end it all. In fact, Summerslam was so good that even certain pessimistic fans are calling it the pay-per-view (PPV) of the year, and they aren’t even close to being wrong.

There’s much to discuss now. Daniel Bryan got a clean pin over John Cena (with a knee to the face that actually knowcked my jaw lose), Randy Orton rained on everyone’s parade (and just hours after our own Geno called him a pretty nice guy, too), and CM Punk and Brock Lesnar put on an instant classic. In the midst of all of this, good old Triple H turned heel.

Yes, after months of building himself up to be a man of the people, a man who was in touch with the business (unlike his crazy father-in-law), after spending the last four weeks talking about how great Daniel Bryan is, Trips turned to his old ways and dropped poor Bryan on his head. If this had happened four years ago, the internet would currently be in flames talking about the end of Daniel Bryan’s career as Aitch adds another body to his burial ground.

Thankfully, this isn’t four years ago, and (even more) thankfully Kevin Nash wasn’t even in the building, so we don’t have to talk about burials and politics and all that mucky stuff that gets in the way of our fun. So let’s give credit where credit is due: Triple H reminded everyone tonight that he is one of the greatest heels in the business, and his performance was just spot on in every way possible.

Every time a camera cut to him, he was selling his smarminess to a level I haven’t seen since he spent a whole episode of Raw with the boss’s daughter on his lap acting like the character everyone believed he actually became in the middle of the last decade. There are very few people in WWE right now who can garner so much joyous, marked-out hate with one little smirk as Mr. Levesque. For the prime example of what I’m talking about, check the end of Summerslam. During Randy Orton’s celebration, Trips just leans against the turnbuckle and releases the smirk. With one little crooked smile, he managed to capture the sleaze and arrogance of Heyman, of Bischoff, even Mr. McMahon.

See, I’ve always been a staunch supporter of Triple H. Then again, I also supported my New England Patriots during the filming scandal a few years ago, so you can tell the kind of person I am. I know full well that much of the hate Trips gets is well deserved. Poor old Booker T never got the chance he deserved, the Summer of Punk came to a screeching halt faster than Vince could remind us that he put WCW out of business, and it just wouldn’t be an article about Hunter without a mention of the Katie Vick storyline.

As far as that last one’s concerned, I’ve seen some of the stuff that goes on here in the Dailies. We have no room to judge that one.

But all that aside, he made that swerve work in a way very few could have. We never trusted Vince. We never believed that Vinnie Mac was on our side, that he would do everything the way we wanted it done, but somehow, one of the most controversial men to ever step foot in the ring had us believing for a moment that Daniel Bryan would walk out holding a belt over his head, 20,000 people shouting YES over and over again. Why would we think otherwise? Trips was just there to feed his ego, to be in the spotlight and take some of the positive energy from Bryan, right? It was just another ego trip.

Except it wasn’t.

We’ve known for months now that a big McMahon family drama was going to be playing out between now and Wrestlemania, and we all felt confident that we knew the basic pieces: Triple H is the good guy trying to wrestle the company away from Vince, who’s slowly going insane from too many last minute rewrites. Now, though, things have gotten interesting. Now everyone at the top is a villain in some way, and they have so many directions they can go that the only thing that could ruin it is if they somehow decided to bring back Eugene and have Darren Young explain his lifestyle to him during a segment on Miz TV.

(If anyone at creative happens to be reading this, that was a joke. Please, dear God, don’t write that down)

And you know what? I can’t think of a better villain to have around than Triple H. He’s just a pretty bad guy.

Holy hell…Did I do it? Did I really write an entire article about Triple H without putting THIS BUSINESSAH in caps? I can’t believe it! Yes! Yes! Ye-

Dammit.