Future WWE Hall of Famer Triple H has undergone a number of character changes throughout his career but the one constant has been his devastating finisher, The Pedigree.
Whether he was going by Hunter Hearst Helmsley, The Game, The Cerebral Assassin of any of his other nicknames, The Pedigree was the move that put down countless foes including The Undertaker, John Cena, Daniel Bryan, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Sting. So where did that iconic finisher originate?
In the first installment of FOX's "The Story Of," the WWE COO explained how the pedigree came to life.
"It's interesting, the Pedigree, for me started actually when I was training with Killer Kowalski," Triple H recalls (H/T Fightful).
"Kowalski used to do it a spot where he'd put a guy's head between his knees and he would jump up and just kind of jar their neck. It just dawned on me that if he kept going straight down to his knees, it was like a sort of a version of a piledriver. And as I looked at it, I thought, well, if you held the guy's arms, it would be very clearly a piledriver, so it started out as that in my mind, I've always thought that it was something very unique that I had never seen done before, it sort of slowly evolved in to me hooking the arms behind the guy's back and then jumping up and having them, you know, come down full body face first."
As seen in the video embedded above, Triple H then went on to explain how Seth Rollins asked if he could start using the pedigree as his finisher back in 2015. Of course, The Cerebral Assassin was in full support of Rollins using the move.
"I was like, 'if you think that benefits you, please do. Like, I would be honored.' And, you know, and it worked for him for a while. So, yeah, I was happy for him to do it. You know there's moments in your career where there are things like they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So that for me, if he felt like it was meaningful to him, I was glad he could use it and get something out of it."
Check out some of The Game's most memorable Pedigrees below.