But his style caught up to him big-time before him and HHH could really build a full 'thing' together. And beating the hell out of Mick didn't make Haitch special since Rock and Taker did it in more 'iconic' ways while Hunter tried to be decent about it and...you know...not kill the man.

I kinda buy HBK's take..HHH's greatness is based more on 'loving it enough to stay even with the BS stacking up' than any isolated greatness. He was put in some grand spots at times. But just like any other WWE main eventer, you got stuck with some toads who couldn't work too.

In a vacuum, he's pretty much the B+ player he describes on a regular with a reasonably solid health history, good size, and grand choice in the chick and 'staying off of the stuff' departments. No...not that stuff. He was probably on that a lot. I'm talking the rec drugs.

>He had great feuds but people view his greatest rival as The
>Rock who would call Austin his greatest rival.
>
>WWE's inability to build more stars was an issue for sure, and
>he gets shit for holding guys like RVD and Booker down, but
>RVD was never good enough to be true top tier and Booker was
>good but also not top tier in my opinion.
>
>Even Cena in his era of domination had Edge for a while and
>Orton (as boring as that got)
>
>Imagine Austin with 0 Rock matches and it's a different world.
>He'd still be at the top tier, but having that rivalry really
>pushed both of them over the top. all of the GOATs also had a
>GOAT level rivalry. HHH never did.
>
>When I look back at HHH and that era when he was on TV non
>stop I can't really think of a memorable rival that really
>mattered other than HBK well past his prime who was really
>just being used to elevate HHH.