Triple H Argues That Cinematic Matches Have Been in WWE For Decades

Between The Boneyard Match, The Firefly Fun House Match, the Money in the Bank Ladder Match, the Young Bucks' Falls Count Anywhere Match and The Stadium Stampede, the cinematic match has become the trendiest type of wrestling match since the coronavirus pandemic started. Many fans of the matches have credited their success to The Hardy Boyz, who were putting on a similar style of match back in 2016 at the Hardy Compound. And yet when asked if Matt deserved any credit for the rise in the match style's popularity on Thursday, Triple H didn't agree. "The Game" pointed out that technically cinematic matches, namely pre-taped wrestling matches with different styles of filming and production, had been around decades by citing the Empty Arena match between The Rock and Mankind and the brawl between Booker T and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin inside of a grocery store.

'It's a funny thing, that people say all of a sudden there's this moment with the cinematic thing that happened. But people were doing that 20 years ago — Rock and Mick Foley, Halftime Heat, Austin and Booker in the grocery store. There's so many of those things over the years that have happened," he said on a media conference call

He did however credit Jeremy Borash (who played a major role in creating the Hardy Compound matches back when he, Matt and Jeff all worked in Impact Wrestling) and his production team for making the Boneyard Match between AJ Styles and The Undertaker such a critical success.

"Did they do a great job taking that to another level? Absolutely. Jeremy's an incredible talent with an eye for storytelling and an eye for image and everything like that. Man, I can't tell you how much I enjoy working with him."

NXT TakeOver: In Your House is scheduled for this Sunday at Full Sail University and is headlined by a Backlot Brawl between NXT Champion Adam Cole and Velveteen Dream. Given the unique setting and the fact that it's pretaped many have already classified it as another cinematic match, but Triple H said in the call he didn't feel like that was the right word to describe this match.

Here's the full card for Sunday's TakeOver show:

• NXT Championship: Adam Cole vs. Velveteen Dream (Last Chance Backlot Brawl Match) — if Cole wins, Dream cannot challenge for the NXT Championship as long as he holds the title
• NXT Women's Championship — Charlotte Flair vs. Rhea Ripley vs. Io Shirai
• NXT North American Championship — Keith Lee vs. Johnny Gargano
• Tommaso Ciampa vs. Karrion Kross
• Finn Balor vs. Damian Priest
• Mia Yim, Shotzi Blacheart and Tegan Nox vs. Candice LeRae, Dakota Kai and Raquel Gonzalez