During a March 2003 episode of WWE RAW, Maven squared off against WWE World Champion Triple H in a squash match.
Maven struggled to gain momentum as the match was designed to showcase The Cerebral Assassin, allowing him to secure a win before his showdown with Booker T at WrestleMania XIX.
By then, such dominant squash matches had fallen out of favor in WWE, and even Triple H expressed his disapproval of this approach.
In his latest YouTube video, Maven revealed that Triple H had approached him earlier that day to apologize for what was about to unfold, expressing his dislike for squash matches.
Maven also noted that after the match, The Rock reached out to him, expressing his willingness to collaborate, as he was concerned about how the Tough Enough star had been treated in the bout.
Maven said, “Hunter would pull me aside and explain to me, and apologize in advance. He would say, ‘Listen, Maven, normally, I don’t like doing squash matches.’ By ‘squash matches,’ that’s just a term in our business for, ‘I’m going to get every ounce of the offense, and you’re gonna get nothing in.’ The way you build a character, and the way you help yourself is by building your opponent up. If I go out and just squash someone, what have I done? Absolutely nothing. So Hunter explained to me earlier in the day, ‘I don’t like doing squash matches. I’m sorry I’m doing this squash match. Normally, I want you to get some offense in.’ On this night, leading to WrestleMania in a few weeks, Hunter was just trying to expand on his heel persona. He had a big match coming up with Booker, and he wanted as many people as possible to hate him, to want to see Booker get the better of him, and what better way to do that than to beat the hell out of the Tough Enough kid?”
He continued, “Following this match, The Rock would actually pull me aside and just voice his displeasure. Tell me he didn’t just appreciate the way I was jobbed out, the fact that I was squashed, and said, ‘Business has to be done a different way.’ He didn’t appreciate, he didn’t like the way Hunter just pretty much used me. I wasn’t in a position to where I could say anything. I was just happy to be on the damn show, but the fact that Rock took the time to tell me, ‘Hey, man, I don’t like what he did.’ Then he told me something. He said, ‘When I come back,’ and I don’t know where he was going, maybe he was filming a movie, doing something, he said, ‘When I come back, we’ll do something together.’ He was, he was trying to make things right. Now, it never happened, and to be honest with you, I’m still waiting on it, but the fact that he took the time to pull me aside, and the mere fact that he was in my corner, rooting for my career, truly meant the world to me.”
As you may know, Triple H defeated Booker T at WrestleMania XIX and held onto the title until September of that year, when Goldberg finally defeated him at WWE Unforgiven.
