Triple H tears quadriceps muscle
"The Game" can replay the incident in the slow-motion replay of his mind. Triple H was nearing the end of a high stakes match to which he and Steve Austin were defending the WWF World tag team title against Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit in San Jose, California. Y2J had Austin snared in the Walls of Jericho.
Helmsley planted his left leg just before lunging toward Jericho and breaking the hold. He felt a severe tear--as if a muscle had rolled up inside his thigh. Later, during an interview on wwf.com, Triple H said it felt as if he'd been shot in the leg.
Determined to finish the match, he brawled with Jericho on the arena floor. Unfortunately, Triple H wasn't able to simply run out the clock. Y2J dragged Helmsley onto the announcers' table and applied the Walls of Jericho on top of it. "It felt like he was ripping my leg off," Triple H confirmed later. "It really did."
Eventually, he hobbled into the ring and accidentally hit Austin with a sledgehammer, enabling Jericho to pin "Stone Cold" and win the World tag team title for his team. Helmsley immediately rolled onto the arena floor, where he clutched his leg in silent agony.
Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley tried to comfort him as paramedics and trainers arrived at ringside. They helped him to the backstage area, where the team doctor for the San Jose Sharks scheduled an immediate MRI. The test confirmed the lower layer of his quadriceps muscle, the long thigh muscle connecting at the knee, was torn.
Dr. James Andrews, who performed the surgery three days later in Birmingham, Alabama, estimated it would be at least four months before "The Game" could return to the game. That was a conservative estimate.