Shawn Michaels reveals how he initially felt about his “Sexy Boy” entrance music in WWE

I give Jimmy Hart so much credit for that. When it first came out, I can remember hearing it and thinking like, ‘Oh jeez.’ When you go singles and you pitch yourself as a single star, you kind of see yourself—everybody sees themselves more as the action hero guy. Kevin Nash always describes it as the guy that’s flying the helicopter with a cigar in his mouth, the M16 in his hand, and the girl under his arm, doing everything cool. And my character obviously was not really close to any of that. But then as I got with Sherri and began to embrace it, I was able to find out who this was. The boy toy stuff that was in the song was so helpful in that—in helping me find out who it would be and who HBK would eventually become. So Jimmy Hart and that song deserve so much credit for everything that I accomplished, because it was the tool that I used to find that character.

[Do you remember the day being in the studio actually singing those lyrics?] I do. I just remember bits and pieces of it, talking with Jimmy and telling him ‘I really don’t have a good voice.’ My voice is so deep and I can’t get high pitches. I just don’t even have levels when it comes to singing. I was very self-conscious anyway. But he was great. He just said, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll make you sound great, baby.’ And I think they did whatever it is they do. They obviously didn’t have at that time all the wonderful bells and whistles they have now, but yeah, they did a great job. It was sort of icing on the cake when it goes from Sherri singing it to me singing it. I don’t know—just that whole process. It’s so ludicrous, all of it. And I think that’s what makes it so special. It was just—it was so ludicrous. Like I said, I can’t express it enough. It was just not really where I saw myself going. Later on, when I was 35 or 36, I felt I could be more of who I really was—with a little bit of grit, with the cooler-looking cowboy hat, with a little more toughness to him. But at that time, that just wasn’t something I was going to pull off. It was so unique and different. Once I heard that song, that’s when I began to think about, ‘Okay, I’m going to do this. Who are two people I can connect with on that level, that are this type of showman?’ And it was Freddie Mercury and Elvis. Those were the two people I began to focus on. And that’s what really got me to the point where I could be comfortable out there, because I can’t dance a lick. I can’t sing. Even though I was playing this character, I had no game—as the kids say—when it came to girls and stuff like that. I was very shy. All of that character is 100% based on a bunch of BS that I never actually really had. In fact, as a person, I spent the majority of my life wishing I was that guy, but I was never able to really pull that off in real life. So it gave me this place to jump into—to be this person that was unbelievably obnoxious and cool and into himself, and comfortable in his own skin… because I wasn’t at that time.”