Seven Things I Hate About… Shawn Michaels 2nd WWE Run
Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the triumphant return of Seven Things I Hate About You. That’s right, the column colossus is back baby! Old-timers may remember this as the format I debuted with, where I discussed such hard-hitting issues as “Should JTG be the WWE Champion?” Today, we’ll be discussing the abomination that is the return of Shawn Michaels to active competition within the WWE after retiring in the main event of Wrestlemania.
#1 – Hogan vs Michaels, Legend vs Icon
Let me begin by taking you back in time to before the return of Shawn Michaels. You don’t have to go far to find reports of Shawn being immature or difficult to work with; more than one Hall of Famer has described HBK during this period as “a pain in the ass”. But then he found God, and with the Lord as his shepherd Shawn Michaels underwent a transformation. Gone was the dependency on painkillers, gone was the bad attitude, gone was the “pain in the ass” … Shawn was a new man. He was humble, he was pious, he was born again unto the Lord our God, and everything was different. For a while. “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial” according to James 1:12. The new and improved Shawn Michaels did not persevere under the trial of Terry Bollea. Listen, I’m not an unreasonable man and I’m sure that you, oh avid reader of wrestling columns on the internet, are similarly calm and unopinionated, so we as a collective understand that Hogan had his own unique thoughts on what their feud should have been; but does that excuse the blatant unprofessionalism on display by Shawn Michaels? This should have been a match for the ages, one that is talked about in the same revered tones as Hogan vs Rock for historic relevance alone, but instead it’s remembered for Shawn Michaels blatantly overselling every single strike from The Hulkster. I don’t care what attitude your opponent brings to the table, if you’re a professional you will do your job and you will do it properly. Wasn’t that the very same logic Shawn used to justify his part in the Montreal Screwjob? Dammit Shinobi, you’ve got me taking Bret’s side but far, far more importantly you’ve got me taking ‘Plan’s side, and that is unforgivable.
#2 – One-Dimensional
The Undertaker. Madonna. Chris Jericho. David Bowie. What do they have in common? Reinvention. Big Show. The Darkness. John Cena. Nu-metal. What do they have in common? Same old, same old. I bet you can’t guess which of these two groups Shawn Michaels belongs to, can you? The reason this insult hurts is because it’s the truth. From his return in 2002 until Shawn Michaels left the building in 2010, The Heartbreak Kid was exactly that: The Heartbreak Kid. Despite being one of the most high-profile and decorated superstars in the company, he portrayed himself as the perennial underdog, a ‘sexy boy’ with a receding hairline that would suggest any portrayal of him as a ‘boy’ was misguided at best. It’s at this point that I’d usually play devil’s advocate and talk about the different sides of Shawn, the nuances in his performances and character that made him the showstopper, the main event, Mr. Wrestlemania… but that would be such a crock! Look, once in a while he might have tried to highlight a different facet of his persona but it never lasted; as soon as that particular story was over, he went right back to Shawn Michaels, The Heartbreak Kid. Let’s call back to the Hogan match; despite a well-executed (if predictable) heel turn, the night after the match was over Shawn was back on Raw hamming it up and portraying himself as a babyface again. Any chance of character depth was gone quicker than a hiccup and he was back to his old self, squashing a young up-and- comer by the name of Chris Masters. Hey, speaking of squashing young, up-and-coming talent…
#3 – Who Did He ‘Make’?
Last time around I talked in great detail about how the intercontinental title match at Wrestlemania 8 was the greatest torch-passing moment in history, a gift from Roddy Piper that lifted Bret Hart into the upper echelon of the elite and progressed wrestling forward into a new generation; one could easily argue that Michaels vs Austin from Wrestlemania 14 was equally important, a truly star- making match that pushed ‘Stone Cold’ even further into the stratosphere. Now, allow me to tell you about the torch-passing moments that happened during the second WWE run of Shawn Michaels: Didn’t catch that? Sorry, I’ll write it louder. Shawn Michaels lost sixteen singles matched on pay-per-view between his return and his retirement. Of those sixteen, eight were to the individual members of Evolution (more on that later) and all but one were against wrestlers who had already won a world title. The exception? Randy Orton, who won thanks to brass knuckles and interference from Ric Flair. To make matters worse, the aforementioned Orton match was one of only three singles matches against opponents without a world title to their name. In the other two, he cleanly defeated Mr. Kennedy and Chris Masters. No big-stage rematch, no redemption for the youngsters, just a quick Sweet Chin Music and th…th…that’s all, folks. I can’t be alone in thinking that this is a joke, right? He’s one of the biggest stars in the history of the business, widely regarded as the greatest in-ring competitor of all time so surely, he would have given someone the chance to progress their career at his expense on the way out, wouldn’t he? Unfortunately, no, this isn’t a joke, this isn’t exaggeration for the purpose of making a point. While Triple H was putting over Batista and John Cena, Shawn Michaels may well have been the single most selfish man in the history of wrestling.
#4 – Triple H’s Ego
Until 2002, Triple H never had to share the main event scene with his former mentor. Within that first iteration of DX there was a clear alpha male, and his name was Shawn Michaels. Triple H learned from The Heartbreak Kid and treated the early retirement as an opportunity to establish himself, first at the top of D-Generation X and then at the top of the main event scene. As strange as it seems now, hardly anyone was really comparing the two as top-level talents because there was never any need to; Michaels was gone and Helmsley was coming into his own, end of story. It’s easy to imagine Triple H being thrilled that Shawn was coming back… until Summerslam ’02. As Michaels soaked up the praise for putting on such a fantastic performance after 4 years away, Triple H started to realise that his legacy was under threat. Quite simply, when it comes to Shawn Michaels, Triple H has a complex. With the exception of Summerslam ‘02, The Game wrestled HBK four times on pay-per-view, drawing one and winning the other three; he wasn’t willing to lose to The Heartbreak Kid. Even when they were friends back in the reunited D-Generation X there was a clear alpha male, and this time his name was not Shawn Michaels. When Shawn Michaels stole the show against The Undertaker at Wrestlemania two years running, what was Triple H’s response? Anything you can do I can do better. Triple H is obsessed with being better than Shawn Michaels. He was never going to end The Streak, but he was damn sure going to outdo Shawn Michaels. Whether he did or not isn’t really the question here, but Triple H’s obsession with being seen as the alpha male led to a serious overexposure of The Game, and the deterioration of one of wrestling’s greatest villains into a parody of himself. For much of the early 2000’s Triple H was insufferable, and the blame for that lies squarely at the door of Shawn Michaels. He should never have come back.
#5 – Ric Flair’s Retirement Rub
Deliberate innuendo? I’ll let you decide. I’ve already established that Michaels didn’t put over any young talent during his second run, but it’s an even greater sin that he stole a career-making moment from the younger generation. Let’s have a look at the other names on that show, shall we? CM Punk, Carlito, John Morrison, Mr. Kennedy, MVP, Shelton Benjamin; any one of these superstars could’ve had a career-defining moment when they put the 16-time world champion down for his final 1-2-3. Now look, I’m not naïve; Ric Flair wanted Shawn to do it because he needed a more athletic superstar to help carry him to one final match, but can you imagine what a heel CM Punk could have achieved with Flair? Can you really argue that Shelton Benjamin in the prime of his career wouldn’t have bumped just as well as Shawn Michaels? Every single one of those competitors I named was considered a big enough name to compete in the Money In The Bank ladder match, which in kayfabe means they’re only one or two steps away from a world title shot. Ending the career of The Nature Boy would have propelled any one of them to the next level, but once again the most selfish man in the history of wrestling wanted to steal the show for himself.
#6 – What Did We Miss?
When Shawn Michaels retired, he opened The Shawn Michaels Wrestling Academy. It wasn’t open for very long, but it produced a few names you might recognise: Lance Cade. Paul London. The Brian Kendrick. Daniel Bryan. I’m not here to argue that all of those four men achieved truly incredible things, but what I will argue is that Shawn Michaels knew how to nurture talent; we’re talking about four title-holders within the WWE who came not just from the same school but from the same class! Imagine for a moment that HBK had spent the next decade teaching students instead of systematically destroying the future of the WWE. Imagine if he’d managed to produce a superstar of Daniel Bryan’s quality every year from 1998 to 2010, and continued to use his influence within WWE to secure them spots on the main roster. Imagine if his short-lived Texas Wrestling Alliance promotion had become a developmental territory. We’ll never know. Why will we never know? Say it with me, kids: because Shawn Michaels is the single most selfish man in the history of wrestling. He’d rather ‘steal the show’ for himself than give back to the business that made him a millionaire. He’d rather enjoy just one more moment in the main event than step aside gracefully and let someone else enjoy a single second in ‘his’ spotlight.
#7 – Saudi Arabia
For those of you who aren’t overly familiar with my work, it’s important that you understand the following sentence: I loved Shawn Michaels. To say he was my wrestling hero would be an understatement. In particular, I loved his second run in the WWE. It was one of the most inspirational stories I’d ever seen, a man who came back from the brink of self-destruction to put together one of the most awesome stories the wrestling world has ever seen. He came back after four years and it was like he’d wrestled yesterday. When he won the World Heavyweight Championship, I cried. For several brief moments during Wrestlemania 25, I truly believed he was going to end the streak, even though I knew he wasn’t going to end the streak. Most importantly, when he announced that he was putting his career on the line at Wrestlemania 26, I spent almost £2,000 on tickets, flights and a hotel to be there. I saw The Undertaker end his career with my own eyes, and the next evening I witnessed Shawn Michaels Appreciation Night live and in person, 5,000 miles away from my friends and family because I knew, I knew that he wasn’t wrestling again. It genuinely hurt me when he came out of retirement for ‘one more match’. It wasn’t ‘one more match’, it was ‘one more payday’, and it’s a damning indictment of the principled man I looked up to that he willingly travelled to a country with such an abhorrent human rights record to shit on his own legacy for money. Don’t give me the excuses, Shawn. “It wasn’t a singles match”, “it was a glorified house show”… No, it wasn’t. It was a slap in the face to the young man who believed in you, who trusted you, who loved you so much he put two grand on a credit card to sit in row Z and watch a tiny, stick-figure Shawn Michaels end his career in the main event of Wrestlemania. I can honestly say I’ll never forgive you.