HEARTBREAK AND TRIUMPH Interview with Shawn Michaels

You’re about to visit the UK for a series of Q&A events. What can we expect from the tour?
Well, I gotta be honest, I don’t have any idea what kind of questions to expect – I’ve only done a handful of the Q&As. I’m sure there’ll be some questions that we sort of get in every interview, but I’m looking forward to answering them to the best of my ability, and so I think it’ll be a fun experience.
I haven’t done a lot of these, so UK folks can help me learn how to do them, learn how to get better at them, and I guess the most important thing is to have a relaxed atmosphere, a very informal atmosphere, and have a good time.

How long after WrestleMania XXVI did it take for people to realise that you really were retired, and it wasn’t just a typical “wrestling retirement”?
Well, I don’t know, I still get people telling me I’ll be wrestling at WrestleMania XXX (laughs). I don’t know how many folks believe it or how many don’t, and both is okay, and both of them are understandable. It’s just one of those things that comes along with being in the WWE or being in the wrestling business in general. After 30 years, not a lot surprises me - not a whole lot affects me or bothers me. It’s all perfectly natural, and so I think at the very least people see that I’m pretty content in my life, being retired, and I guess that’s as good as you can ask for.
I guess it’s a good thing that people still want you to come back; I certainly see why guys do, and certainly there’s far more people that want you to come back than want you to stay retired. You hear from the minority [who want you to stay retired] a lot more, but they’re definitely in a minority; there are far more people that want guys to return and come out retirement than want you to stay retired, so I can understand why guys do it..

After spending four years out with your back injury, you returned like a different wrestler: you had a lot more maturity, you took on a legend’s status, and you had a more deliberate ring style. How do you think you’d have progressed if you hadn’t had the time away?
Beats me! (laughs) I am not somebody that spends a lot of time on speculations and what-ifs, because I don’t know. There’s a difference: retirement to me is walking away on your own terms, and being forced away as a result of an injury... (pauses) I guess I would term that as maybe not retirement, but maybe forced retirement. Regardless, I’m very thankful that [the injury] happened, because without it, things wouldn’t have worked out the way they did, and I wouldn’t change the way things turned out for anything.
I spend absolutely no time on the what-ifs. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what it could be like if I could fly, since I can’t, so I don’t spend a lot of time wondering about what would have happened if I hadn’t got injured.

In 1990, The Rockers “won” the WWF Tag Team titles, only to have the decision reversed. How long did it take for you to find out what was happening, and how did that conversation go?
I remember Marty and I were at his house in Orlando, and we were [both] told in the same phone call that the match wasn’t going to air, it wasn’t going to be re-done, and we weren’t going to win the titles.
Obviously, Marty and I were disappointed; I’m sure we got off the phone and cursed something and talked about what a rip-off it was, and things that wrestlers do when things don’t go their way. But I can’t recall spending a whole lot of time dwelling on it from that point, because I guess you always think about the fact that as quickly as [things] change against you, they can change for you. So I honestly can’t say that it was something that we harboured for awful long, other than the understandable thinking that it sort of sucked.

This was at a time when you didn’t carry the belts at house shows until the title switch aired on TV, so presumably you never defended the titles?
I think back then we were doing a number of TV [tapings] and that match was on the last day of TV, so we would have had a number of days off before starting back up on a live event tour. To the best of my recollection, the call came on our days off. It was seamless from the company standpoint: the match never aired, therefore it never happened, and we didn’t make any live events with the titles. I don’t think the company had to do any sort of backtracking.

What adjustments did you have to make when moving from a regular tag team to a singles role?
I think even though most guys are in shape, there’s certainly an amount of ring shape that’s going to be an adjustment. Obviously you’re going to carry the match 100% yourself for the most part, and depending on whether you’re going to be a good guy or a bad guy, there are adjustments there.
There are adjustments just from an overall presentation standpoint: carrying yourself, trying to separate yourself appearance-wise from being that tag team guy to a singles guy, but it’s got to be more of a spin-off, so to speak, of what you were. I think if it’s a complete detachment from what you were, there’s a little bit of a disconnect.
Certainly [there’s] the understanding that a singles career is altogether different than tag team wrestling. WWE tag team wrestling, or anywhere for that matter, is 9 times out of 10 only going to go to a certain point on the card, and so there’s more pressure from a singles standpoint, as far as trying to move up the ladder.

The basics of the 1996 “curtain call” at Madison Square Garden are well-known. But what exactly was said when you went backstage?
Vince said, “Did that mean a lot to you?” and I said, “Yes it did”, and he said, “Well, then it meant a lot to me.” It was all the green light from him until afterwards, and that’s when a number of people didn’t care for it, and it upset a lot of folks, and the next day he informed us that we needed to apologise to a lot of people, and we did. Obviously [it was] far more dramatic than I’m making it sound, but fortunately or unfortunately for me, after 15 years I no longer carry drama in my life. At the time, it wasn’t a big deal – we totally had the green light – but like a lot of things in our business, from the time of about 11pm ’til 9 or 10am the next day, a lot goes on (laughs). We learnt that first-hand when we got to TV, and that was that. We took our brow-beating, and went and apologised to everybody, and did exactly as we were told.

Is that a good example of the more rational perspective that being away from wrestling for several years gave you?
Yes – in a word, yes. It’s amazing how marriage and children and, certainly from my standpoint, my faith, gives you a real clear view on what’s important and what isn’t. There are times [that not worrying] gets taken as an even bigger sign of disrespect, but I never meant it that way. But yes, it did [give me a more rational perspective] and I’m thankful for it. I think I was able to do the job better, be more productive and be a better employee. And so the answer to that is a big fat yes.

Is there any truth to the story that when you started working with Shelton Benjamin, you took him aside and told him you’d let him in on the biggest secret in wrestling: that wins and losses really do matter.
I know that I’ve had that conversation with people over the years, only because it’s true (laughs).
To me, it’s one of those silly wrestling voodoo things that, “Well, it doesn’t matter...” It certainly matters: no-one’s ever paid a lot of money to see a guy that’s 0-500. To imply that it doesn’t matter... (pauses) It’s one of those things in our business that’s voodoo, because it means, “You don’t want to do a job”, and it’s a bunch of insider stuff that’s up there with the what-ifs: “What if I didn’t get injured?” or “What if I could fly?” I mean, there’s a number of things that I personally think are silly in our line of work, and if you don’t agree with them somehow, you’re [said to be] not respectful of the business.
The reality is, it’s still reality, and the truth is still the truth, and I don’t know anybody that’s paid a lot of money to see a guy that’s 0-500. To imply that it doesn’t matter is silly.

You famously had a lot of creative input in your 2008 feud with Chris Jericho. How did that happen?
He and I had just always connected in that respect. It was one of those things that was not really planned. As I recall, he and I were first just supposed to do a one-off in between what was going to be a more lengthy myself against Batista storyline, and then Chris and I just started throwing in some little things here and there that we get a kick out of doing. Those things connected in a way that the company called an audible and decided to extend the Jericho-HBK feud.
I won’t try to make us sound like evil geniuses, but it was really just a case of he and I getting together each week, just sitting down and chatting, talking about things. And again, one of the things that he and I have always come together on is we both really enjoy the creative process; we’re both sort of, as I term it, artsy-fartsy, and really enjoy the small little subtleties and detail things that don’t seem like much, but have a lot of impact. The more we started to mess with that, the more we enjoyed it, the more we got into it, and the more it just sort of progressed.
Really, we just piecemealed it together week by week, and went from there. We had [writers] Brian Gerwitz and Ed Koskey, and they tore the scripts up now and again, and they’d sit with us and we’d all throw things out there, and added what we liked and took out what we didn’t like. All of a sudden, it was turning into this unbelievably fantastic thing, and the more that snowball rolls downhill, the bigger it gets and the more fun it becomes.
Chris and I are two guys that enjoy the process more than we probably should, and can sit there and talk about it, and take it apart little piece by little piece. There are times that can get on other people’s nerves, but Chris and I both enjoyed doing it, so it was a case that we so thoroughly enjoyed the process that it just got better as we did it.

You have several DVD compilations available. Are there any matches that weren’t televised that you wish could have been included on a DVD?
I am guilty of being one of those guys that really has zero input – other than the interviews – into his DVDs. I have forgotten so much that it would be tough for me to say, but I know there were numerous Ladder matches that Scott Hall and I had that after WrestleMania X, we joked, “Holy cow, if they thought that one was something, they should have seen the one we had in San Diego” or wherever.

Is it correct that you asked to work with Vince McMahon at WrestleMania XXII because you wanted a year off from the pressure of being expected to have the Match of the Night?
Yes. I’ve heard stories that I was supposed to wrestle Eddy [Guerrero] and things of that nature, but for whatever it’s worth, no-one mentioned that stuff to me. I just recall commenting that it would be nice to, just for one year, not be in a position – though they never put me in a position, I put myself there – to deliver this wrestling match that needed to be off the charts. I just wanted to see what a WrestleMania would be like just having fun. I had mentioned that, and that’s when doing the stuff with Vince came up.
Anytime you wrestle Vince, it’s not going to be focused on a wrestling match so to speak, and there’s going to be, for lack of a better term, hardcore rules or No Disqualification or objects and things of that nature. From my standpoint, I looked at that as something that’s a little easier – a little more fun. So that was really the mindset, nothing really genius about it, just wanting to have a match that you didn’t feel that the world was expecting to be a five-star wrestling match.
Usually, a day or two before the Hall of Fame, you just zone out and began to focus 100% on the match, and totally ignore your family, which is traditionally what I did. It’s sort of a running joke in my house that Daddy always sort of fades out at the Hall of Fame, isn’t saying a bunch, and you just had to leave him be because he went into this little world of himself. [I was] just wanting to have a WrestleMania where that wasn’t the case. Not to imply that the other [shows] weren’t fun, because they certainly were, but just looking at it as more of a relaxation, and not putting a ton of pressure on yourself.
Strangely enough, the match turned out really, really good, and was great deal of fun to do. I got to accomplish all worlds at that WrestleMania, where it was a great match and I didn’t feel a bit of pressure.

A couple of years ago, you recorded a lengthy sit-down interview with Bret Hart discussing your careers, as well as The Montreal Screwjob. Did that change the way you looked back at that situation?
All of it has. Everything that Bret and I have gotten to do in the last several years has been cathartic, and yes, I can definitely see the other side. I think a lot of that comes with age and wisdom, but at the same time being in a different place [mentally] helps in that respect. It’s been phenomenal, and our relationship since then has been a joy. It’s so nice to see each other and talk about regular things, and on things we do look back on, we can chuckle and say like, “Oh yeah, I’m surprised you didn’t kill me”. It’s night and day, it really is.
You can put it up there with not being able to fly; you can’t change the past, but you can change the future, and those are the things you concentrate on. You do absolutely no good to anybody or yourself dwelling on the past. It doesn’t matter how many times people want to bring it up and throw it in your face; the great thing is that the two individuals that were involved in it see their roles, understand it, and are apologetic to one another and regret it.
There is absolutely nothing but positive things that have gone on since that. It’s a nice place to be at, because at the end of the day, life is way too short to allow things like that, or to allow anything that happens in any job to affect your life in a bad way.
It goes up there with a number of the great things that I had the good fortune to be involved with in the wrestling business.
It’s a very nice picture to look back on.