9 Things We Learned From Bruce Prichard's In Your House 8: Beware Of Dog Podcast
8. Storyline Drama With Diana Hart Was Supposed To Humanise Shawn Michaels
The chief storyline going into In Your House 8 involved a toxic love triangle between Shawn Michaels, Diana Hart and The British Bulldog. An opening video proudly presented allegations aimed at the reigning WWF Champion, rumouring that Michaels had made sexual advances on Diana (who was Bulldog's wife away from the ring).
According to Prichard, this storyline was an attempt to humanise Shawn Michaels and allow people in the audience to relate with his situation. At the same time, there were genuine worries that pressing home Diana's storyline attempts to fool Michaels into hitting on her might cause unnecessary problems at home.
Everything was designed not only to make people feel sorry for a wrongfully accused Shawn, but also so fans would view Jim Cornette as the puppet master pulling strings behind the scenes to try and rattle the defending champion before facing Bulldog.
The feeling was that Michaels needed something that would move away from his bad boy image of before and present him as a more wholesome kind of character fans could identify with.