If a pro wrestling fan tells you that they absolutely expected Shawn Michaels to ever return to in-ring action after Wrestlemania XIV, they're lying to you. By 2002, the WWF did an amazing job of making wrestling fans everywhere believe that above all else, Shawn Michaels was a pill-popping ex-wrestler who was in such tremendous pain that even getting out of bed was an impossibility. Thus, when he returned to TV as a member of the ill-fated nWo, it was strange, stranger still when he was set to re-form D-Generation X with Triple H. Of course, one Pedigree later, and we were off to the races with a feud that culminated in *gasp* Shawn Michaels returning to the ring to wrestle Triple H at Summerslam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYX7zLt070o No, it was just that shocking, and Shawn Michaels doing all of his old highspots AND also taking a backbreaker onto a chair (among other "harrowing" maneuvers) makes the match truly captivating and likely the most compelling in-ring return in wrestling history because the wrestling fan universe (in the then-expanding digital age) was successfully worked into believing that a match of this magnitude would never occur.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
