10 Great Matches When Wrestlers Stopped Giving A Damn

2. Hulk Hogan Vs. Shawn Michaels - WWE SummerSlam 2005

Hulk Hogan Shawn Michaels
WWE.com

A dream match that nobody had ever really clamoured for, Shawn Michaels and Hulk Hogan put on a very memorable bout in the main event of SummerSlam 2005. The build was particularly notable, as Michaels found himself working as a heel for the first (and only) time following his return from retirement in 2002. Needless to say, he was fantastic in the role.

But it is the match itself that sticks in the collective memory, a remembrance based purely on HBK’s preposterous selling. Michaels was an expressive seller at the best of times, but the match with Hogan saw him flopping around the point of parody. In the years to follow it was revealed that Michaels put on the show because of backstage politics, one of the few times that HBK’s petulant past reared its ugly head during his renaissance.

Michaels may not have taken the match particularly seriously, but his exaggerated bumping (and some classic Hogan crimson) elevated the match from a sluggish bout between two legends to something that fans remember fondly to this day. Isn’t that the whole point of professional wrestling, to create memories that make fans smile?

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.