10 Things We Learned From Shawn Michaels On Vince Russo's Podcast
2. Roddy Piper Taught Him A Lot
When 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper passed away in 2015, the wrestling world responded with a shared grief and the knowledge that one of the keenest minds in the history of the game was no longer with us.
In his chat with Russo, HBK mentions a few things that Piper taught him about the business, which may go a long way to explaining the longevity of The Showstopper.
The first is that Michaels never listened to the fans regarding his matches. This didn't go down too well with the boys in the back but it was Piper who instilled this thought-process in him. As he says himself in the interview, 'no one tells me if my match was good. I tell me. No one stars me, I star me'.
It's an interesting take on the idea of a 'good match', especially in the modern age where this seems to be the holy grail of professional wrestling.
Another piece of advice Piper gave Michaels was something that WWE seems to have forgotten in the modern day. In many ways, how you follow up the main event and big show is every bit as important as the event itself.
If you go out and put on a great show only to follow it up with shoulder-shrugging and question marks, your audience is going to drift away fairly swiftly.
Piper and Michaels rarely crossed paths during their time in WWF, although there is a video on a well-known video streaming website of an encounter between the two in the build up to WrestleMania.