After suffering a debilitating back injury at the 1998 Royal Rumble, Shawn Michaels knew that his time in the ring was running out. He dropped the WWE Championship to Steve Austin at WrestleMania XIV, then stepped away from pro wrestling, ostensibly retiring. During his time out of the business, Michaels opened his own wrestling school and worked as a sportscaster in San Antonio while also doing the odd spot of commissioner work for WWE. Still, while Michaels was out of competition, he was quietly healing. In 2002, he made a return to WWE in a classic match with Triple H, then won the World Heavyweight Championship later in the year. It was the start of another eight years of ring work for HBK, and by the time he retired for good, he had become a true Hall of Famer. Michaels's return almost came a year and a half earlier, though - he was originally slated to take on Triple H at WrestleMania X-Seven. The match was cancelled when HBK showed up to a Raw tapomg in no condition to compete, and the former WWE Champion's comeback was put on hiatus indefinitely. Thankfully, he soon got his issues in order, return and wrestled classic bouts at the next eight WrestleManias.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
