3. A Casket Bump Takes Four Years Of Shawn Michaels' Career
Shawn Michaels was not going to retain the WWF Championship at WrestleMania XIV. The decision had already been made that the event would mark the beginning of the Stone Cold Steve Austin era no matter what. It was set in stone. Yet whatever was planned for Shawn Michaels after the event was undone by an injury at the 1998 Royal Rumble. When Michaels went over the top rope and landed back-first on a coffin during his casket match with The Undertaker at the Royal Rumble, it didn't look like much. Yet a post-match examination would reveal that it was the culprit of a significant back injury that many felt would eventually be viewed as the killer of Shawn Michaels' career. Michaels would return to face Austin at WrestleMania and eventually make a full-fledged comeback in the year 2002, but in the process he had to become a non-competing player in the Attitude Era. An era that he had helped to kick off with his outlandish behavior and backstage insistence on making the kind of changes that would help WWE stand out from anything else on television. An era that the greatest in-ring performer of all time could have absolutely shined in. So it goes.
