In one of the most infamous moments of his career, Shawn Michaels once conceded the WWE Championship because he 'lost his smile'. It's perhaps HBK's most notorious quote, and he gets ribbed about it even to this day. While it gets joked about these days, at the time, the loss of Shawn's smile was a pretty controversial topic. The story goes that Shawn wasn't having the best of times in his personal life, and was struggling with the pressures of being a WWE superstar, and it's primary champion. Shawn also required knee surgery at the time, and he had to leave the company and drop the title in order to heal. The validity of Shawn's story was questioned at the time, because a lot of people that believed that he simply didn't want to lose the title to Bret Hart; and he would rather see the title go vacant. Either way, handing in the title and citing the reason being the lack of passion and enjoyment for wrestling is one of Shawn's many innovations; although is likely one he wish he'd not created.
