19 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Shawn Michaels

2. He Hated (And Avoided At All Costs) Dropping Titles In The Ring

A tarnished reputation in the wrestling business is something that is hard for people to look past. If you are labeled as an untrustworthy person or somebody that deceives others then you will have a tough time succeeding in wrestling. When it came to his titles, Michaels wasn't very good about putting people over the right way. There were some instances where he did business like he was supposed to, but not all the time. The most famous incident was in February 1997 when Michaels claimed he had a serious knee injury that forced him to stop wrestling. At the time, a doctor told him that he couldn't wrestle anymore. Because of that, Michaels went on Raw and did the famous "I lost my smile" speech where he forfeited the championship without actually losing a match. Three months later, Michaels was back in the ring looking like he hadn't missed a beat. Was he really hurt? Only he knows. In late 1995 when he was the Intercontinental Champion, he got beat up by those marines in Syracuse and instead of defending the IC Title against Dean Douglas, he forfeited it. Razor Ramon ended up beating Douglas for it that same night. It was a case of Michaels and his buddies in the Kliq working together to help each other out. Those two incidents pissed people off because the feeling was if he could walk to the ring then he could at least try to have a match. They could have done quick matches in both instances, worked around the injury and done a future storyline. Instead, Michaels just gave up his titles. His three tag title reigns, two with Diesel and one with Steve Austin, ended without losing a match. They were all storyline reasons for the titles changing hands. As mentioned earlier, he didn't lose the European Title to anybody in a competitive match either. It was a joke match against Triple H. At WrestleMania 14, there was concern that maybe Michaels would back out again. He was scheduled to drop the WWE Title to Steve Austin. Michaels had a serious back injury at the time and his future was very much in doubt, but there was concern that maybe he would try to back out of that title defense too. There are even stories of Undertaker giving him menacing looks backstage to intimidate him into doing the right thing. Michaels did the clean job to Austin in one of the rare occurrences of HBK doing the right thing when it came to a title defense. Were all of these things just coincidences or did Michaels have a problem with putting people over? Once again that's only something he could answer, but those that are anti-Michaels will mention that his reluctance to put others over is something that really hurt his reputation a lot.