Horrifying Injuries That Changed Wrestlers FOREVER
3. Shawn Michaels
What might WWE have looked like if a fully fit Shawn Michaels walked in to WrestleMania XIV as WWE Champion, had no inclination to put over Stone Cold Steve Austin, and continued into 1998 as the top heel, top star and leader of the original D-Generation X?
It's an enormous sliding doors moment in WWE history, not least because Vince McMahon had gone all in on 'HBK' as recently as the prior November. It's easy to assume that unstoppable babyface Austin really couldn't be stopped, but Michaels made nothing simple back then and - per rumours that exist to this day - took some convincing even though he knew he was going on the shelf for a long, long time.
In many respects, the back injury he sustained and/or exacerbated at Royal Rumble 1998 changed the lives of Austin and McMahon as much as it did Michaels himself. With 'The Showstopper' gone, the 'Rattlesnake' and his new on-screen rival were able to drive the company back to hitherto unseen heights. In the four years Michaels missed, the industry and the world changed and he did too. Clean, sober and arguably more valuable at the box office than he'd ever been during WWE's leaner years, Michaels was free to be the man in a company that now needed him far more than he did them.