One MIND-BLOWING Secret From EVERY WWE WrestleMania
25. WrestleMania 17 | We’re Not Sorry, We Hate You
Shawn Michaels was an enigmatic figure throughout the Attitude Era.
Why wouldn’t he make a comeback? Was his back injury really that bad? What was going on with him personally?
At a minimum, he was unable to work a singles match beyond WrestleMania 14. It took a serious test of his pain threshold to do the job for Steve Austin to begin with. A badly injured and agonised Michaels underwent what was seriously considered to be career-threatening back surgery in January 1999, ruling him out for that year, too. But then he worked a match of not inconsiderable length - 17 minutes - for his own Texas Wrestling Alliance outfit on April 4, 2000. A Bunkhouse Brawl around which he could hide his shortcomings, it was still a match. He could still do something.
If Shawn was going to make a comeback, rumours surrounding which intensified in late 2000, it was going to be for something big. Vince McMahon was too savvy a promoter and frankly, he loved Shawn too much to waste it. The problem is that, for a big match, Shawn needed a big opponent - and there were very few volunteers.
“None of the top guys are apparently anxious to work with him,” wrote Dave Meltzer in the December 18, 2000 Observer. Shawn had a reputation for deliberately blowing people up and refusing to do jobs in the ‘90s, to put that very mildly. And, since the top guys in 2000 were outdrawing anything he ever did by orders of magnitude, he had little leverage and they lacked incentive. In an interesting note, Meltzer also wrote “many aren’t even wanting him to be brought back as a regular because of things he’s said”.
Allegedly, Shawn wasn’t very nice about a certain top star’s grandmother. Let’s call him. D. Johnson. Wait, that’s too obvious…let’s call him Dwayne J.
Triple H was Shawn’s best bet, but Shawn was so out of control that even they fell out for a while there.