The Night Shawn Michaels Found His Smile
The WWF put up with what is generally accepted as his being a little f*cker because he was a goddamn genius in the ring.
He didn't even draw! He drew incrementally better than Diesel did. Incrementally. And yet Vince McMahon, never one to value the purity of in-ring performance, adored this professional wrestler over most sports entertainers. Michaels is everybody most of your favourite wrestlers ripped off. Sammy Guevera's trademark bump is patterned after Shawn's famous Sid carry-job. Most everybody does a Superkick. Most everybody goes big on the bump now. To varying degrees of subtlety, much of wrestling in the U.S. has modelled itself after the melodrama with which he and the Undertaker stole the show at WrestleMania 25. Michaels was a pinballing dynamo who sold like a motherf*cker and earned the catharsis of his sh*t-kickings because thats's exactly what he was. He was such a phenomenal showman that, again, he created a spectacle of the in-ring that Vince McMahon fell in love with.
Shawn Michaels was a genius. Even a Bret Hart guy can write that. Even Bret Hart himself can express it, and he has a more valid reason than most to conflate the man and the performer.
Shawn's in-ring career was cut short when his back landed sharply on the titular casket during the 1998 Royal Rumble's WWF Title match. He powered through on adrenaline to complete it. The severity of it only became apparent in the days that followed. He was done, or so he thought; at WrestleMania 14, in his most selfless professional act, he bit through the palpably searing pain to deliver the result, if not a classic, passing the torch to Steve Austin.
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