WWE: 7 Matches That Were Too Painful To Watch

7. Shawn Michaels vs Steve Austin - WrestleMania 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwBCKFSq5uk Any time you walk into a WrestleMania with the WWE Title in your possession it's a huge match. For Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 14 in Boston, it was one of the toughest matches of his life as he stood across the ring from Steve Austin. My two favorite wrestlers one on one, but I couldn't enjoy it as much I normally would. A back injury forced Michaels to miss nearly two full months of action. During the Royal Rumble 1998 match between Michaels and The Undertaker, the back of Michaels hit the casket that was outside the ring (it was a Casket Match). It didn't hurt him right away, but he said that days later it caused him a lot of pain. Michaels didn't work again until WrestleMania 14. The other part of the story is that Michaels had a lot of heat in WWE at the time. A year earlier he missed WrestleMania because of a knee injury that he thought was going to cost him his career. He forfeited the WWE Title, but was back in the ring three months later looking as if he wasn't hurt at all. His haters thought he could be faking the back injury as a way to get out of dropping the WWE Title to Steve Austin. There's even a story about how Undertaker was in the locker room taping up his fists while making menacing faces in the direction of Michaels, which was his way of telling Michaels that he better do the right thing. In other words, if you don't do it you're going to get your ass kicked. Michaels worked the match with Austin and even though it wasn't a classic, it was still very good with Austin getting the title and Michaels getting knocked out by Mike Tyson after the match. Michaels was favoring his back the whole match. It was not a work. He was in a lot of pain as he bounced around the ring, climbed to the top rope and did his famous kip up. Every move he made hurt him, yet he kept on going. This was the last WWE match that Shawn would have for over four years. The back injury was so serious that it required major surgery and most fans didn't expect him to ever wrestle again. He didn't think he would wrestle again either. Somehow he did. That story is coming up later.