Shawn Michaels spoke to USAtoday recently. Here are some highlights;
FTW: Do you ever sit and think about where you might be now if you hadn’t become a Christian?
Michaels: I don’t like to be an alarmist or over-dramatize too much, but certainly a number of the guys I used to run around with are dead, and I don’t think it’s a huge leap that I was very close to winding up the same way. Even if had I not gone that far, it’s a very easy jump to be what’s termed as a wrestling tragedy. Being divorced from my wife, alienated from my children, and living alone… the only time you hear from me is when my mugshot pops up on TMZ. Both of those are very realistic possibilities, and I don’t think it’s overstating. My life was literally saved, as far as I’m concerned.
FTW: Whenever I think of Shawn Michaels, I think of Vince McMahon’s famous call from WrestleMania XII when you beat Bret Hart, “the boyhood dream has come true.” In the book you actually note that when you were a kid, you had no bigger dream that to win the Southwest Championship Wrestling title, meaning Vince’s call was a bit of a fabrication. When did you begin to believe ‘I can win the WWF title and be the best in the world?’
Michaels: As a kid, I didn’t have the ability to dream as big as what was to happen. So I didn’t dream of it in the AWA — you always sort of say ‘I want to be the world champion.’ I can remember [the wife of Michaels’ original trainer José Lothario] saying ‘this boy’s going to be a world champion someday.’ And that’s very nice of her, that’s why you say. You don’t say ‘he’s going to be mediocre.’ It wasn’t until I got into the WWE, WWF at the time, and really started my singles career. The dream grew as I was in wrestling… and even now I sit back and I’m amazed at what I’ve accomplished. And I mean that I’m humbly amazed. I surpassed anything that I thought was possible, and I’m incredibly thankful for that.
FTW: How do you explain pro wrestling to your children?
Michaels: It’s tough to explain to kids, especially when you’re the guy doing it. Our kids didn’t watch it for the longest time until we felt that they were at an age appropriate time where you could sort of explain it. It’s a confusing line of work. There’s pieces of the real you that are there, and there’s pieces that are not. You’re beating the living daylights out of yourself and other people, but at the same time you get along with all these people. And then in your home life you’re living a life to where ultimately it’d be great if everything didn’t wind up in a fight. It’s a little bit of a tightrope and you do your best to walk it.
WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross recently wrote a blog. Below are some highlights;
– Thought Roman Reigns mic work showed improvement. He seems to be the kind of talent who works much better with a bullet point format than adding the additional challenge of ‘remembering his lines’ to the always challenging promo facet of one’s game in the biz. Mic work doesn’t happen over night and too many fans show no patience while these skills are being developed. Reigns is far from the only talent on RAW that needs to work on that phase of their game. It’s an on going process that doesn’t come naturally for every talent. Reigns has great presence and knows that he has to become more proficient with his verbal game and I’m confident that will occur in time.
– I wish that the audience would care more about the Divas but I can see why they don’t more often than not. WWE has and are assembling some outstanding female talents.
– Didn’t have any issues with the Sting-HHH presentation but in hindsight I did not need to see the image of Sting entering the ring. Thought the graphics and overall video production was excellent. Looking forward to this confrontation.
– Booking Cesaro and Kidd as WWE’s top tag team seems like an easy transformation to me. I’d have no issue in re-building the tag team around these two underutilized talents.
– It seems that no matter who is announced to be inducted into the WWE HOF some fans simply cannot be satisfied or happy and instead make the announcement about someone that they feel has been passed over or is more deserving. Has anyone been really passed over as anyone not inducted still has a viable chance in being honored in the future. I’m happy for Rikishi and his family.
– 12 years ago today Curt Hennig aka Mr. Perfect or “Perfecto”as Razor Ramon called him passed away. We went into the 2007 WWE HOF class together and he was one of the funniest men I ever met in the business. I think it was the Bobby Heenan/AWA influence plus being around “The Boys” all his life. Curt was amazedly gifted and one helluva in ring hand. We had a blast doing some commentary together as he, like Hennan and Lawler, could show up w/o much prep, sit down and be great.