If you’ve watched professional wrestling any time in the last quarter-century, you don’t need me to explain Shawn Michaels to you. He’s one of the most beloved, influential, and respected wrestlers of the modern era, and his impact on the sport — both behind the scenes on on-camera — can never be overstated.
With WrestleMania 33 weekend approaching in Orlando, the Heartbreak Kid is gearing up for lots of WWE festivities, but he’s also taking part in a special event at Wrestlecon. He, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Sean Waltman — four-fifths of the legendary and at times infamous “Kliq” that spawned both the nWo and D-Generation X — will hold a special “One Night Only with the Kliq” fan Q&A.
Michaels was nice enough to give us a phone career to talk about the event, his historic career, the Kliq and both his future at the WWE Performance Center, and his opinion on the next generation of transcendent superstars.
With Spandex: Thanks so much for giving me a call, thanks for taking the time.
Shawn Michaels: You bet man, thank y’all for helping us out.
Obviously it’s WrestleMania season, and when we’re talking about WrestleMania, you are Mr. WrestleMania. And everyone talks about you matches at WrestleMania X, XII, XIV, 24, 25, 26 … You’ve made so many memories. But do you personally have any WrestleMania moments that stand out to you as special, that maybe fans don’t talk about quite so much?
You know what, honestly all of those that you mentioned, and a number of others. You know, they’re all sort of special in different ways. Honestly, one of the hardest questions to answer is, what is my favorite match, or my favorite WrestleMania. I consider myself very, very fortunate to have been part of so many awesome events in WWE history. And obviously, you remember your first WrestleMania. I think that’s one that probably, you know, clearly nobody talks about. It was Marty and I against Akeem and Boss Man. At the old Trump Plaza I guess, and I think because it’s your first one and you know at that time — gosh, I don’t even think I had the ability to dream of one day even being in the main events or anything like that.
So, I guess that’s the thing: to me, at this point in my life, I look at the entire scope. Starting from that one and then where it ended up. And honestly, I’m pretty humbled. You know, by the entire thing. And on one end, you dream. Then reality sets in, and you wonder if that so-called dream — does it really ever have the real possibility of coming true. Then of course, for for it to have gotten so much larger than I ever possibly imagined it being … And so, at my age now, I really [am] — I only have the ability to look at it in retrospect — unbelievably humbled and again I’m obviously thankful, but it sounds silly and it sounds sort of, I don’t know … namby-pamby. So goody two-shoes. But it really is [humbling].
Because again, I took the luxury of seeing the whole thing, the entire journey. And so now that it’s over, all of them are pretty cool, and all of them — like I said, X is sort of the one that put me on the map and really had people notice me, so to speak, and consider me somebody that might be a main eventer and then of course, you go to 12 and I win the championship, and again, I’ve come back and had a successful career that most people thought wasn’t going to be possible. They’re all sort of special in their own way.
I gotta say though … I guess the one that gets sort of overlooked — strangely enough, it’s only a little bit — the one with Angle. You know everybody is thrilled that he’s getting inducted this year, and that one was just so fun and again, one that that you really have to work for and of course all of the expectations are really high with he and I, so I’m really glad that he and I delivered on the level that we did, and you’d expect nothing less from Kurt Angle but you always run that chance that maybe you’re not living up to the hype, and thankfully we did.
Well I mean, in a way, the only reason people don’t talk about that Angle match more, that’s your fault, because you had three such great WrestleManias to go out on.
I guess that’s the thing. That’s why I get it. It’s very hard for me to, again honestly, to take any of them because it’s completely mind-blowing to me that something as good as Kurt and I did — You know what I mean? I feel that in a nice way, it can get overlooked. We worked our tails off and certainly from the drama and storyline standpoint, those last ones were the one with Flair; those had a lot more substance to them beyond just wrestling, and I think certainly later in my career that got so enjoyable to do.
As you get older, its tougher and tougher to continue to dazzle on a purely wrestling and athletic level. You can do it, but creatively you want to do more and go a little deeper emotionally and certainly, drama-wise and creatively, you want to get maybe a little bit deeper than just wrestling and that’s what I got to do later in my career with Ric and Taker, which again, the artist in you appreciates those times over just straight wrestling, so to speak.
Yeah. It’s like trying to figure out which one of Van Gogh’s paintings is the best, right?
Look, let’s just say from [the artist’s] standpoint, there is sometimes — we as the individual getting enjoyment out of one thing of course, and the fan making enjoyment out of something else and thankfully, at the end, people enjoy those on a wrestling level, but also on a creative storyline and psychological level. That’s how it’s fun; we get to feel like you’re combining the two things that you love the most, which is again, wrestling, but also the art.
Yeah. So on that level then, just real quick, what would you say is the most personally fulfilling WrestleMania match you’ve had?
[long pause] I guess I would say the one that’s probably, to the heart of everything, is probably the one with Ric. Just because that was, again I’ve told the story a million times, but I was driving out to the ranch and whatever, and my buddy Jimmy from high school called me, it was before WrestleMania, and said “Can you believe it?” And I said “What?” And he said, “Dude. Would you have ever thought when you and I were fifteen watching Ric Flair on TV, that you’d be having this last match of WrestleMania?”
And of course you’re doing it so often and Ric’s become a friend and a colleague and a peer and all of that, and you sometimes lose touch of that, and he reminded me of that, and that’s all that I can really think about was getting one in there forty-something years old, but really deep within my heart I was going in there as a fifteen-year-old kid wrestling the guy that you grew up watching, and then of course knowing how important it was for him for it to be special and good and certainly something that he would really appreciate and cherish for the rest of his life, so to speak.
I know how serious he takes his wrestling career, and as I’ve gotten to know him personally, I want that for him as well, and so for it to turn out in a way that everybody, he himself included, was happy, was very important to me.
So let’s talk about what you’ve got going on this week. You’re going to be reuniting with the Kliq publicly and I think this is probably the first time that the four of you have gotten together in this sort of fan forum setting. How did that all come together, and what can fans expect from that?
How it came together was again, we’re all at phenomenal places in our lives, and we all separately — and those guys sometimes together do appearances and stuff like that — and in the last couple of WrestleManias, with Scott and Kevin going into the Hall of Fame, and all of us getting together and just having so much fun when we are together just got me thinking like, “Jiminy Crickets, I want to go do an appearance with these guys.” Just something where we can do what we do when we’re together, out publicly with the people, telling stories and interacting with the people and answering questions. Doing what we’ve always done, I guess, and what we’ve all been so fortunate to do with our lives is just hang out with your buddies, have a great time, and call that work.
So honestly I’ve been working on it since last year, trying to figure out how we can make this happen. So Saturday before WrestleMania, I think that’s what, April 1st?
Yep. April 1st.
Yeah, we’re gonna have just a One Night Only with the Kliq, and obviously there is a number of different experiences you can have being part of the Q&A, and taking limo rides with us at a separate, private, meet and greet with us, and a number of other aspects to it. It’s gonna be a blast. I have no doubt even though we’re all different people [now], there’s gonna be a lot of stories and probably things that people have not heard. I don’t know if I want to hear them again, but there is probably going to be a fair amount of embarrassing moments and having to give folks some inside scoops on things that went on, that believe it or not, they don’t know about. We’re thinking it will be a blast for everybody involved and my assumption that not too many questions are going to be off the table. Especially when it comes to Kevin, and Kid, and Scott, that’s for sure. I’m probably going to try to run, but I know those guys won’t.
So this is one night only, but do you think that maybe years down the road there’s a chance we might see something like this someday, but maybe with the one missing Kliq member?
Possibly. Again, and certainly that would be very good if we could, if he wasn’t busy. Obviously, his life has taken on a number of different aspects and challenges that he’s got, and its just not something that [laughs] there is time for him to do and certainly, the [other] four of us are certainly at a place where we are for the most part, and especially again I think half-jokingly, but its true Scott, Kevin, and Kid, man, there is nothing off the table with those guys, and so that’s just a pretty rare opportunity to get people of that caliber together who just are not going to dodge too many controversial aspects of things that went on. Not to imply that Hunter would, but it’s just honestly just from a time standpoint; it’s not something that he has the availability to do, and none of us would want to put him in any form of uncomfortable situation anyway.
That’s one of the reasons why our friendship has worked and stayed strong for so many years: we all respect one another, and the thing is we’ve always understood when business comes and comes before even the friendship. And that’s just real friendship, is understanding that whether its Kevin, and Scott, and Kid, leaving to go make more money for the competition, or Hunter being busy. Nothing separates the friendship from the five of us, and that’s something that I don’t know how many people can say that through almost 30 years of wrestling, they have stayed as close as we have.
Not many, that’s for sure. So the Kliq led to nWo and DX, everybody knows that, but you guys inspired a countless number of wrestlers, and right now the Bullet Club and the Young Bucks, in particular, are really keeping that legacy alive. My question is, is there an official Kliq name for the Wolfpac hand gesture? Because modern day fans, we call it the “Too Sweet,” but did you guys ever have a name or a term for it?
I don’t think we did. Again, that would be [a question for] those guys. If I remember correctly, I’s say that the person who came up with that was Kid. It was my understanding that it was something that he got on a European tour. He started doing it and then all of sudden we all started doing it. And like a lot of things, I have so little information on it to be perfectly honest, but they were doing it down there and then yeah they go with being Too Sweet, and then its the Wolfpac and this, that, and the other.
Honestly for us it was just a sign for the The Kliq, and if we did it we always knew it was a shout-out to one of another show’s people. And we were on different brands, and [it was] something we just thought would be amusing, and it might bother some of the people in charge. So we did that as well, because we wanted to make waves here and there, and I have seen that these other guys have continued up with this. Again, sort of neat and I guess I don’t know, I only met a few of the guys and I don’t know who the Bullet Club entails, to be perfectly honest.
To me, I just think its neat that they’ve all done that, and whatever kind of negativity that at one time people tried to put on the Kliq then — some of it, don’t get me wrong, very deserved — but these young guys sort of didn’t shy away from that, certainly didn’t care. They understood the point of it. Whether it was more about friendship, or it was more about always trying to be a little bit rebellious and stand out from the crowd. I appreciate that aspect, and I think it’s sort of neat that those guys have continued it on.
There isn’t anything that I think is owned [by anyone]. In pro wrestling, everyone has stolen something from somebody and so I don’t look at it as obviously anything other than one generation influencing another, just like the generation before me influenced me and I think that’s pretty cool. I hope that those guys continue to take it and pass it on to another generation, just for the heck of it.
[laughs] Now, you just dropped a bombshell on Sam Roberts’ podcast. You said that you were offered a match at A.J. Styles at this year’s WrestleMania. and you turned it down. Are you able to elaborate a little bit on that?
I guess that’s one of the things I really need to better at. To me, things that are natural occurrences in a number of different people’s careers in the wrestling business its towards either the bombshell. Honestly, whether it was me, Steve Austin, Edge, you just throw out a number of different guys that are no longer around that have stopped wrestling. Granted, some guys, from an injury standpoint, can’t return, but anybody, if they wanted to come back and have a match at WrestleMania, if they were to withdraw at sometime it would be something the WWE would take them up on. Again, I think sometimes things do get — and that’s the great thing about pro wrestling; something that’s just normal, regular occurrence to you is a bombshell to everybody else. [laughs]
People have to understand that anytime someone leaves the wrestling business, so to speak, anytime you want to come back, for the most part, I think you can always run that by the WWE and they’re always gonna consider it if they feel like it’s a really good option — or something [that] is going to draw money and draw viewers — they’re going to take you up on it. The idea of me ever coming back and doing what I think is always on the table from their standpoint, it would just be a matter of me calling and asking, which I’ve never done.
Sure. Sure.
In all of the years since I’ve been retired, there’s been countless stories [saying] that people have called me and asked, and that’s honestly never happened. [It hadn’t] happened until this year, and didn’t happen until I made an appearance at the Rumble and it was simply like, “Would you be interested?”
I guess it gets talked about so much [that] I don’t know if they thought if it was something that I had started. It gets talked about so much that I think they begin to go, “Maybe it’s something he’s open to.” And so I was asked and I said, “No, I’m still [retired]. I want to stay retired.” And so it takes on a life of its own. But this was actually the first year in all of the years I’ve been retired that someone actually, formally, asked me. I guess that is the bombshell. I’m thankful that at at 51 I can create a bombshell.
Well you’ll never be able to stop getting people to talk about you, I don’t think.
I can think of worse things, I guess.
Sure. There is a lot of people who would die to still have people talking about them so you said, when you talked about that AJ Styles match on Sam’s podcast, you said that you wished it was 10 years ago. So if this had been the talent group that was around 10 years ago, who is there besides AJ on the current WWE roster that you would just be so jazzed about working with?
I think that I mentioned that before. Samoa Joe is one of them, you know? I think Kevin Owens is one. I like them, the guys that are different. Again, AJ and Seth [Rollins] are guys that — its one of those things where I would say 10 years ago, that’s going to be more of your angle, Shawn. Wrestling matches where again, it’s phenomenal, but you’re having to hustle and work pretty hard, because more athletic skill-on-skill wrestling is the focus of the match.
Other guys from a more creative standpoint I think I can do something a little deeper and creatively challenging with are guys like Kevin Owens and Samoa Joe and lately — I don’t know if you’re not outdoorsy like I am, and I just like him — Braun Strowman, I mean that’s a big son of a gun. Roman [Reigns] is a guy that I could go out there and have a lot of fun with. The bigger guys, to me, are a lot of times a pretty darn easy story to tell because visually, you can see the difference with them, and some of the aspects that I do well is getting beat up and fighting from underneath. And so those are the ones that as you get older and you want to be more artistically challenged, those are the ones that appeal to me.
I feel like there are other guys. I think the talent, to me, there’s a number of them and then you go down to even the cruiserweight stuff. I don’t know if I could move as fast as those guys do now but maybe if I get guys like Neville and TJ [Perkins], [Shinsuke] Nakamura, I think would be neat. I think Bobby Roode would be fun.
Again, it’s like being a kid at Christmas time, and being exposed to a bunch of new toys, so to me the list goes on and on. Because one of the things that gets sort of tough is you have worked with everybody for the most part. People want to see you this or you thought about or you watched them and you go “Oh he does some really cool stuff, I feel like I could have a really good match with him” and now you’re looking at a whole new fresh batch of talent for me. So if I was younger and in this group, there is just not many of them I wouldn’t want to go out there and see what I could do.
That was the joy of the job, was as more new faces came in, you were exposed to different styles or different techniques, or just different little aspects or characters that you’ve got to begin to try to wrap your head around and think like, “Oh, maybe I could do this with that guy or have this kind of match with that guy.” That’s, to me, the joy of the job is looking at people individually and then watching them and seeing how you could bring out all of their best qualities, and hopefully in the process bring out yours as well and tear the house down. That’s the whole point of the job.
So let’s just talk about what you’re doing now. You’ve said in interviews that you’re more or less at the performance center all of the time now or most of the time. Has your role, your title, or anything like that been finalized yet?
No I don’t know that I have a title, and it [would make] me very nervous if I did. I don’t even know what I would be called, and right now I think my title would be the “Pain in Matt Bloom’s Backside.” That’s a little long, probably doesn’t fit on anything like little name tags, but right now that would probably be it because I’m forever, oh my goodness, texting the guy and asking him about this, and then you’ll get an email and does that mean it applies to me? I don’t know what things I’m supposed to listen to and what things I’m not, so right now, yeah most of it may be me [figuring stuff out]. I’m there on a regular basis, but everyone knows about my fear of having too much organization or having too much of a real job or looking like I have a real job, because I wouldn’t know what in the world to do with that.
I think we’re getting close, but again, because Hunter is so busy, and I guess because I’ve been working with WWE since I was 23 years old, I just show up at times whether people like it or not. They are nice enough to accommodate what I do, and then at some point we’ll all come together and go “Look, you seem to be here a bunch. Should we just go ahead and make something official?” I think we’re probably pretty close to that, but I’m sure Hunter will [make that move] if there is some formal something to this. From a corporate standpoint, they have to put out a statement on that [when it happens], or whatever, and that will all be fine with me. Right now I guess I’m a volunteer.
How hands-on are you with the Performance Center people right now, the kids?
I’m hands-on with a few of them, I think pretty darn regular. I look at certain guys and I think that they’ve got something special, [asking] “Do you mind if I work with them?” Even though they’re all foundationally and fundamentally at different levels, I feel like if I’m going to be someone that can help someone, I’m not going to be the one to teach them the X’s and the O’s. They’ve got more than capable enough people to do that and help them with the fundamentals of in-ring work, so to speak.
I think what I would bring to the table is getting guys to think about wrestling matches and their character, and the art of doing this stuff and telling a real story and connecting emotionally with people on a different level than everyone else. I think that’s ultimately what separates the tip-top of the card from everybody else. You can have something really nifty and cool to get you in the door, but eventually as a character and as a wrestler you have to evolve in a way much like people do in real life. You have to do that, and you have to have the ability to have the people walk into you as you are and continue to watch you as you turn, as you change, as you grow, and all the while not losing touch with that. Get them to begin to 100 percent care about you in a real way.
That is something that I like to think that HBK did over 25 years in the WWE. Clearly, as a guy who is not your model, WWE main event guy so to speak, physically there’s gotta be something more to it than just that. What allowed me to stay at a pretty decent level for as long as I did it wasn’t because of my build or dashing good looks, that’s for sure. Someone had to be that. For whatever reason, people felt that everything I was going through was in fact real.
Look, for the most part it, 99 percent of it was [authentic], and not being afraid to let them into who you are. Or who you want to be and who you desire to be, and get them to believe in that and want to see that for you. It really is about engaging with the WWE fanbase on a real, intimate, and emotional level. That’s not always real easy to do.
So you’ve been talking about helping them put it all together, and you’re also talking about how you’ve been around for 25 years. You’ve lived through the two hottest periods of wrestling history — probably the three hottest — you’ve seen massive crossover stars come and go. You’ve see people get made. You’ve seen people fizzle out. Is there anyone in the next year WWE that isn’t at that main event level yet, that you look at them and you just think there is no doubt about it, that’s a future megastar?
Well, I don’t know. I think there are a number of people that have the ability and the talent I just don’t know. One, it’s fair for me to say that I don’t know anyone intimately enough and that sounds silly, but I’m [not] close enough with anybody yet to know if there are aspects of them, realistically, in their character, so to speak. Does that make any sense?
Yeah, for sure.
Because I think that’s the key ingredient. I think there is a certain amount of truth in this business, which that’s the unbelievable irony of it all, because in a business that is what it is, we’ll use the word entertainment, I think for you to establish that something different, there has to be a real nugget of truth to you and authenticity to you that [fans] can latch onto and they can engage with.
So I know I don’t know any of the talent in the WWE [well enough]. I’m beginning to know a number of the NXT talent, but I think guys like Patrick Clark, Revival, Bobby Roode, Roderick Strong … there are guys I’m getting to know a little better, and those guys I’m certainly trying to help, one, find out who they are, and see if I can bring a little bit of who they are to their character so to speak, so that it flows in a much more natural way. And certainly it is something again that the people can see and go “That was real. That was real and therefore I’m interested. It’s something I can relate to”. You know what I mean? That’s something that I’m now learning and trying to figure out what I can do to best help that progress continue.
That’s awesome. I’ve got one last question for you. You mentioned them just a minute ago … At With Spandex, we tend to be of the opinion that The Revival might possibly the the greatest tag team of all time, and we simply can’t speak highly enough about them as fans. But do you have any thoughts about Dash and Dawson and where their careers could possibly take them?
I think they can do very well. The truth is though, that you can be the greatest tag team ever and the realization is that this is an individual sport. So I think the reality is that you have to realistically look at that and say, “What is the highest level for the greatest tag team?” I’m not saying I like it. I’m just saying we have to deal with the realities, that I think there is a ceiling on that. Whether anybody likes that or not. I think they’re unbelievably talented. I think they do stuff from a tag team standpoint that is unbelievably innovative and quite honestly, there are things that they do that they don’t get the credit for doing, because they do it so flawlessly and therefore it gets overlooked.
That’s something that I’m open to: help[ing] them realize that just because it’s easy to do and you can naturally flow through it, you’ve got to take your time and let people really see that. Absorb that and appreciate it. By the time you do that, you’ve done 10 other things so to speak, and it loses its specialness. They remind me of Tully and Arn, which to me will probably be the greatest tag team of all time. But these two guys are right there as far as I’m concerned. But at the same time, the reality is the wrestling business is the wrestling business. At some point, they’ve got to be thinking even bigger than [being] the greatest tag team.
One Night Only with the Kliq takes place on April 1. Please visit Showclix for ticket and pricing information.
