Original subtitles

I mean, that way, Keith, it looks like it's higher, right? Did you do that from

the second rope?

Boom.

This job to me is the greatest life that I could ever live.

For years, people told me that I was too small, that I couldn't do this, that I

couldn't do that, and I wasn't going to make it.

And I've shoved it in everybody's face.

No time out for this man. I realize I can't be popular with everybody all the

time. So in the meantime, I'm going to be popular with me, and I'm going to be

the best.

There are definitely two lives of Shawn Michaels, even as who he was before.

You will not ever in your lives see a man more charismatic, more

flamboyant, or more talented than the heartbreak kid Shawn Michaels.

The greatest.

in -ring performer of all time.

Being a prick doesn't actually sound.

It did.

It was a dick.

There was so much bad blood between us, and I was always like, if I see him,

I'll kill him.

I had so much.

anger about it nobody steals my spotlight i want it all sean michaels

absolutely anything any style to perfection with anyone when the bell

one is as good as sean i will give you a show like you have never ever seen

before why because i can the only man to win every major title

you can't say anybody was better but also tormented It was like on self

-destruct mode.

I just knew that he didn't love himself. There was something in him that he

despised. You're taking pain pills at 12 in the afternoon.

Belligerent, falling down, staggering.

Everything that you have in your life is this. And it's all going away.

On more than one occasion, I really wanted a big tail light shot.

But I knew there was a good man behind all this other crap.

The biggest thing that he ever did.

is turning his life around to where he is now.

And so, yep, there are two lives there, but there's one Shawn Michaels.

The very best sports entertainer in the world!

I love it. I say this, I say, again, Vince, he's always telling me, you go

the way out there, I'll reel you back in.

if I want to, you know what I mean? NXT started out as a developmental brand

that grooms WWE superstars. Any kind of count -out, DQ or whatever, ends the

match. There are Shawn's fingerprints in almost every talent in NXT.

Shawn is very hands -on.

Then he sits up behind him and then... He sold out arenas all around the world

when he was the Heartbreak Kid.

He's in a different place in his life now. He's humble.

He wants to be behind the scenes. It isn't about him.

He wants to help others achieve their dreams. Say it with passion and anger.

Here we go, guys. Three, two, one.

Seeing Shawn today, it's sometimes hard for people to believe that Shawn

Michaels, certain levels of talent, commands certain levels of respect.

His knowledge and his...

wisdom of the business and all that stuff.

It's so valuable.

Shawn Michaels' life is a story that a lot of people could relate to.

He always wanted more.

It was a life of never enough.

And then his life totally changes.

A lot of us have that.

If we're lucky, I think the Shawn Michaels story is one that's really cool

one that all of us can stand to learn from.

I was born into a military family.

My father was in the Air Force.

It was Michael Sean Hickenbottom, but everybody in my family called me Sean.

My father was a pilot. So early on, we moved a lot. He was going to Vietnam.

We went to England, then Maryland, and then we moved to Texas. I was about

-ish. From that point on, I was in the state of Texas.

You don't have long -lasting friendships in the Air Force. The hardest part for

making friends was having the last name. The roll call, Hickenbottom, Michael

Hickenbottom. You'd hear the snickers all over the road, Hickenbottom, and of

course you did.

And it's like, son of a biscuit, I wish I had a different last name.

Sean was well -loved. He was always very quiet and very shy.

Growing up, he wasn't an extrovert.

He was just a good.

friendly, nice little boy.

And people liked him. He was involved in sports all of his life. He just enjoyed

doing everything.

I was a big fan of playing football because of the contact.

You know, contact and athletics were appealing to me.

And then I'm 12 years old, getting to stay up late on a Saturday night.

And this wrestling show starts, Southwest Championship Wrestling.

The beginning montage of the guys, slow motions, jumping off the top rope.

I was enthralled. It was just the neatest thing I ever saw.

The best in professional wrestling, and I'm Steve. After the show, I walked out.

My mom was in the kitchen. I said, I know what I'm going to do when I grow

And she said, what? I said, I'm going to be a professional wrestler.

I was like, oh, that's nice, honey.

He began to talk about that's what he wanted to do.

And I was sure that ultimately he would grow out of that, but he never did.

Down at the Freeman Coliseum, Sean would periodically get to go and, oh, he saw

Tully Blanchard. Wahoo McDaniels, Eddie Mansfield, Scott Casey.

Of course, then later, Ric Flair was the wrestling god.

And he would buy wrestling magazines, and he would look at Ric Flair, and then

he'd stand in the mirror and try to talk like him and look like him.

Being a wrestling fan, it was really a black sheep source of mockery.

It's not something you say with a great deal of pride.

It was just a relationship between me and wrestling for a while.

And my dad was an amateur wrestler at the University of Iowa, so he was a real

wrestler. And, of course, he just gave some gruff, like, ah, that stuff's fake.

The kindest thing I could say about it was I considered it to be an athletic

soap opera, which has always been my description of professional wrestling.

Then a new kid gets transferred, but his name is Kenny Kent.

I met Sean the summer of 1980.

We were sophomores in high school, both 15.

He would want to wrestle and throw around his friends, and they didn't like

And so I instantly became his little tag team partner, and we would just bash

each other and throw each other around, and that's really what developed our

friendship. They'd practice out in the pool, frightening.

Sean would lift him straight up, and then they'd fall into the pool.

His way of practicing.

Sean dreamed of wrestling. He would call me and tell me these matches that he

would lay out and prepare.

He was really obsessed with it.

In that time, you struggle back and forth with people are telling you it's

but I am there watching the guy.

I mean, hit the guy and sweats flying off.

There's something to it.

They've got me hook, line, and sinker.

We were a very small school. We did not have a wrestling team, but our senior

year, we had a talent show, and it was Sean's idea that me and him were going

do a wrestling match.

Everything was going quite well until I threw Sean off the stage.

into the crowd and beat his head on the table a couple of times.

And there's just blood gushing all over his head.

And people are going nuts.

I think we came in second.

We didn't win.

We got beat by a group of cheerleaders.

So, you know, two guys in little tighty -whities versus cheerleaders, they're

going to win every time.

We graduate, and then it's, what are you going to do? Have you decided what you

want? I still want to be a wrestler.

I recognize that I said it when I was 12, but it's just been a big, big part

my life.

Okay, that's awesome. That's not a possibility.

But, you know, at 17, you look at them and you think, you don't know what

talking about.

We said you're going to college.

There wasn't a lot of hope and understanding in what I was doing.

We went off to Southwest Texas State University.

When we lived together in college, there were many nights I would hear him, and

he's standing there with his shirt off, and he'd be talking and screaming at the

mirror, practicing.

At the end of the second semester, I think his GPA was .4.

School just wasn't for him, and he was ready to make his move into the

world. Essentially, he said, I don't want to waste any more of my time or

money. I am going to be a professional wrestler.

My dad played golf with this guy, and apparently he's the guy that's the local

promoter here in San Antonio.

We go down there, and Jose Lothario was there.

From San Antonio, Texas, superstar Jose Lothario.

I understood he was a legitimate name. The gentleman's name where he has to be

trained. Jose could do the training if you wanted. It's going to cost $3 ,000.

I thought about facing him when he was 35.

40 years old, and having him say, Dad, if you had just given me the chance,

I could have been a professional wrestler. And I couldn't face that

And so I said, what the hell?

You know, I wake up every day never forgetting what I did for a living.

Sort of developed to have him get up in the morning, stretch in, and then the

heat pad.

Over the years, you just come up with a system that your body responds well to.

I do some form of training every day, you know, to be comfortable for the rest

of the day.

I plan on getting, you know, new knees, knee replacements, and shoulder

replacements. Most things are going to add to my quality of life.

It's not like I got into this stuff thinking, I want to be.

independently wealthy, and be 100 % healthy. That doesn't happen. So I don't

mind any of it. I don't think that's some big, crazy sacrifice.

I first came across Shawn Michaels in 1983.

Shawn was training with a gentleman by the name of Jose Lothario.

Jose was a big star in...

Houston, Texas, Dallas, San Antonio.

He was Hispanic, so there was a luchador style.

It was the aerial side of things.

Thankfully, in all of that process, he saw that, oh, my goodness, he's actually

pretty good. It was worth the $3 ,000, period, for him to get me my first job

Louisiana. That could not have happened without Jose Otero.

The pride of Vero Beach, Florida, Terry Taylor.

First time I met Shawn Michaels working for Mid -South, there was this young,

innocent, cheerful, vibrant sort of lost young man.

I was scared of everything.

It was a lot of confusion, a lot of unknown.

How in God's name is this supposed to go on?

They came walking to the back and Terry Taylor was standing there at the

curtain. I said, how long have you been in the business?

And he goes, that was my first match.

I couldn't believe it.

Because this isn't easy. Shawn Michaels, very young man and very inexperienced,

but he has a great deal of natural athletic ability.

We drove 3 ,000 miles a week. That means there's a lot of time that you're in

the car doing this, and he would ask questions. Young man who is quite

I was very well -mannered. I was quiet, and I wanted to do nothing but learn.

Some young people come in, I know everything.

Nothing like that for Shawn.

Humble, passionate, driven, hungry.

At about six months, the owner, Bill Watts, came to me and he got me set up

Kansas City.

I was going to have the opportunity to begin to grow as a wrestler, as a

performer.

We're hearing all this like, gosh, John Michaels, John Michaels coming in. We're

like, damn, nobody's got any attention like this.

What's wrong with us?

We walked into the dressing room, and this guy had real short hair, green

tights, pulled up to under his chest.

Let me ask this nerd, like, hey, do you know who Shawn Michaels is?

And anybody goes, I'm Shawn Michaels.

Oh, damn.

We got some work to do. They threw us together because they needed a match

quick. We didn't have time to prepare for it. But it clicked.

Marty Janetti.

Marty just carried himself with such confidence. He was enjoying himself. He

outgoing. I was so sort of shy, conservative.

Shawn came from a military family. Shawn was protected from a lot of the

evils that lurk in the real world.

And having some notoriety, being on television, you've got women, you've got

alcohol, you've got drugs, and it's all readily available to you.

Yeah, he liked it right away.

But at first he wasn't old enough.

So he had to wait in the parking lot.

We'd bring girls down to him and beer down to him.

Marty Gennetti one day said to me, you know what, I see something in you. It's

just dying to get out.

He said, you just need somebody to bring it out of you.

And I'm going to bring it out.

From the Showboat Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This is AWA, Championship Wrestling on ESPN.

So I was 20 years old, TV tapings are in Las Vegas.

At that time, Marty and I, you know, I knew he was out there. So you just start

looking around.

All of a sudden, there he is. He's down there playing and go down there. I went

and just do, do, do.

Pulled it down. I'm sitting there with him, and all of a sudden we hear this

ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Red lights go flashing around, and

Sean hit triple sevens. Won $750 the first time. The irony of it now, like,

this place was Vegas, and the nightlife of Vegas and everything else would be my

downfall. It started later that night.

It's the first line of Yale.

You know, the first line of blow, and it's, oh, my gosh, this is the greatest

thing ever.

And just this whole world opens up.

I'd have never been able to get that guy out of me. And Marty is the guy that

helped tap into that. I don't even know how much I knew was there.

Me and Sean partied Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday

night. Come Friday, we'll burn out.

Big Van Vader, he comes to hang out with us.

He looked at Curt Hennig, and he goes, I thought you said these guys partied.

And Curt said, they don't start until midnight.

The Midnight Rockers, what a sensational pair they are.

It was like magic.

The Judas Priest song, come on.

They love to party.

They've taken the AWA by storm.

The move happening faster than we can even talk about it. They've got to put a

bigger roof on the arenas to hold these two kids in it. These two are

sensational,

to say the least.

Live in after midnight.

Rock in till we're gone.

Midnight Rockers had a hell of a run in the AWA that had TV on ESPN.

The World Tag Team Championship is Marty Zunetti and Shawn Michaels' goal. They

were smaller guys, but they could work with the Giants and have a great match.

The Tag Team Championship of the World is what they are fighting for here

tonight.

The blood match, if you will, is the first time that a national audience got

exposed to the talent of the Midnight Rockers. This is absolute mayhem. The

match itself was very bloody, very gory. One of the toughest, roughest matches

that we have ever seen.

That was kind of like a defining moment in their career that they were made at

that level.

If we was on the road 300 days a year, we partied 290 of them.

We used to do a lot of drugs. There was a lot of powder around.

You look at rock stars and you look at rock bands.

There was a tendency to want to go wild and destroy things.

It's fun when you're young because you feel like a rebel.

We've made it, man. Look at this.

You throw a beer bottle up against the wall and you're like, all right, we'll

pay for it later.

We always did the job, but it was just burning all night.

destroyed a room with a showboat, and we got the entire AWA, the entire company

got kicked out of there.

It wasn't very long that we had a reputation.

And once you get it, everybody else knows you got it.

WWE was starting to really separate itself.

That's where you wanted to go. That's where you set your goals.

Finally, Marty got the call to go into New York.

In 1987, the Rockers started in Buffalo, New York.

Marty and Shawn looked at this as their big break that night in the bar.

The other talent looked at Shawn and Marty as these two young punks with a

on their shoulder.

They're going to have to earn the respect of the WWE locker room.

We were scared, man. We were scared. So that night, that's why we kind of kept

to ourselves.

And Terry Garvin come up and he said, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Y 'all

have to mingle.

And then all of a sudden, Jimmy Jack Funk, he came over and he's hammering

these drinks.

And he's like, hey, you guys be partiers.

He starts eating his glass.

Come on, let's do it.

I at least got to be a little bit tough.

So then I make wine glass all over my head.

And that was it. Turn around, I leave.

I would never say we didn't earn our reputations, any of that. But the

business is one giant fish story, all right? So if something happened once in

the wrestling business, that gets magnified to ten times.

Some people say that Sean or Marty threw a beer bottle, which started a chain of

events that couldn't be stopped.

And then these two guys, I mean, they're in there just getting crazy, tearing up

the bar, throwing stuff all over the place.

That is not at all what happened.

The next day, Sean and Marty were fired, and it was over for them after one day

from just the story and the hearsay and innuendo.

I normally get reasons as to why I want to do something, and I'm sure I did with

them, but...

That was one and done out.

He said, guys don't like it. He said, they won't let you make it here. In my

mind, I'm 23 and it's over.

That was my one big shot.

It happened now and it's gone.

I was going to take a little takeover.

We'll watch it and I'll scull you.

Okay.

Shawn Michaels put his heart and soul into being the best pro wrestler that he

could possibly be. And he does the exact same thing as a coach and as a

producer. Stop there and look at each other. Can that stuff take a little

longer? He will find ways to pick apart every little thing to make it better.

Same for the head.

You can't hold back on that because it's going to cause you not to get all the

way around.

Shawn has this amazing ability to instill a confidence in you. This was

tremendous. And when someone like Shawn Michaels gives that to you, that's all

the motivation that you need.

The unfortunate

byproduct of Shawn and Marty being fired after their first day in WWE is

Marty and Shawn had... burned their bridge in the AWA.

Where do you go?

Welcome once again to Continental Championship Wrestling. We ended up in

Birmingham, Alabama, Continental Wrestling.

I was wrestling in front of 25 people at $300 a week. If you wanted to get $50

in cash, get your other $50 in blow, you could do that, which is probably what I

did nine times out of ten.

I heard him talk about how depressed he was.

At that time, we was doing a lot of cocaine.

And we would talk about wrestling, and we would watch wrestling videos, and we

would study. I had to go home to my girlfriend like at 2 or 3 or 4 in the

morning. Sometimes the next morning, the sun was out.

And evidently, the way he says it, I let him down because I didn't stay with him

more, and he was by himself. When you're doing cocaine, you don't want to be

alone.

When you're up at 4 o 'clock in the morning coming down from...

The yayo, that's, like, that's very dreary.

Because the low is just so really new.

I was, like, man, if I had a gun, this is one of those times that I was

enough to have the balls to do it.

At that time, it would have wrecked my parents. You know, their suffering is

what pulled me back from that.

But the thing is, I never told them the truth.

So I'm not telling, like, jeez, Mom, I'm just partying and getting hammered and

doing blow.

Sean and Marty, they wanted to come back. I remember Pat Patterson giving

the advice to continue to work and continue to reverse the reputation that

have and prove to us that you belong.

And that's what Marty and Sean did.

Pat was instrumental in saying, Vince, he's a great talent. And it was

for me to make that decision because he was a jerk at me doing some stupid

things. But Pat was right.

I was there in 88 when they came back. It had been a year since the Rockers had

kind of screwed up on their first day.

We're going to bring you back with John Probation. You know, keep it together.

Yes, sir.

I met John in

1990. They were pretty much, you know, fun -loving guys.

They even tested me a little bit with their, you know, their antics.

Actually, you know, they were both pretty much peckerheads. I mean, I got

call a spade a spade.

They were definitely

innovators doing tandem moves together. You know, such a cohesive unit.

The fans were nuts for them, especially the women. You know, the long hair and

all that.

There was a transitional moment happening in the business where the

was picking up the ability to do things that Sean and Marty could do.

Oh, what a backdrop!

Tag team wrestling now has been impacted a great deal by what Marty and I did.

First time you ever make a magazine is huge.

And we would always go through the stores, stop and look at the magazine

I remember one time I heard Sean, oh my God!

And there's a picture of us. It said, from imitators to innovators. And he's

holding it up, and he was so proud. And I was like, oh, man, we did it.

Shawn Michaels, Marty Jannetty, the Rocker!

That's a real notch in the belt to be on Saturday Night's Main Event.

Saturday Night's Main Event was finally going to be the Rockers winning the tag

team championship against Red Heart, Jim the Animal Nightheart.

It was going to be...

Five stars.

It's going to be as good a match as we ever had.

We're in the process of having that match, and all of a sudden, the rope

Brett, the consummate pro, he understands it's not live. It's taped.

all this. It's taped. All you got to do is grab a hold, and then they'll fix it,

and then you're still in that hold, and the match can carry on. And I told him,

I said, just fix the rope. Fix the rope. Fix the rope. We'll take care of this.

And then we get word just to continue without it. So that's what we do.

It was a disaster and I was so sick about it.

We get our championship victory. We are doing our best to look excited in what

is this huge steaming pile of crap in the ring.

It just looked horrible. So the match never aired.

Vince calls me and said, we're not going to acknowledge that you won. We're

going to give the belts back.

I go, okay. Are we going to have another opportunity?

No, we're probably just going to go another direction.

Unbelievably disappointed because that's not what you imagine that moment being.

Done. It's over.

We were on the road 300 days a year for years.

Same hotel, same rent -a -car, some of the same girls.

I remember we were in Denver.

Roddy Piper came into the room, and we had a few girls there.

And Roddy kept bragging on Sean.

He was stirring up the pot as far as saying, you know, I could be a singles

you know, have great success and things like that.

And he'd look at me and go, well, you got to work on you. You're still rough

around the edges.

I was like, Roddy, shouldn't we talk about that some other time?

And Sean shoved me at that point.

Everybody got in a fight because everybody was not in their, you know,

frame of mind, like all the time.

And he tackled me in the hallway, and I didn't want to hit him once, let alone,

you know, over and over.

I had blood like, it looked like, you know, gutted a deer or something.

All of my

success at that point was tag teams, but there was never a time in my career

where someone...

didn't say to me, like, I think you've got some talent. It was eventually going

to come down to me.

I remember the first time he told me, I want to be the world champion one day. I

don't want to tag the rest of our career.

I just need you to let me know when you're ready for that. Don't spring it

me. And he sprung it on me anyway.

Welcome to the barbershop, ladies and gentlemen.

Let's welcome them right now.

They're the Rockers!

Recently, there's been a lot of controversy, a lot of rumors flying,

Maybe you guys are going to break up.

You've been having some problems.

I didn't become familiar with Shawn until he showed up in WWE with Marty

Jannetty as The Rockers. That's my first introduction to Shawn Michaels.

See, one without the other isn't any good.

Oh, I knew he was going to do that.

I just knew he was going to do that.

I would argue the barbershop window is the greatest tag team breakup of all

time. It is the standard bearer for turning on a friend.

It's super good. Oh, he laid again.

Oh, he got me back for Denver.

Is there a problem?

It was so effective that it makes Sean one

of the most hated men in wrestling.

Shawn Michaels changed forever on that day.

I have this strange thing with Marty because

without him, so much of the good doesn't happen for me.

But there's a ceiling on being a tag team, period.

Whether it's called a leading man as opposed to a leading duo, it's just a

natural evolution.

Now everybody is going to find out what Shawn Michaels has known all along, that

he is without a doubt the hottest thing the World Wrestling Federation has ever,

ever laid eyes on.

The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels was something that Don just pretty much came

up with. I don't think that anybody really mapped out the Heartbreak Kid.

It was allowing me a vehicle to let this other person out.

To get out there in front of a bunch of people and you can just be somebody

you've never been.

No, I don't know where all that came from. I really don't. He figured Tom

Michaels could do whatever he wanted to.

What, an alter ego? Maybe. The Kentucky Waterfall mullet alone.

Probably one of the greatest mullets of all time.

He is arrogant.

He's cocky. The dangling earrings.

The village people outfit.

Your girlfriend wants him.

You're going to go over and kick his ass. But maybe he's going to kick yours

take her anyway.

And that's where his heat was.

I was a pretty kid.

I was a pretty man.

I don't mind telling you at one time.

Could play the part of Mr.

Confident and everything else and could do everything under the sun.

Couldn't do a lick.

Elvis and Freddie Mercury were on stage. They were so freaking positive. But in

their lives, they struggled.

There was something there between me and those individuals that I could relate

to. You're not comfortable with who you are. You're not comfortable with

yourself. Not knowing who I was as a human being.

Out there, you're playing this role, but you can do it with just unbridled

confidence.

And you absolutely cannot do it by yourself in your own hotel room. I am a

-performance, state -of -the -art wrestling machine.

I think any great character will be confused between the human being and the

character. And Sean Higginbottom kind of morphed into the heartbreak kid at all

times. Sean is becoming a little bit more difficult.

And the Intercontinental title is coming to the sexiest man.

The WWE was still the land of the giants. And there was still a lot of big

And Shawn wanted to break through what he considered a glass ceiling of.

I'm not six foot eight. I'm not 300 pounds.

I want to be what I am.

And I want to be the guy.

When you are that talented.

And that hell -bent on succeeding would have the chip on your shoulder of being

the little guy to get to where he needed to be. He had to stand his ground. He

had to fight for what he wanted.

I was at the very least as good or better than, you know, anybody else that

was sharing a locker room with. I was getting an opportunity that not many

like me were going to get.

We got a new intercontinental champion!

Tom made him 6 '1", but his eagle and the chip on his shoulder made him 9 '5".

By 92, 93, Intercontinental Champion at the time, we're looking for Shawn to

really step up and become a huge star for us.

One thing I did have is I wasn't scared of anything. I was the most dangerous

person in the world because I had nothing to lose.

And when you are like that in a creative line of work, you are freaking

unbeatable.

Welcome to WrestleMania 10!

In the process of studying Shawn Michaels' matches, the one that many

back to is the infamous ladder match, the match that Shawn Michaels and Razor

Ramon made famous at WrestleMania X.

We are making history here.

So right before WrestleMania X leading up, there was a suspension with Shawn

where Shawn had been out of the company for a while. Shawn left as the

Intercontinental Champion.

Yeah, he failed a drug test for roids.

At that time, brother, pills were being passed around in bars.

Like, guys would go, here, man, Canadian virus, here, take this.

Sean did not feel that he should have been suspended, was pissed off.

Vince didn't want to put up with him, thought he was an out -of -control

egomaniac. And they tell Sean to send the bell back, and he says, no, I'm not

sending it back.

Sean decides he wants to come back, but Razor's their Continental Champion.

Take both championship belts, hang them above the ring. You fight to climb the

ladder. Whoever gets championships above the ring, that's your true champion.

But two intercontinental championship belts hanging from above.

For the following contest, there are no rules.

Put the ladder in.

The most.

barbaric, insane car crash excitement you've ever seen.

I was able to have a presence that I don't think they knew that I

had. It isn't about size, it is about presence.

Sean actually lost the match, but it put Sean in a different level that...

People believed this little bastard could do anything.

If you didn't before or you didn't want to believe, Sean made you

believe.

She closed it, just dropped it to the side.

Boom, and then she said, okay, mister, here we go. I don't know, just throw it

out there.

This weekend we have one of our bigger events, five -man ladder match.

Someone will be holding that right there.

Many, many years ago, it was just two of us and one ladder.

And now these young men and women have taken it to a whole other level.

I always dreamed of being in a ladder match, obviously, because of Sean and

Razor.

Ladder matches are about crazy stunts, big balls, the car crash coming to life.

He is the fate of the ladder match. And to have him kind of help us out, have

him kind of watch over us, you can't dream it up.

It's perfect.

I

met

him in the locker room in 1993 and wanted to know if I would be interested

becoming his bodyguard.

And the first thing out of Shawn's mouth is, just so you know, everybody hates

us.

The bodyguard position was 24 -7. It wasn't just on television persona.

He had a lot of people who didn't like him.

Shawn Michaels was misunderstood all throughout his career. There was a

perception that he was, frankly, Shawn was selfish.

Shawn did have an out -of -control ego. And Shawn did feel he was better than

everybody else.

To be successful and to take it to the next level, you have to start looking

for yourself.

It's not a team sport.

The one thing that was the saving grace for Shawn was he was so good in the

ring. As a performer, if you work with a guy that makes you look that good, I

don't care what you think of him, you want to work with him.

Shawn Michaels, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, 1 -2 -3 Kid, and then Paul Levesque,

Triple H.

These were guys that loved hanging out together, and hence the clique began to

form.

We all just hit it off. What we did was talk nonstop about the business, and we

were all just so passionate about it. The perception was that the clique was

-knowing and all -powerful, and that if you crossed the clique, they'll just go

to Vince and you'll be blackballed.

They couldn't call any of the shots, but I listened, and they had some really

good ideas.

Really smart individually, and Sean was very smart when he was sober.

Sean had an attitude when he drank even more so, on top of pills.

And Sean was the wrong thing at the wrong time.

And he was protected in the WB environment, but outside of the

Sean Michaels, British Bulldog, 1 -2 -3 kid, walked into a bar.

Me, Scott, and Kev were in Europe.

is where we find out that this all happened.

A bunch of Marines in a tough bar.

Every eye in that place turns to the three wrestlers that just walked in the

door, of which Sean is the megastar.

Every girl in that place starts to look at Sean.

Sean is very enamored with that. And Sean is at this point in his life like,

what are you looking at?

A problem jarhead?

They go to walk out. Six Marines walk out, beat the out of Sean and leave him

the side of the car.

And the last thing I can remember is, you know, there being the coat check.

next thing is waking up in the hospital.

And everything else is a complete blank.

That was four days out of a seven -day week.

Situations like that.

Getting beat up by nine guys in Syracuse, to me, there's not a whole lot

shame in.

You know, that kind of stuff just sort of happens to me. I've got two choices.

Sit home and cry or to come out and be a pain.

I've got news for you, folks.

I'm all tied up. His moment of existence was the 20 minutes in the ring every

night. He wouldn't be messed up. He'd go in there and he'd kill it every night.

And then the second he was done, I'm in pain.

And I took some stuff, so I wouldn't be in pain this morning, but I'm not messed

up. Why would you hang out with this misery 24 -7? No, it's not.

It's, again, like your brother. It's like a family member. Sean owes his life

Triple H. Call him back. He owes his life to him.

Shawn Michaels knows that the greatest match of his life must come this Sunday

night. By the time you get to the mid -90s, Bret Hart has become a crowd

favorite. Bret is a very soft -spoken, quiet Canadian gentleman.

Shawn is an outspoken, loud, brash American.

Only one person can be the absolute alpha dog.

The Iron Man match, the boyhood dream, realize.

it added another layer to the Shawn Michaels character.

The Iron Man match, the opportunity where I get to, you know, get my first

championship. There's only one heartbreak kick!

Unbelievable! What a ride!

An hour -long match.

It's going to be a long night at the office in wrestling terms.

For the World Wrestling Federation Championship!

We started to have our issues.

You know, I was never big on the click idea.

It was a testy match in a lot of ways.

There's a famous part where I jump off the second rope.

He comes up and kicks me in the face as hard as he could. I mean, he almost

knocked me out.

We skipped each other a lot of times in that match.

Boyhood dreams come true because that was John's boyhood dream. It was, and

that's exactly what happened.

It was a very big moment for my career.

It's like, oh, it's the first world championship, and you go like, oh, I

it being different.

I wasn't at a good place and all that kind of stuff.

There's a lot of responsibility that goes with that. Now every guy in that

locker room, their well -being, their life, their livelihood and all that

depends on the job that you do.

You know, it all falls on your shoulders.

The whole thing was uncomfortable.

We got into 1996.

Ted Turner, who owned WCW, our competitors, was being very aggressive

quest for new talent. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, they were going to leave

and go to Ted Turner's WCW.

The last matches being in New York in Madison Square Garden.

On May 19, 1996, one of the greatest days of wrestling and my life as well.

Me and my friend went to a house show, which was not televised.

We would sneak in a camera, pass security, and we would film the shows.

Sean was my hero and was my idol growing up.

The ending shows Shawn Michaels giving Diesel a super kick. Match is over.

And then all of a sudden, Razor Moon comes out. Like, oh, cool.

They start hugging, and I'm screaming like a little girl.

Oh, my God!

Who's this? And it turns out to be Hunter Hearst Hounsley. They all start

hugging and, you know, obviously saying goodbye.

It was insane.

That night was magical.

The business was well protected up until then.

And our cameras still kept going. The only camera that was there. If we were

involved in taping the current call, it would not be talked about as much today.

Place is going insane.

Everybody knows everything on the inside of the business. There's no secrets.

People in the business, they didn't like it. They thought it was the worst thing

that happened. Here's this bad guy who we have no idea is friends with all

other guys.

It's breaking the fourth wall and just telling people everything we just did is

Shawn Michaels.

Now hugging and kissing the guy that he just spent 20 minutes beating the hell

out of. We entertained you, but now it's all over. We're really good buddies.

Taboo in the wrestling business.

The tape was leaked out to a writer.

The tape blows up on its own.

I had no idea it was going to happen. It was something that's never been done

before.

I'm watching this and going, what the hell is going on?

The clique was an insult to our business.

If they had done that in the 70s, early 80s, they'd have all four fingers beat

out of them. They wrestled each other and they all kissed and said goodbye.

Somebody's got to go down for it.

Kev's gone.

Scott's gone.

Sean's the champ.

Stuff rolls downhill.

And, uh, yeah, it all rolled on me.

Triple H is the one that probably paid the heaviest price as far as his career

kind of hitting a roadblock at that point. Sean didn't really pay a price.

I was inherently selfish regardless, so I'm sure I didn't feel the, you know,

the compassion for him as I, maybe as I should have.

There was a bit of a shutdown on Sean.

Businesses, it's okay, but it's not great.

You know, there's a lot of banter about Sean's not working as champion.

He's not drawing.

He's collapsing under the pressure.

I can see him falling apart.

Kevin and Scott are done.

And I'm all he's got now.

He's a mess.

I felt a lot of pressure, and I didn't handle it well.

For me, it was all about running and escaping.

And honestly, you know, it was running and escaping from the dude I'd become.

Better than having to face that. I might have just taken a few of these and...

Knocked myself out. I wouldn't pay attention to it till tomorrow.

He'd be pilled up, passed out, put Sean on a luggage cart, roll him up to his

room, get him undressed, dig dip out of his mouth, and put him on his side, put

a pillow behind him so he wouldn't roll over and choke to death in his sleep,

and set an alarm and get up every two, three hours to go check on him. And that

was every night.

You know, every night.

He had a drug problem for a while, a serious one, and he

kind of fell in the hole even deeper. But it wasn't until he became champion

that I felt that Shawn...

Started to question himself.

I called his dad, the colonel, and said, I'd like to visit. So flew down to meet

him, and I'm saying, you're probably not aware of this.

Sean really has a drug problem.

The colonel got angry.

He just didn't want to hear it.

I don't know that anybody knew how to address it. Even things like rehab, my

parents, you know, God love them, I don't know if they knew.

what it was that you did, except just to be worried.

Not long after that, I tweaked my knee.

I went to this doctor in San Antonio who doesn't know anything about wrestling.

Obviously, he sees I've tore my ACL. He's like, dude, you're done.

You're not wrestling with a torn ACL.

I know that over the last several months, I've lost a lot of things, and

them has been my smile.

He went in the ring to announce he was retiring because he had a bad knee and

didn't believe his knee was the issue. I always thought the issue was he didn't

want to wrestle me at WrestleMania 13 and drop the belt to me.

I doubted Shawn's integrity as far as his injury went.

You phony little faker, why don't you take your little pussy foot injury?

No, no, no.

I got accused of faking it. Brett told everybody I was faking it.

My excuse is drug addicts lie all the time.

A year off of the wrestling business was a year no pay.

That's just not, that isn't feasible.

And they said, well, look, you can put a brace on it and wrap it up. They went

and they got me a brace and everything else. I was like, okay, I can, you know,

I can do this.

For the heartbreak kid, Shawn Michaels, to return to action.

This was a moment where things needed to change.

Business was bad.

WCW was starting to kill us.

Put Shawn and I together on TV.

We will multiply each other's personalities on screen.

Put us together.

DX is born.

D -Generation X consisted of Sean, Triple H, and Chyna. Two goofs in Sean

Hunter that were immature and did everything that you weren't supposed to

Sean Michaels, you're a disgrace to professional wrestling.

I saw it as inmates had taken over the asylum.

I'm going to start with that degenerate right beside you in the green shirt.

D -Generation X! Suck it!

Yeah, I can't say I liked it. The smut and the crotch shots, it did get pretty

raunchy. I don't think it was over the line.

You know, we were getting our tail hit in the ratings.

DX took it to the very, very tipping point of going too far.

But that's what we needed. It was kind of a whole facelift for the company.

They loved it.

Cranes are going up. Your segments are hot.

They were the anti -authority.

They could do anything they wanted.

We were just trying to make each other laugh.

Say something so stupid that people would go, oh my God, I can't believe he

that. Your old lady is not too thrilled with your privates.

You would think like, okay, so everything's great backstage.

We're still approaching this from a place of anger.

We know we're pissing people off and we're trying to be dicks.

I got in trouble for a lot of stuff.

that we all thought was funny and clearly we might have been the only

I'm going out in a blaze of glory.

At that point, Sean's DX personality and his real personality kind of morphed.

So Sean really never turned it off.

This is what it's come down to. You're looking at somebody that's got no

for anything.

There was a true animosity.

Between Brett and Sean just spiraled completely out of control.

In the beginning, Sean and Brett were friends. And the antagonistic

relationship that they had on camera, that was all orchestrated.

But it became personal. It became personal between Brett and Sean because

guy would go too far.

I never knew enough to avoid the confrontation.

If something bothered Bret, I made sure that I did it. He stabbed the World

Wrestling Federation in the back. Why? For his financial gain.

Instead of facing me like a man, you're too busy posing for girly magazines.

You know, I know you don't like me talking about you posing for Playgirl,

you did pose for Playgirl.

And we finally had a fisticuff in the dressing room.

Oh, my God, Brent Shawnee's going to do a fight and pull each other's hair out

of the locker room. What?

And run over there and find Shawnee with a big chunk of hair missing on the

side. He's like, what are you doing? I realize that I hate your guts.

We had a lot of these resets and talks, and we would always end up offending

each other quickly right after that.

Brett is the champion, but Brett's on his way to WCW.

And he doesn't want to drop the title to Sean. But they couldn't let Brett leave

with the title and then show up on WCW TV the next night.

Who's going to win?

I don't know.

Brett thought the match was going to go one way.

Sean and Vince McMahon come up with a different plan.

Brett doesn't know about the plan.

We're being told by Vince, like, this goes to your grave.

This is high -level espionage, man.

Nobody ever knows this.

It's kind of what's best for business.

The whole thing was uncomfortable.

I was out there, you know, being Judas.

They had created a spot where Sean was going to put Brett's move, which is a

submission hold, the sharpshooter, on Brett.

Look at this!

Oh, you're kidding me.

It's definitely one of the most fabled stories in our industry, the Montreal

Screwjob. Just minutes into that match, not one person on planet Earth

thinks the match is going to end.

So when all of a sudden the bell rings, there's complete confusion as to why the

match has ended.

He said Brett submitted, which didn't happen.

It was basically a hit to make sure that they got the title off of Brett.

I could see Vince yell at him to ring the bell.

Like they're trying to screw me now.

I

didn't

know Vince was coming out. I think he just felt like maybe if he was out

he might get some heat off me, thus making my denial plausible.

Vincent, I want to take the heat for this.

I don't want anyone to think you had anything to do with it.

I took the heat. I didn't want anyone to know that Sean was

involved.

Brad comes over and knocks Deej. One punch.

And knocked him out cold. Went straight down on his back.

Out cold.

And after I knocked Vince out, Sean was crying.

Sean sat on the bench and was crying.

Even though I didn't feel like I did anything wrong that night, you're still

carrying a burden by not coming clean with that.

You just say, yes, I do.

Vince asked Sean to do something for everyone in this company.

Who else would have had the balls, the guts, right or wrong, how many other

people would have done it?

I remember going to his house in San Antonio, and I'm driving my minivan down

there. I've got my wife and three kids at home, and I pull into his gorgeous

home. I don't have 20 bucks in my pocket. And I'll never forget, he put

out like this, and he just looked up and he goes, you could have had all this.

But I realized, you know, somewhere along the way that I saw him lose so

He got into drugs, and there was some really bad side effects to his fame.

I looked at Kenny.

A lot of times I'm having a wife and a family and just been as happy as can be.

And I've always looked at and admired and thought it was pretty enviable to

have. But when my line of work, it was always wondering, can you have both? Or

is that not possible?

They don't mix.

The following contest is a casket match.

for the World Wrestling Federation in the end zone.

This casket match is the Undertaker's specialty.

The object of a casket match is to beat your opponent down far enough that you

can throw them into the casket or coffin and shut the lid. And if you do that,

you win the match.

Somewhere through the course of that match, I threw him over this giant.

I wanted to clear it and go to the floor.

And I just didn't quite get far enough. And bam, I just hit their corner.

But I didn't really think much about it. You know, you still finish the night.

The next day, I just remember getting

up like, ah.

You know, waking up and not being able to move.

First time I recall being in that much pain, we do all the x -rays.

Apparently, I blew the disc, and that kind of stuff, that needed to be fused.

Doctor says, you can't be wrestling after that.

He said, I'm never going to wrestle again, yada, yada, yada. I said, nobody

tells me what to do, so we're going to WrestleMania with Steve.

So you give me enough drugs, all right, to let's do whatever we can to get me to

WrestleMania.

Getting Shawn to WrestleMania was a battle. He had a bad back. He was

heavily medicated.

He is the World Wrestling Federation champion, the man who will defend his

against Stone Cold. But Mike Tyson is the enforcer here, ladies and gentlemen,

Shawn Michaels.

I choose to make an ass out of it.

Toughest SOB. I can do that any time I want.

I was going to have to talk myself up and drop the belt to Steve, and then I

guess I'll let my career be over.

He was bitter.

It had nothing to do with him losing. It had to do with being replaced.

He never had his moment. He never had his run.

I'm still the greatest.

Now it's his run.

What do I do?

I'm the backup guy?

One of the most messed up things I ever heard Sean say in his life is, I should

have taken so many pills I died after WrestleMania X. I'd have been the

star of all time.

I've been Elvis.

It's hopelessness, and certainly that's where I was.

I am not just, you know, a drug addict. I'm an angry one. And I mean angrier

than ever.

At that time in my life, that's all I had.

I identified who I was with what I was doing in that ring.

And without it, I wouldn't have known what to do with my life.

On the day of WrestleMania 14, we barely talked.

You know, he didn't feel like doing business with me.

Triple H was the conduit between most of it.

He was pissed.

He wasn't about to talk to Steve about this match. I helped him put it together

by going from room to room, and it was just so difficult to do.

It was difficult. I remember that day.

I'm thinking, I don't know what Shawn's going to do.

He's retiring, Joe.

This could be his final screw you.

Nobody has ever, ever outperformed Shawn Michaels in a big match situation.

I'm not in great shape.

My back was pretty bad being in that much pain.

Got the cortisone shots and stuff like that.

I feel like I'm putting him over. That's good enough.

Sean's always a troublemaker. He always wants to get in your face, talk.

Even when he's on your team, he just talks.

He's an irritant. That's what he is.

Sean had sour grapes.

It was kind of a close blow because Sean was pretty much out for a little while.

Tyson takes the Austin 316 shirt and lays it across Sean's chest.

This was adding insult to injury, and this was rubbing salt in a wound. I

have been pissed too.

Not exactly the screw job, but it was them getting the last laugh as far as,

know, you know, good little prick, you put us through hell this week, but we're

at least going to get you going out the door.

The new World Wrestling Federation champion, Stone Cold Steve Austin.

He was going to that press conference to just let everybody know, I'm pissed

off. He walked in the door and he yelled some stuff.

Oh yeah, it's selfish and it's stupid, but you know, that's where he was at

time.

Sean is suffering from ruptured disc as we speak and will not participate at

this press conference.

Nonetheless, he participated in the arena in an extraordinary way, and there

no athlete in the world that can say they can do what Shawn Michaels does.

I got on the plane the next morning and went home and began to, I don't know,

let it all sort of sink in.

It takes some time before...

It goes from being time off to the reality of how exactly is the rest of

life going to go when you're done at 33.

Okay, see if we can get one done here.

All they knew at the time was stuff like that you don't recover from. People

don't get back in the ring and wrestle again.

The thing is, I can't keep coming out here week after week after week, going

back and forth with all this. I've got to get busy with my rehab.

My physical therapy. My physical therapy for my back.

Now I've got a legitimate reason to have pain pills.

And I've got a prescription and everything else.

I just want to be a pro wrestler. That's what I was trying to go back to.

So I began to start the Shawn Michaels Wrestling Academy.

We had a couple rings. I had a little workout room.

There were a couple guys that came through my school that went on to have

success.

It was a great experience. It really was. I did it for about two and a half,

three years.

So I'm at home, and I'm watching TV. Then all of a sudden, it's the

of this new nitro girl.

Tampa Bay girl herself, Whisper.

And she's out there with this chair, just doing this dance.

And it's captivating. And she's absolutely the most beautiful thing I've

seen.

We were at a rehearsal, and one of the night show girls had mentioned to me

a man named Shawn Michaels, a former wrestler, wanted to meet me. And that

the first time I'd ever heard of him. I called her up. We probably talked for

three hours on the phone each night for two weeks. Two weeks of talking and

emailing, and then I flew out to San Antonio to see him.

And we dated for about two weeks.

After that, he told me he loved me. I told him I loved him. Two weeks after

that, we got married.

It was the Graceland Wedding Chapel. Yeah, yeah.

You know, an Elvis impersonator walking down the aisle.

Regrets. It was fantastic.

It's just the greatest thing ever.

There was one evening where my pills had kicked in, and I'm out of it.

Sean was in tremendous pain.

When he would take the muscle relaxers, he would usually pass out over his food.

The very first time that Sean ever did that was when we were first married, so

it was a bit of a shock to me. So I got him in the shower because he had spilled

food all over his chest.

And I would say it probably happened a couple times a week.

The worst time, again, was when she was eight months pregnant.

She's doing everything she can at eight months pregnant with her belly trying to

hold me up.

I took pity on him, and I just prayed for him is all I could do, but it didn't

make me think, you know, what in the world have I gotten into? If I was

I was fearful for our unborn child, and I hoped that it would end whenever the

baby was born, and it didn't.

I don't remember why

Sean was there. There must have been something doing something in the show.

We all go, me?

Taker, Rock, Vince is in the ring. I own WCW.

Sean is messed up, pilled up.

So this is a celebratory moment.

He's belligerent, loud, falling down, staggering.

Vince calls him in, tells him, go home, done with you.

Sean goes ballistic.

Walks by me in the hallway, just goes off.

You know, I went and browbeat Hunter unfairly, obviously. And I just

went off back, you know, just in his face, screaming thatch back and forth,

he storms out.

Now, that's another one that makes me cry. I went and said some mean stuff to

him and walked out.

And, you know, that sucks as well.

And I don't talk to him for...

A long time.

We didn't speak, I don't know, I mean, I would think at least a year, two years.

That was, what do they call it, the rock bottom.

Our son was at the age to where he was, you know,

walking around more aware of things, and it was the night when Sean had fallen

asleep on the couch, drug -induced.

sleep with our son climbing all over him and saying daddy's asleep to me the

biggest thing again was cameron saying daddy's tired and it's sort of dawning

me that he was now being able to recognize clearly my state of mind went

into the bathroom and closed the door looking at yourself in the mirror and

know i sat there and cried like a baby and wept you know of realizing that you

are failing a, you know, a two -year -old little boy. And all of those things

sort of came crashing down that night. And I just, it's the first time I ever

fail like such a frickin' failure.

I think that that was the last straw for him. And when he woke up the next

morning, he told me that he was never taking pills or drinking again. And from

that point, he didn't.

It was an instantaneous letting go of the drugs and alcohol.

I just called him up out of the clear blue. I just asked him when the last

he talked to Paul.

And he just avoided that situation.

I just said, man, you're wrong. You got to call him.

I called Hunter and let him know how sorry I was and how out of line I was.

I said, I hope you can forgive me.

I needed that from Hunter.

For me, it was easy. I didn't.

As long as the one with the drug is talking to me.

Of course I do regret the pain that it caused people in

my life. There is a part of that that I don't think that Michael Shaw and

Hickenbottom can get to where he got creatively without a little bit of that

reckless, risky mindset.

I wouldn't have had the guts to do it.

It was our first Christmas together, and I gave Sean a Bible and some other

books, and he began reading them.

I had never had anything that I could grasp that was bigger than the wrestling

business. That's just not enough to base, I don't know, a life on.

I worked at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. All of a sudden I heard

deep voice that said, I want to come to a Bible study.

And then I got up from my desk and...

Took my head out the door, and I said, well, you can come to mine.

When he left, everybody came out to him. He said, do you know who that was? I

said, no, I don't know who that was. Who was it?

And he said, Shawn Michaels. I said, well, who's Shawn Michaels?

He said, well, first, Keith, I want you to pray for my back. He says, I've been

out of wrestling, and I want to go back.

I said, well, it's a simple prayer that we can pray together. And while he was

saying that, Rare tears just come out of his eyes.

I got nobody to blame but me, and I don't have anything in common with the

dude. I don't know how it got that way.

It wasn't from family. It wasn't from upbringing.

He was so desperate to get back in a close relationship with Rebecca and his

son. I was now a dad. I was a husband, and I was...

Really devoted and thrilled about that. You're like a child. You just want to

tell everybody, I've been saved.

Once Sean got his life together and found Christ, it was night and day. When

looks back at his life, that's the biggest thing that he ever did.

You were dealing with a grown -up when Sean came back.

someone who was there to do business.

Sean was a lot calmer and much easier to deal with.

Sean Michaels of old is very different from Sean Hickenbottom, the man I

married. The sexy boy and all that kind of stuff and his cocky attitude and that

cocky little smile that he does. And that's so far from who he really is.

I remember somebody asking me, they said, you know, hey, I heard Sean found

religion. Yeah, they laughed. And I said, well.

I don't know anybody that died ODing on religion.

He had called Triple H.

He thanked Hunter for the time on the road, because before his marriage to me,

the one that took care of him was Hunter.

That night, after Sean had gone to bed, he woke up in the morning, and the pain

was gone in his back.

It was definitely a miracle.

So he was physically ready to go back in the ring, and I knew that the Lord

would take care of him.

We were kind of having a conversation at the time, and then he said, he was

like, I want my son to see me do this one time. He said, I don't know that I

do it. I don't know physically if I can or not. And he said, if I'm going to, I

only trust one person.

If you consider it, I would love to do it.

What do you think?

Moments away from the non -sanctioned fight between two men who are at one

best friends, Shawn Michaels and Triple H.

John Michael's last wrestle, 1 ,609 days ago, if you can believe that.

The whole family was there.

They were all scared to death.

Got a ring, did a couple of things.

Never met the beat, not a moment, not an anything.

I was on my chair like a redneck, just screaming and yelling for him. Of

I cried at the end.

Like, how is it possible that he is this good still?

After all that time and injury and everything else, unbelievable.

It was just as easy as the day is long. It was poetic. It was phenomenal.

It was everything that is right and good about the world and this line of work.

And, you know, my family there, out there with my best friend.

Summerslam, that's when there was a sense of peace and joy in the midst of

your job and your family and combining these two worlds that I've never had

together. And I'm not even the same person. And it all feels so right. It's

good as it gets. It's heaven on earth here in this world.

Shawn Michaels changed completely as a human being. And somehow, as a

he managed to keep...

a lot of the aura that he always had. I could argue that Sean was at his best

after he came back.

To me, he's the greatest in -ring performer of

all time.

It gets more difficult to find a new mountain, a new challenge.

Sometimes that new mountain or that new challenge just isn't there. And so later

on in my career, I learned that when I disconnect from it, something will

usually happen. You know, the one with the player is obviously the one I always

speak of.

Remember the story of Old Yeller?

The showstopper's going to take you, Old Yeller, behind the woodshed and

put you out of your misery.

I lost myself in that drama.

I get a call from my buddy Kenny, who's now been made aware of the match. Like,

oh, my goodness. He said, can you believe it?

It was overwhelming to think that the guy that we idolized, that we would

on a little TV box in San Antonio, Texas, somehow their lives were going to

interconnect. Rick was his guy. He absolutely loved Rick Flair.

Kenny took me back to that time.

This was why I went from New York to Orlando, was to see this moment.

Now in this match, should Ric Flair lose, he must retire.

I remember feeling like the way Ric Flair started this match, that he had a

chance.

There's no other way to put it. He carried me.

He gave everything that anybody could ever give.

To imagine that. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Look out! Get straight!

No! Not again!

It becomes clear that Ric Flair just doesn't have enough.

I love this part. And I could tear up talking about it. Flair, like an old

still fighting.

He thinks he still has it.

And that's when Sean sort of has to have that moment where he says, I'm sorry.

I love you.

Ric Flair wants to fight. And just turns the lights out.

It was as beautiful and perfect an ending to a wrestling match as you will

have.

You know, I didn't want to go.

And yes, I love you.

It's a great moment of wrestling. I don't care what anybody says.

You can't replace something like that.

I'm ashamed that it was my love letter to the wrestling business and to Ric

Flair.

It is show day, and we're off to the shizzo.

I've been doing this for 35 years.

Days like today, it's a different kind of anxiety that I have now. I have

anxiety for the performers, for the entire show as a whole.

For me, it's just all fantastic, especially when it goes well for them

come back and they're jacked. It's ten times better than when I had that

opportunity. This is where I'm supposed to be. I absolutely love it.

What moment would you say you're most proud of?

And then by the same token, what moment would you say you're least proud of?

Most proud, I guess, would be winning the world title. And least proud would

probably be, you know, the Montreal incident.

One is everything you aspire to do, and the other is the complete opposite.

Something you really don't want to be a part of.

It's the long -term guilt. It's the shame. It's the loathing that you know

person has you.

There was so much bad blood between us, and I was always like, if I see him,

I'll kill him.

I've always believed that I had so much anger that I think it led to my stroke

and a lot of things that I went through.

And then I remember thinking about Sean and how we were good friends once upon a

time, and, you know, that it wasn't just Sean. I was guilty, too.

And I remember thinking it would be good to put it to bed.

And I've certainly talked about my regret and the hope for reconciliation.

It took him some time to get there.

Vincent suggested, there's got to be a way we can do this live in front of the

world. I've got 12 years of things I want to get off my chest. I want to call

back there and ask John Michaels to come out here.

I call for truth, and I call for you to shake my hand. The fact that we did that

in the ring and we shook hands and all that was very honest and very sincere.

You know that everybody's watching when you're trying to have this very real

moment with one another. Art does imitate life.

He's matured, and he's a different guy.

And I thought he finally, you know, he's got his priorities all in order.

Welcome to the 25th anniversary of WrestleMania!

70 ,000 WWE fans!

By the time Shawn Michaels and Undertaker meet at WrestleMania 25,

veterans. They've been around forever.

And somehow, they're actually both in their absolute prime.

One of my favorite entrances, Sean as the Undertaker, but in all white,

ascending from the cloud.

Such a stark contrast to what I'm about to do.

Battle between heaven and hell.

Prior to 2002, we did not have a great relationship.

We did not like each other outside the ring. This guy I genuinely like now.

And I've been years and years and years since we had worked together.

Since the time that he injured himself in the casket match.

Unknown to us at the time, we're about to create one of the most epic things

ever done in the wrestling business.

There's that brash arrogant.

70 ,000 chanting HBK. The other hand.

You know when you're in the middle of something really special, and we did.

By

then

I just remember getting to Sean, and we just embraced and hugged and thanked

each other.

It was an awesome moment.

I was on the ride home the next day, just settling into me that I just don't

know that I'm ever going to encounter from a performance standpoint anything

greater than that thing that I experienced last night.

There was only one match that can be considered match of the year.

Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker.

Undertaker, I can beat you.

You and me.

WrestleMania one more time.

So I remember tuning in to WrestleMania 26, but I had a knot in my stomach

knowing that if Shawn Michaels wasn't able to win this one, that he would

retire. But it was a beautiful, artistic way to end the career of Shawn

Michaels.

Career is over.

My heart was broken. My heart was broken. But I'm glad also that he got to

on his own terms.

It was important that I needed to get out of there to let the fans show him

appreciation that he deserved.

You have to imagine that Tom Brady and Michael Jordan, as much as they

appreciate the fans, I think more than anything, it's about their teammates and

the people that they play.

That means the most to them.

A lot of times, there's still a chasing of that last perfect one.

And that's why I'm so appreciative that I could define some form of finish line.

There's two things that I thrive on. There's two things that I'm in love

which is, you know, Rebecca and the kids and the wrestling business.

They're the two greatest loves of my life that's never changed.

You've probably been to more ladder matches than half the people in the ring

would imagine.

It's awesome for me to have Sean there.

He'll tell you what he's thinking.

He'll tell you what I'm thinking.

And there's a chemistry there. We have this uncanny thing with each other.

Sean's a legend.

And for a legend to walk in, too.

an environment full of performers.

They revere him so much.

Welcome to NXT TakeOver!

There is the North American Championship.

Who will climb the ladder?

Shawn has been a role model both in and out of the ring.

I have so much respect for that man for not just what he's done for professional

wrestling, the type of person he is.

To me and so many others, he's the greatest.

And it's insane how kind, generous, and humble the guy is.

Sometimes I think he doesn't realize that he's Shawn Michaels.

When you said a tale of

two lives, that's what it's been.

Believe it or not, the same business.

That might have almost killed me, I think, is the same business that saved

I know I accomplished more than what I wanted.

I've never lost touch with a 19 -year -old dude that was hoping to have a car

and an apartment and be the Southwest Heavyweight Champion.

A lot more has happened since then.

Holy Toledo.

That's like the Sean dance.

I'm just a sexy boy. Sexy boy.

Oh, goodness gracious.

Good stuff.