This post is about 10 days late. I wasn't going to write about this, but after seeing Shawn Michaels retirement speech/video again the past few nights I decided to put down a few thoughts.
Besides being one of my favorite wrestlers ever, Shawn is the last of a dying breed.
He, along with the Undertaker, was one of the only remaining active wrestlers who had trained and performed back in the territorial era. Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair do not count, as calling them "active" is an insult to what Shawn and the Undertaker are still capable of most nights.
This insight (Shawn being the last link to the old days) is not specific to me. Many people wrote about it on wrestling websites and the excellent message board I post on that cannot be named.
It just seems that a certain level of storytelling and ring psychology might be lost forever when all links to the territorial era are severed.
Many veterans of that era, such as Ric Flair, have lamented the fact that the newfangled superstars are thrown directly into the mix of television and pay-per main events after only a year in the business before they're able to completely learn their craft; whereas in the old days you had to hone your craft and learn all aspects of the business inside and out over a period of years before you were considered ready for a prime-time push.
That period of development was crucial to developing elements of ring psychology and storytelling that could make someone with a work-ethic and talent truly great.
Shawn wrestled in Central States, Mid-South, World Class and the AWA during his development and I think the experience working with all the grizzled veterans in those territories contributed greatly to his understanding of how a match works; and perhaps more importantly how a well-worked match effects the audience emotionally.
The first really memorable Shawn Michaels moment came via his participation the feud between the Midnight Rockers and "Playboy" Buddy Rose and Doug Somers, and he says in an interview on From the Vault: Shawn Michaels that "Buddy Rose was the general of that entire situation."
Rose was a respected veteran with years in the business expected to teach these young guys how to work.
A similar quote was uttered by Marty Jannetty regarding the importance of working with a veteran like Tully Blanchard and the impact it had on his, and by extension Shawn's, development.
I can only hope that Shawn was able to effect people like Randy Orton in the same way when they worked together.
Development and dues-paying aside, Shawn Michaels possessed an undeniable athleticism.
I'd pick one of his many classics to show the ever boring "don't you know that stuffs fake?" crowd.
I notice that a lot of these "wrestling is fake...hehe" people seem to be Golf fans, and Eldrick Woods fans in particular.
And I'll just simply state: Shawn Michaels is more of an athlete than Woods or any golfer, no matter what you think about wrestling.
Locked-in results non-withstanding, it takes agility, stamina, and strength to perform at the level Michaels did for over 2 decades.
Phil Mickelson's pot belly says all you need to know about the level of conditioning, agility and stamina "pro" golf requires so spare me this garbage about Eldrick Woods being "the world's greatest athelete." He might the world's greatest game player, but he's no athlete.
Golf takes skill, no doubt, but so does surgery, yet I never hear doctors being referred to as athletes.
It might have been predetermined, but you absolutely have to acknowledge that Shawn was truly an athlete after watching the first Hell in the Cell match vs. the Undertaker, or the ladder match vs. Razor Ramon.
I largely sided with WCW and Nitro during the Monday Night Wars. I loved the NWO and the Cruiserweights and the WWE just seemed to be at a low ebb in the early phases of the battle.
Shawn singlehandedly shifted the tide back towards the WWE for me with his performance in the Hell in the Cell match in St. Louis vs. the Undertaker.
That match was flat-out incredible.
It still is the benchmark for those type of matches (my apologies to Mick Foley's brain, ribs and teeth).
My friends and I were buying WCW pay-per-views at that time and getting increasingly disgusted. This was the time when Piper and Hogan were fighting over who was the "true icon" and we'd just wasted our money on some embarrassing cage match they had to "settle" it, and just by some chance we decided to order WWE's "Badd Blood" to watch Shawn/Undertaker and I remember nothing but jaws dropping.
The quality of performance, athleticism and talent in this match was so vastly superior to what WCW was putting forth in their main events at that time.
I wasn't the only person who noticed, either. I'll never forget a sign I saw the next night on Nitro, it read simply:
Shawn is the REAL Icon
RAW got more and more time on Monday Nights all the way up until Shawn's back injury forced him into semi-retirement.
I found his retirement speech to be moving and sincere. It was brutally honest and when he said "I spent more of my adult life with you than my own family. And I don't say that with regret because I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to come here night after night and show off for you", I couldn't help but be reminded of Randy "the Ram" Robinson's final realization at the end of The Wrestler: that the audience was his family, and that dying in front of them would be preferable to dying alone somewhere.
With all the sad endings and premature deaths that wrestling has wrought, it felt so great to see one of the all time best go out on top, healthy, happy and with a smiling family to go home to.
No one deserves it more than the Show-Stopper, the Main-Eventer, the Heart Break Kid.
Peace.
