Shawn Michaels Reacts To WWE Stars Leaving The Company For AEW

Over the last few years fans have seen a number of former WWE Superstars join All Elite Wrestling, and many of those stars worked closely with Shawn Michaels in NXT.

Shawn Michaels helped names like Adam Cole and Johnny Gargano during their time in NXT, and during a recent interview with Denise Salcedo the Hall of Famer noted that he still keeps in touch with talents who have left the company, but he admitted their departures have been bittersweet.

“We still keep in contact, but yeah it is bittersweet, those young men were a big part of my life, they were a lot of the reason that I sort of got back into this line of work. I was happily retired. When it came to Johnny, Tommaso, Adam, those guys, even way back, the Revival Boys, Shawn Spears who was Tye Dillinger at the time, all those young men sitting in a room with them; their passion, their excitement, their desire to be better was just hard not to love. They are the reason that I came back, and fell back in love with Sports Entertainment, with this line of work. As you’ve heard and everyone has numerous times, in NXT at the Performance Center, is where it’s still pure, it’s still all the reasons we get into it before it becomes business, and money and negotiations and things of that nature.

“To fast forward your question, I miss them. One of the things I always try to instill on all of them is ‘your happiness, your contempt, your peace, is the most important thing to me.’ Because I learned that, yes mine all happened in the WWE but when everything was set and done that’s why I think that leaving and walking away was so much easier for me than it was for everybody else. I got all the answers to the questions that I had coming into this line of work and as long as they are at peace with that, that’s cool. At the very least, I tell them ‘if you’re not gonna be at peace with it atleast have a big bank account.’ At least it makes you feel better a little bit.’”

Stay tuned for more updates on former WWE stars possibly joining AEW as they become available.

H/T Wrestling Inc.