Shawn Michaels Talks About The Original Plan For His Return And More

Donald Wood, Mike Chiari and Brandon Galvin had WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels on Ring Rust Radio this week. Below are some highlights:

Mike Chiari: Your book, Wrestling For My Life: The Legend, the Reality, and the Faith of a WWE Superstar, largely focuses on the second half of your WWE career, which kicked off with the unsanctioned street fight at Summer Slam 2002 against Triple H. How was that decision to come back after so much time away from the ring ultimately made in terms of who was involved in it, and also how did you know that the time was right and that you were ready for it?

How the process sort of went was I had gotten saved, I called Vince about a previous offer months before that to come back, and I had turned them down because something was going on in my life that I didn’t want to miss. So after I got saved, I called him and said this is what it is, Jesus had saved me, and my life is wonderful now. If you still want me to come back I would love to. At that time, he said that window had closed but they will keep the door open if something comes up. Few more months down the road and I got the call, “We’d like to bring you back as an on-air character.” Of course we agreed to that and we did the short NWO stint. In that time if I recall, I think it was Nash that was going to the next PPV with Hunter? It might have been they were building to a match with them and that’s when Kev blew out his quad.

The next day I was on a plane reading the book of Joshua and just thoughts came into my head about possibly returning. The words “be strong and courageous” at the beginning of Joshua just kept jumping off the page at me. Then I thought maybe I can come back and do this. So I made a call to Vince and threw out an idea that involved just wrestling him actually more than a street fight. The story line was him pushing and forcing Kevin to be in a match when he wasn’t healthy and ended up getting hurt. I was going to come in and defend the honor of wrestlers being pushed too hard by Vince. The story line would cumulate in a throwaway match between Vince and myself. He asked if I was ready and I said I believe I can do it. He said let me think about it and he called me back two weeks later. He said, “Look, if you can do that with me, couldn’t you have a match with Hunter? He is a heck of a lot better than I am.” I said of course but Hunter was the main guy at the time. I wasn’t looking to come back in some big fashion. Just like a couple of exciting matches something a little lower on the card. Just so this way all the focus wouldn’t be there and if I’m going to stumble and fall that it’s done a little lower on the card without the spot light. The opportunity was there to do it with Hunter and I guessed that would be fantastic but it turned into a much bigger and promoted match than what I originally had anticipated.

As far as knowing if I could come back I didn’t. That was the million dollar question. Those are all great ideas but you still gotta deliver. Haven’t been in the ring in almost four and a half years, how is it gonna be, and clearly I didn’t know. That soon after my salvation and everything of that nature I was feeling pretty confident that it was either gonna be there or it wasn’t. It really was a sink or swim moment. Thankfully, everything went well when we got out there.