On the latest edition of his podcast Something To Wrestle, Bruce Prichard reflected on Shawn Michaels being chosen by WWE as the main star in the mid 90s.
The decision to make it happen was taken around Summerslam 1995: “I think probably around SummerSlam. It was a time that was the right time. Looking at everything, you start positioning. The whole thing with Shawn getting beat up and collapsing in the ring, it just was, ‘Well, we need to go’ because you wanted Shawn to be the guy. Part of it was, do you lose a little bit of that cockiness and attitude and go with him as champion to be the humble boyhood dream and do you continue on? We essentially went for a hybrid [character].”
Back then, Michaels started having problems with Jim Cornette, which Prichard attributes to their different personalities: “Different people. Just completely different people. It was like oil and water. A lot of their thought process in the business is the same. It’s like I’ve always said about Cornette and Paul Heyman. They’re the same person. One’s from New York, one’s from Kentucky. Heyman would get upset back then, and I’d say, ‘You’re just a sophisticated Jim Cornette.’ And to Cornette, I’d say, ‘You’re just a country-fied Paul Heyman.’ They’re one in the same. They have the same beliefs in many ways and go about them differently. I would think Cornette and Shawn Michaels were the same in that regard, but their personalities could not have been different. Their personal lives, outside of the business, could not have been more different. I really think it started during the Vader stuff. That’s my perception of it. I don’t really know when Cornette started disliking Shawn or vice versa, but perception is that it was during that.”
At the time, WWE also didn’t see an alternative in HBK: “Yeah, I think from the standpoint of it not happening as fast as we’d like to, and did we make the right decision. You question yourself every single time no matter what. There was a plan there, and we were gonna see it through. Some have worked out and some have not….the question then is, if not Shawn, who? There wasn’t a good answer to that question.”
Prichard also dismissed the idea that Michaels had been a problem to deal with the whole time, with the main issues arising once the decision to make him the top player had already been taken: “I think that for 1996, Shawn did prove to be the guy that was willing to anything and everything needed from him as the champion. That Shawn was a problem is probably the biggest misconception in ’96. He turned into it after the fact, but again, you had your rough patches with everybody. I think the misconception is Shawn was a problem child all the way through.”
H/T to 411 Wrestling for the transcription.
