WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels believes that some fans are a bit too harsh on his WrestleMania 12 Iron Man match with Bret Hart.
At the 1996 event, Michaels and the Hitman competed in WWE’s first televised Iron Man match, but neither man scored a fall in the hour-long time limit.
In sudden death overtime, Michaels scored the pinfall over Bret, kicking off Shawn’s first reign as WWE Champion.
While the match is considered a classic by WWE, some have criticized the bout as boring compared to the Iron Man matches which have come since.
When asked about the reception of the match by “GV Wire’s ‘Off the Bottom Rope’” Michaels said that he finds the criticism somewhat unfair.
“Hindsight is 20/20, especially for the people that didn’t do it. You know what I mean? Understanding the business now and just the tempo of the business now certainly was different,” Michaels said. “Do I think [the criticism is] a little unfair? Obviously, I do. I think if it were somebody else other than myself, and Bret was doing it with somebody else, I think they probably might not get quite the hard time.
”I always more so appreciated the risk that we were willing to take as performers to go out there and do that hour match at that time, again in the business, that was a huge risk from a company standpoint. It’s very challenging from a performance standpoint to do that. For anybody … to knock it, obviously, as somebody who’s never done it.”
Michaels would compete in his second Iron Man match years later, drawing 2-2 with Kurt Angle on the October 3, 2005, episode of Monday Night RAW.
