Shawn Michaels

[funkdoc]

to be fair, shawn didn't hit his stride in singles until 94 or so.

 

also, i think the rockers would do more than shawn as WWF ace to put him on the list for much of this forum.

[BillThompson]

Savio Vega? Takao Omori? Yoshinari Ogawa?

Sting

Wolfie D

I mean, WOLFIE D

C'mon.

Not only would I place all of them above Shawn that year, but they'd place above him all time. Listen, I can't stand Michaels as a performer and don't think he's worth all that much. As I've previously stated he does have some great matches to his credit, but those are only in gimmick matches or when he's being carried by a much better worker. Had Shawn stayed a Rocker he might have a shot at my list because I do think he was terrific in that tag team. But, Shawn Michaels the superstar singles performer who can't sell worth a lick, has weak offense, ruins matches by acting like a baby, can't execute a Hurricanrana to save his life, doesn't grasp psychology, and so on ad so forth isn't among the greatest wrestlers ever, he's not even close.

[goodhelmet]

Michaels had the great 1997 run as dick champ. In 1997, he was the single most unlikable guy ever. Starting with the "Losing My Smile" speech, the shoot wars with Bret Hart, the tag team with Austin, the formation of DX and being a general prick, he really was in his element.

[NintendoLogic]

Listen, I can't stand Michaels as a performer and don't think he's worth all that much. As I've previously stated he does have some great matches to his credit, but those are only in gimmick matches or when he's being carried by a much better worker. Had Shawn stayed a Rocker he might have a shot at my list because I do think he was terrific in that tag team. But, Shawn Michaels the superstar singles performer who can't sell worth a lick, has weak offense, ruins matches by acting like a baby, can't execute a Hurricanrana to save his life, doesn't grasp psychology, and so on ad so forth isn't among the greatest wrestlers ever, he's not even close.

 

I can see how someone can view things like this. What I can't see is how someone can view things like this while simultaneously ranking Kurt Angle top 20 all time. Pretty much anything you can ding Shawn for, Angle is far worse.

[BillThompson]

I disagree, as I feel Angle excels as a pro wrestler and he's a far different wrestler than Michaels. Watching his stuff during my Network PPV rewatch project has solidified how great Angle is in my mind. Tremendous storytelling, believable offense that looks like it can finish, sells really well, has an intense character that fits his style, etc.

[Jimmy Redman]

I get digging Angle, but you're going to have to show your working on "tremendous storytelling" and "sells really well".

[Matt D]

Yeah, Bill, not to pile on, but I want to see it too. Take your time, we've got it, but let's see some breakdowns in the Angle note.

[dawho5]

Preferably not in this thread though. I understand how things can move from topic to topic, but it's probably a good idea to migrate as they do for the purposes of GOAT stuff. Nobody will be looking for Kurt Angle stuff here.

[BillThompson]

Yeah, Bill, not to pile on, but I want to see it too. Take your time, we've got it, but let's see some breakdowns in the Angle note.

 

I've written about at least two examples of it on my blog recently. At some point I'll probably do a bigger piece on Angle here.

[Gregor]

can't sell worth a lick

I don't agree with this at all. To give an example, his selling every shot from Diesel like death in their 1996 PPV match is part of what makes that match as good as it is. I mean, yeah, he's flying around during his comeback, but as soon as he gets hit he drops like a shot again, like he'd just been running on fumes. He also did a good job selling Owen Hart's and 1-2-3 Kid's kicks when he was doing the concussion thing earlier in the year.

 

has weak offense

Fair point.

 

ruins matches by acting like a baby

I wouldn't say that he ruined the Vader match with his tantrum. Hurt it, yeah, but I don't see how stomping on Vader and screaming at him for a couple of seconds is enough to turn a good match into a bad one all by itself. Other than that, what matches does he ruin/hurt in this way?

 

can't execute a Hurricanrana to save his life

This one just baffles me. How is his execution different from that of, say, Atlantis or Lizmark? The only difference I see is that they end theirs in a pin.

 

doesn't grasp psychology

I'm struggling to think of 1996 Michaels matches with dodgy psychology. I guess it was weird that Owen Hart spent much of the February match working the back to set up the Sharpshooter when the big points of the match were the kicks to the head. Other than that, his psychology was pretty sound. Something like the Sid match - they did a good job of establishing that Michaels couldn't go toe-to-toe with him, so he had to resort to trying to work the knee, and by the end of the match he was just fighting on heart and will and all that stuff.

 

My biggest issue with Michaels from his '90s face run is that his kip-up comeback doesn't work that well after limbwork-ish offense. He shouldn't be doing a moonsault after Razor Ramon spent the match busting up his knee, and he shouldn't be casually slamming Rad Radford after his inability to do so was a hope spot earlier in the bout. There aren't that many times when the heel works that way on offense, though, at least not in Michaels' matches from that period, so it's not something that ends up being a huge deal for me.

[BillThompson]

 

can't sell worth a lick

I don't agree with this at all. To give an example, his selling every shot from Diesel like death in their 1996 PPV match is part of what makes that match as good as it is. I mean, yeah, he's flying around during his comeback, but as soon as he gets hit he drops like a shot again, like he'd just been running on fumes. He also did a good job selling Owen Hart's and 1-2-3 Kid's kicks when he was doing the concussion thing earlier in the year.

 

 

The flying around is my main issue. Take the SummerSlam '95 ladder match as an example. Razor works over Shawn's leg something fierce; really going to town on his leg. Shawn does some token selling and then he's flying around as if nothing happened to his leg. That's a big MO for Shawn, and it's super annoying. When it comes to long term selling he very rarely decides to do it, because that would hamper him getting his signature stuff in.

 

 

 

ruins matches by acting like a baby

I wouldn't say that he ruined the Vader match with his tantrum. Hurt it, yeah, but I don't see how stomping on Vader and screaming at him for a couple of seconds is enough to turn a good match into a bad one all by itself. Other than that, what matches does he ruin/hurt in this way?

 

When Shawn decided to throw his tantrum at Vader it took me out of the match, made me remember instantly that I was watching something fake. As a performer that's terrible and it instantly turned me off of the match. The Shamrock IYH match is another example, him calling spots as loud as he could to make sure that Shamrock looked like a putz. Or, there's the Hogan PPV match where he threw a fit the entire match because he was upset at the idea of even being in the ring with Hogan.

 

 

 

can't execute a Hurricanrana to save his life

This one just baffles me. How is his execution different from that of, say, Atlantis or Lizmark? The only difference I see is that they end theirs in a pin.

 

Their versions look good. That's mainly what I'm getting at; whenever Shawn executes his it looks sloppy, ill applied, and half the time not even like a Hurricanrana.

 

 

 

doesn't grasp psychology

I'm struggling to think of 1996 Michaels matches with dodgy psychology. I guess it was weird that Owen Hart spent much of the February match working the back to set up the Sharpshooter when the big points of the match were the kicks to the head. Other than that, his psychology was pretty sound. Something like the Sid match - they did a good job of establishing that Michaels couldn't go toe-to-toe with him, so he had to resort to trying to work the knee, and by the end of the match he was just fighting on heart and will and all that stuff.

 

My biggest issue with Michaels from his '90s face run is that his kip-up comeback doesn't work that well after limbwork-ish offense. He shouldn't be doing a moonsault after Razor Ramon spent the match busting up his knee, and he shouldn't be casually slamming Rad Radford after his inability to do so was a hope spot earlier in the bout. There aren't that many times when the heel works that way on offense, though, at least not in Michaels' matches from that period, so it's not something that ends up being a huge deal for me.

 

 

For me it's nearly an every match thing with Shawn. His psychology is always dodgy. Tossing out random moves that are too light to do damage, making sure to set up his signature spots even if they don't fit within the structure of the match, etc.

[Gregor]

The SummerSlam match is a bit of an anomaly. Yeah, once his comeback gets stopped he just sells typical late-match punishment/fatigue. As I noted before, though, there aren't that many matches around that time where he has to sell a certain body part. Most of the time all that he has to sell is that late-match punishment, and whenever his opponent halts his comeback string he immediately does sell it. He's not focusing on selling while he's running the ropes for the forearm, but nothing he does strikes me as atypical for a babyface comeback, especially in the WWF. They get fired up, they get on a roll, and then if someone puts a stop to it they go down and remind everyone that they were just running on fumes and are still in pretty bad shape.

 

The Shamrock stuff was kind of a dick move, but in all honesty I wouldn't have noticed it if people didn't point it out to me, and occasional loud spot-calling isn't enough to take me out of a match. A lot of wrestlers do it unintentionally. The Hogan match - I haven't seen that in years and thought this was mostly about 1996 Michaels anyway. I vaguely remember that being about as good a match as one could expect from Hogan at the time, even with Michaels sort of selling like a goof. If he hadn't done the sarcastic promo the night after I don't know if anyone would have given him crap for that. There is that bump off nothing he took at IYH 8, where he just crashes to the floor for no reason - that was pretty terrible.

 

"Sloppy, ill applied, and half the time not even like a Hurricanrana" doesn't really explain how he applies the move differently. That's just begging the question. When he does the move, what does he do that makes it those things? I guess it's not a true 'rana if it doesn't end in the pin, but that just means he's doing the takedown part into some punches.

 

He very rarely "[tosses] out random moves that are too light to do any damage." He does stuff like headscissors and, I dunno, armdrags early in the match, and they aren't sold as damaging. "Random moves" is a really odd criticism of him; he's not a guy who had a big moveset or would throw out new stuff for the hell of it. His punches aren't great (they don't bother me, though), and I never liked how long Vader stayed down from his forearm, but other than that there aren't too many instances of an opponent's selling being too much for what he actually did. At best this is double-counting with "weak offense" and not really a psychology issue.

 

Given that his signature spots all come in a row, and the forearm is the first one, I don't see how they can feel shoehorned into a match. I can't imagine watching a match and going, "Oh, there's no way that guy would have gone for an Irish whip there - come on." Sometimes I wish he'd deviate from them a bit, and sometimes they end a match too early, but they never feel that weak or... tacked on?

[W2BTD]

There are very few wrestlers, probably zero, who sell body parts (particularly legs) while making a big baby face comeback. When they do, it really stands out, because nobody ever does it. This is an example where selling is used as a criticism crutch IMO. You can literally knock any babyface ever for this.

 

Tetsuya Naito's 2013 G1 was very annoying for this reason, but to me he really deserved the criticism because he was returning from a knee injury and every match was built around opponents going after the knee. And sure enough, there he was, flying around during his comebacks. THAT drove me nuts, and I'm not someone who harps on focused selling or let's it ruin a match for me.

 

Anyway, in the case of Michaels, I'm with Gregor on this one. Selling is one of his strengths. I can't kill him for ignoring the leg on his comebacks. Wrestling is worked after all, there has to be some creative license with these things when it comes to selling, or every match looks like McIntyre/Masters. To me it's nit picky in some of these cases.

[Matt D]

In general I don't disagree heavily, not because it shouldn't be done but because it's not done to the extent that when it is, it does stand out. That said, re: Late Michaels, it's more of an issue to me when he dropped the back selling, because so many of his matches were built around his opponent working over his damaged back. The more the limbwork is an essential part of the narrative, the more of an issue it is when it's dropped.

[Loss]

The biggest issue with Michaels is his offense. I can't think of anything he did routinely that looked like it hurt other than the superkick.

[BillThompson]

The biggest issue with Michaels is his offense. I can't think of anything he did routinely that looked like it hurt other than the superkick.

 

Yep, times a million. And Gregor, this ties into my point about his Hurricanrana. Although, for the sake of clarity Shawn does more of a Frankensteiner than a Hurricanrana. It doesn't bother me at all that it doesn't end in a pin. My issue is the awkward way he gets into position for it, how it looks like the victim is doing all of the work, how awkwardly and ugly he executes it once in position, and how when he finally lands it's so light that it feels like his opponent is a feather in the wind (who is forced to sell such a light move as if it did damage).

 

I don't have a problem with fatigued selling, or even big comebacks where selling is put on the backburner. It all depends on the context, and with Shawn he shakes off the beatings he takes in a way I find annoying and that takes me out of the match.

[BigBadMick]

The biggest issue with Michaels is his offense. I can't think of anything he did routinely that looked like it hurt other than the superkick.

I think his work got a lot tighter after coming back in late '07. Plenty of vicious strikes in the Jericho feud.

[JerryvonKramer]

Michaels is really hurt by three things:

 

1. His gimmick was "Greatest Wrestler Ever", and he was booked and promoted as such. In fact, wasn't he placed at #1 in their top 100 book that Larry Matysik hated so much?

 

2. Lots of people raised on WWE bought into and believed that.

 

3. He absolutely, definitively, based on any criteria you want to name, wasn't that.

 

So backlash is inevitable. The question is: has it come too far?

 

Personally, I find it really difficult to care about that question. If someone like a Loss or a Chad who has watched the bulk of the 90s stuff could point to 10 matches for me to rewatch at some point I'd be grateful, just as a referesher on 90s Michaels.

 

As for 00s Michaels, aside from possibly El-P, I might be the biggest HBK detractor on the board. I don't like the Taker matches, I don't like the Flair match. I pretty much despise the style. Any and all DX stuff (90s or 00s) makes my skin crawl with embarrassment at its total and utter lameness. I hate him on the mic. I dislike his face. I dislike his character work. I hate sweet chin music as a finisher.

 

Rockers-era Michaels I have some more time for, but I was more on Matt D's side of the argument for that cage match, and don't think it was particularly hard to stand out in the WWF tag scene of 1990. All-in-all I'm probably more down on Michaels than most. I actually like him best as a singles guy circa 1992-4 sort of time.

[W2BTD]

The Midnight Rockers/Sommers & Rose cage match is one of the most overrated matches ever. The first time I watched it, I came away baffled at what the fuss was all about. I've easily seen thousands of better matches.

[soup23]

Which one did you watch, December 25,86 or the one in January. You answer depends on whether you are Matt D's lovechild or not.

[soup23]

10 1990's Shawn matches:

 

I went for more under the radar choices as well as some obvious ones that I think show off Shawn's strengths.

 

1. The Rockers vs. Hart Foundation (Ft. Wayne 10/30/90)

2. Randy Savage vs Shawn Michaels (WWF Munich 04/14/92)

3. Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon (RAW 8/1/94)

4. Shawn Michaels vs Razor Ramon (WWF Summerslam 08/27/95)

5. Shawn Michaels vs Owen Hart (WWF In Your House VI 02/18/96)

6. Vader, Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith vs Shawn Michaels, Ahmed Johnson & Sid (WWF International Incident 07/21/96)

7. Shawn Michaels vs. Steve Austin (KOTR 6/8/97)

8. Shawn Michaels vs. Mankind (RAW 8/11/97)

9. Shawn Michaels vs. Davey Boy Smith (One Night Only 9/20/97)

10. Shawn Michaels vs Steve Austin (WWF Wrestlemania XIV 03/30/98)

[TRMD]

I like Shawn Michaels. I think he's an amazing performer. He gets me drawn into his matches. But I understand a lot of the criticisms the board has of him.

 

A lot of his offense does look weak. His "formula" does get a little tiring.

 

I think Will said something on a podcast that struck me once.. He was referring to either Michaels or Angle, and he said what they do isn't wrestling to him, it's performing. And that helps me understand a lot of the opinions I see on the board.

 

I'm not sure if I like "Wrestling" or "Performing" more, but I do know that Shawn Michaels was a performer. And he was really, really good at it.

[W2BTD]

Which one did you watch, December 25,86 or the one in January. You answer depends on whether you are Matt D's lovechild or not.

 

Welp, now I have to go watch both, because it's been years and honestly I don't know. And maybe the one I didn't see was better.

[Matt D]

I'm not typing that rant out again but honestly, it does play a little bit into Shawn Michaels "performer" and as a guy who would take certain parts of the match that he shouldn't to the detriment of the match.

[W2BTD]

So I watched a bunch of WWF HBK today. Rockers, boy toy, and comeback.

 

I watched the SummerSlam ladder match for the second time ever. First time was as it happened 19 years ago. I wasn't expecting it to hold up after all of the crazy ladder matches that have happened since. Well, it did. It was actually significantly better than I remembered. Just an incredible match, and Michaels is so good in this that I can't even rate him. There is no scale. One of the greatest single match performances I've ever seen.

 

I watched the 2009 HIAC DX vs Legacy. This is the match where HHH is locked out of the cage and HBK just takes a beating the entire match. Another great performance, selling his as off. His facials and body language are so on another level from most guys.

 

Michaels is simply an incredible pro wrestler. Easy top ten contender. Has to be considered for #1. And he's not even a guy I consider one of my all time favorites. Never was. But he's just great at this goofy fake sport. Undeniable.