Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, the superkick finisher was synonymous with two-time WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels. Known as Sweet Chin Music, Michaels took down hundreds of opponents throughout his career with one well-placed kick square on the jaw of his opponent. In his prime the move was virtually a guaranteed knockout, and while he was far from the first or only wrestler to use the move during his career, the superkick became synonymous with “The Heartbreak Kid.”
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But as the years past the move became a staple for more and more wrestlers, to the point where it stopped being a devastating finisher and more of a signature move to liven up a crowd. In WWE alone wrestlers like Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, The Usos, Rusev, Dolph Ziggler, The New Day, Johnny Gargano, Ali, Luke Harper, Daniel Bryan, all four members of Undisputed Era and Velveteen Dream frequently used the move. And that’s not even mentioning wrestlers outside of WWE like AEW’s Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks, who rarely go a match without hitting a superkick at least once.
Yet when asked about so many wrestlers using the move, Michaels said in an interview on the Challenge Mania podcast recently that it doesn’t bother him.
“It’s all over the place, I think that’s sweet,” Michaels said. “They can deny all my contributions to the wrestling business, say nobody cares about Shawn Michaels. But that thing is all over the place and it makes me smile. I think it’s kind of endearing. It seems to bother everyone, except me.”
Elsewhere in the same interview, Michaels spoke candidly about his return to action for the Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia back in November after sticking to his promise of staying retired for nearly a decade.
“… It’s not a WrestleMania, it’s not a this, it’s not a… to me it wasn’t coming back as the Heartbreak Kid. It was a tag [team match]. I know that’s not the same, and I know nobody will understand it, but in my mind, it was like a glorified house show, a live event… I don’t mean that to be intellectually insulting to the wrestling fan, but in my mind, it was just so not the same,” he said.
Michaels also opened up on why he did the match (a tag match between D-Generation X and the Brothers of Destruction) in the first place.
“I got asked. It was almost like, as a favor [laughs]. And it was totally just, Hunter and I [did] the DX thing, a tag match,” he said. “None of that felt like — it felt like a totally separate entity to me than the other. And that’s why I felt okay doing it. And the thing is, it was done with the intent of again, being a nice little fun thing to do. And I can’t say that it turned out to be all that fun. It was okay, and it was great being out there with those guys. But again, it was just one of those things that you sorta do because you’re a company dude and you go, ‘Oh alright, you know, I’ll do this’ and it’s separate and all that. To me it just sort of lives out there on its own.”
