WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels was the subject of A&E’s latest Biography episode, recapping the personal struggles and comeback “The Heartbreak Kid” went through in his two stints with the WWE. Vince McMahon and Triple H were both interviewed for the episode, and the WWE Chairman didn’t shy away from Michaels’ substance abuse or the political power he and Triple H held during The Attitude Era.
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“They couldn’t call any of the shots, but I listened. They had some really good ideas,” McMahon said (h/t Fightful) “Really smart, individually, and Shawn, very smart when he was sober. Shawn had an attitude. When he drank, even more so, on top of pills… Shawn would say the wrong thing at the wrong time and he was protected in the WWE environment, but outside of that environment *shakes head.*”
“His moment of existence was the 20 minutes in the ring every night,” H siad. “He wouldn’t be messed up. He would go in there and kill it every night. Then, the minute he was done *mimics taking a pill* ‘I’m in pain and I took some stuff so I wouldn’t be in pain this morning but I’m not messed up.’”
McMahon added, “Shawn owes his life to ‘Triple H’ Paul Levesque. Owes his life to him.”
Michaels now helps Triple H run the NXT brand down in Orlando. In a recent interview with Inside The Ropes, Michaels thought about how a young HBK would have been handled in the WWE Performance Center.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’d deal with them and I’d probably suggest that we let him go, he’s going to be nothing but trouble, no matter how talented he is. Either that or get him help,” Michaels said. “Honestly, that would be the the biggest thing. Especially, as I look at it, I think to myself, ‘Well, I… I was good at my job.’”
“So when you see that kind of ability and they’re young, and they are just angry at everything, and obviously have a problem — as opposed to getting rid of them, the first thing you probably should be doing is helping them. So, the more that I think about it, I think to myself that, again, ‘We should try to at least help him because the young man is going to end up hurting himself someday,’ or he’s going to be one of those wrestling tragedies that we hear about. I think if he had all the drug issues and things like that, that I had, that’d be the first step. If it was just an attitude thing and there were no other circumstances, that’s when sometimes it may not matter how good he is, he’s probably more trouble than he’s worth.”
