Shawn Michaels: I Didn’t Hope To Be The Most Hated Man In Pro Wrestling When I First Started

Shawn Michaels became arguably the most hated man in wrestling following the Montreal Screwjob when he and Vince McMahon pulled a fast one on Bret Hart.

Things were tense in WWE following the incident and in order to make sure everything was going to be fine backstage, Michaels needed to talk to The Undertaker.

“Clearly, you’re worried about going, but only because I wondered what it was going to be like, what the atmosphere was going to be like,” Michaels told Inside The Ropes when asked about showing up to Raw following Survivor Seris 97. “As far as what everybody thought, I didn’t care. I asked about one dude. I went in, I said, ‘Where is Taker?’ They said he was in (a room) with Vince. It’s two different guys and personalities, but by this time, there were two pillars in the WWE that everything was built around. I needed to know where he’s at because if there’s somebody you have to chat with, it’s going to be him. For all of this move forward, he and I have to find a way to get ‘simpatico’ on this. Clearly, Vince knew the same thing and that’s why he was the first guy he talked to the next day. I remember waiting on him, he came out, and he goes, ‘We’re cool.’ Off he went. From there, it was both barrels loaded, whatever they wanted.”

Michaels continued, discussing how he felt following the incident.

“It wasn’t fun by any stretch. For Bret and I to get past our personal feelings about it, when we finally started putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes, I think that’s what helped get it all over. When Bret realized (my perspective), he heard me say a million times, I was not thrilled to be that dude. It isn’t like I sat at home when I was young and went, ‘I don’t want to just be a pro wrestler. I want to be a pro wrestler, and when I’m in it, I want everyone in the industry to hate me guts.’ That isn’t what you hope for. It sucked,” he said.

Michaels and Hart were able to patch things up years later, even embracing on an episode of WWE Raw in 2010.

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