Shawn Michaels reflects on his first SummerSlam match as a singles competitor.
In 1992, Shawn Michaels turned on Marty Jannetty to break up The Rockers and officially become the Heartbreak Kid. As part of his first singles push, he was paired with the Sensational Sherri. At SummerSlam 1992, his relationship with Sherri was tested in a match where he could not strike Rick Martel in the face, and Rick Martel could not do the same to him.
Now, 30 years later, Shawn Michaels is reflecting on what that match meant to him and his career at the time.
"Well, I think the biggest thing for me, again, was sort of coming off of the tag team with The Rockers and just really having my first sort of story," Shawn said on the most recent episode of WWE’s The Bump. "The first time being involved in something and, again, with with someone that I'd never been in the ring with. It's not as if Rick Martel and I had been on the ring a lot with each other. It's SummerSlam, you're on a pay-per-view, you're in kind of a featured match. That was a big moment for me as a singles wrestler.
"Very nerve-wracking because, again, at that time, you feel that every time you're out there is make-or-break," Shawn continued. "'Is this the one where they look at you like, 'I don't see it. I knew he was too small. I knew he wasn't this.'
Speaking about the very unique situation and stipulation behind the match, Michaels says he was always flattered by the fact that he was put into a type of guinea pig scenario.
"I go back and I think of some of those very unique and different things that I was in. I don't know, I guess I'm always flattered by the fact that I was kind of the guinea pig for WWE. Every time we had a new type of match, like, 'Let Shawn try it, he doesn't know any better,' and of course, I will say this having Sherri out there was fantastic, right? She was in the middle of it all. Exactly. And of course she was she was she was the gem that tied it all together."
Michaels would go out and steal the show at several SummerSlam events in the years that followed, but it all started with that very unique night in 1992 in the United Kingdom.
SummerSlam 1992 was headlined by Bret Hart vs. The British Bulldog, and Bret Hart will be talking about that event at Starrcast V in Nashville during SummerSlam weekend.
Elsewhere in the episode, Shawn Michaels spoke about enjoying his time in NXT. Read more here.
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