Vince McMahon looks back on asking Shawn Michaels' father for help regarding issues with substance abuse.
Despite the fact that Shawn Michaels is one of the greatest in-ring performers of his generation, behind the scenes, Shawn Michaels was frequently dealing with self-doubt and coped with these issues by turning to substances, as he has since admitted, in an effort to escape the person he was becoming.
On his A&E Biography special, Vince McMahon opened up about asking Shawn Michaels father, whom he called “The Colonel” out of respect for his military status, for help getting Shawn Michaels’ substance abuse issues under control.
While there is no specific date given to when this interaction between Vince McMahon and Shawn Michaels’ father occurred, its place in the documentary was between Shawn Michaels' victory at WrestleMania 12 and his forfeiture of the WWE Championship in February of 1997.
“I called his dad, The Colonel, and said I would like to visit. I flew down to meet him and I said, ‘You're probably not aware of this, but Shawn really has a drug problem.’ The Colonel got angry and he just didn't want to hear it,” Vince recalled.
Shawn Michaels would follow up on this statement from Vince saying that it was very likely that his parents didn't know how to address his issues.
“I don't know that anybody knew how to address it,” Shawn Michaels recalled. “Even things like rehab, my parents, God love them, I don't know that they knew what it was that you did besides just to be worried.”
The documentary then moved on to Shawn Michaels' knee injury from 1997 and his famous promo where he claimed that he “lost his smile.”
Appearing on the documentary, Bret Hart reiterated his stance that Shawn Michaels' knee wasn't injured to the point of near retirement but rather, Shawn didn't want to drop the belt to Bret at WrestleMania 13. In response to this, Shawn Michaels said that he was a drug addict at the time and drug addicts have a tendency to lie.
“I got accused of faking it. Bret Hart told everybody I was faking it. My excuse is, ‘Drug addicts lie all the time.’”
Elsewhere in the same documentary, Vince McMahon stated that Shawn Michaels owes his life to Triple H for all the times that Triple H helped take care of him during his lowest of lows. Learn more here.
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