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The Piledriver Report 04.22.10: The Shawn Michaels Story Part Two – Rockin’ in the World Wrestling Federation

April 22, 2010 | Posted by RSarnecky

BACK IN THE SHOW

On July 7th, 1988, Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannety made their return to the World Wrestling Federation. This time, instead of coming in as the “Midnight Rockers,” Vince McMahon had them drop the “midnight” from their name to be called “The Rockers.” The “Rockers” first major feud in the WWF was against former NWA World Tag Team Champions Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson. The two teams put on some of the greatest tag team matches of that time. Blanchard and Anderson brought in the technical science and experience to help guide the younger Michaels and Jannety. The Rockers brought high-flying action and energy to the table in this feud. Their Madison Square Garden house show match on January 23rd, 1989 was rated as one of the 50 greatest matches in “Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s”10th year anniversary issue.

According to Shawn Michaels’ autobiography, “We really tore that son of a gun down that night. When we came to the back, Hogan looked at all of us and said, “How am I supposed to follow that?” He wasn’t mad. He said it with a complimentary tone, and we were flattered.”

THE FIRST WRESTLEMANIA

WrestleMania V took place on April 2nd, 1989 in Atlantic City, NJ. It was the night where the MegaPowers would explode, but for Shawn Michaels, it was more like the day his head felt like it would explode.

“I was excited to be there. Theresa (his wife at the time) came up for it, and Marty brought his girlfriend too. The night before, we all went out for a couple of drinks. Marty and I wanted to do something special for our first WrestleMania and had talked about doing a double dropkick off of the top rope. While we were out, I suggested that we give it a shot tomorrow against the Big Boss Man & Akeem- the Twin Towers. We were having a good time, everything was positive, and we decided that we would try to get it in the match.

The four of us stayed out for a while, and then we went back to our rooms. I ended up getting into a fight with Theresa. I became so angry, I left the room and headed down to the lobby to cool off. I came out of the elevator, and at the very same time, Marty came out of another elevator. It turns out he had a fight with his girlfriend. We just looked at each other, headed to the bar, and drank till four in the morning. I managed to get about four hours of sleep. When the alarm went off, I thought “Great, my first WrestleMania. I have a huge hangover and am going to be working on practically no sleep.”

I don’t remember much about getting ready for our match except being extremely hungover. I can recall popping some Fastins, pills that were supposed to get you going, and drinking tons of coffee. The match itself turned out pretty well. We took a pretty good beating and managed to get in the double dropkick. We weren’t perfect on it, but the fans screamed for it. It wasn’t a positive thing, but back then I felt like I could stay out all night and still tear it up at a WrestleMania.”

WORKING THROUGH THE TAG RANKS

Their next feud would be against the Rougeau Brothers. The feud was set up when the Rougeaus assaulted Shawn with manager Jimmy Hart’s megaphone and drew blood. Their war led to a match that would become more famous when Shawn Michaels would get his push towards his first WWF World title run. During the Rockers/Rougeaus feud the concept of the “Iron Man match” was introduced to the WWF. The two teams wrestled in five Iron Man matches against each other, although none of these matches were ever televised or released on a commercial video tape.

Following their feud with the Rougeaus, the Rockers reignited their feud with the Brain Busters. The two teams battled with one another until late 1989 when Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson left the WWF. The next team the Rockers feuded with was the mid-card tag team called the Orient Express. Their high flying feud lasted for over a year.

BRET AND SHAWN’S FIRST CONTROVERSIAL TITLE CHANGE

Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart were involved in their first controversial moment with one another inside of a wrestling ring. On October 30th, 1990, Vince McMahon was putting the tag title straps on the Rockers during a Saturday Night’s Main Event television taping. The Rockers fought the Hart Foundation in a two out of three falls match for the titles. During the match, the top rope broke by accident. This led to an awful match between the two teams. After a few days to think things over, Vince decided that he could not air the match, and returned the belts back to the Hart Foundation. There are two trains of thought as to why the Harts did not just drop the belts to the Rockers at a later date. According to Shawn Michaels in his autobiography, the Hart Foundation politicked to keep the belts. However, other claims that the WWF had actually fired Jim Neidhart, forcing the title change, but after the match the two sides came to an agreement and Neidhart was brought back.

“Marty and I were ecstatic when we found out we were scheduled to beat the Tag Team Champions, Bret Hart & Jim Neidhart, at a television taping at Fort Wayne, IN on October 30th, 1990. I think the story was they had tried just about every other tag team in the company as champions, so they might as well give us a shot. We were going to go two out of three falls, splitting the first two and winning the third. Unfortunately, everything fell apart.

We were wrestling in the first fall and the top rope broke off right in the middle of the match. Bret and I were in there, and I yelled, ‘Grab a hold!’ and he put me in a chin lock. We knew it was a TV taping, so we figured if we just sat in the hold someone would come down and fix the ring. It wouldn’t be pretty for the live audience, but we figured they would edit it in the studio and make it look decent.

We were yelling at the referee, and he was yelling at us. We were all wondering why no one was coming down to fix the ring. The refs didn’t wear earpieces back then, and we couldn’t get anyone to do anything. So we continued the match with ropes hanging down. It was brutal. We won the first fall when Marty blocked Bret’s attempt at a sunset flip.

No one came to fix the rope after the first fall, and the second turned out to be even more of a disaster. Bret tried to apply their normal finisher: Jim holding me up and Bret hitting the ropes and nailing me with a clothesline. We should have done something else. Bret hit the ropes and it looked awful. It was such a disaster that I couldn’t even tell you how we won the third fall. The broken ring took the air out of everything. We won and we tried to put on a celebration in the ring. I just hoped they could fix the match with the magic of television.

It turned out that they couldn’t. A couple of days later I was over at Marty’s house in Orlando and the phone rang. I heard Marty say, ‘It’s okay. We understand. That’s fine.’ They couldn’t fix the match, and instead of doing it again, they were going to leave the belts on Hart and Neidhart. I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’

We understood why they didn’t want to air the match, because it really was that bad, but we couldn’t understand why we couldn’t ust do the match over. Later on, we heard that Jim and Bret had politicked to keep the titles, but I don’t know whether they did. I still can’t tell you exactly what happened. We were bummed. We figured, well that sucks, let’s go get ripped. There was nothing we could do about it.”

While Shawn may have thought that Bret and Jim politicked to keep the belts, according to Bret Hart in his autobiography explained his side to the story. “On October 9, at TVs in Springfield, IL, Jim and I were finishing up a photo shoot when word came that Vince wanted to see us. Vince opened his door and said, ‘I need to talk to both of you. Bret, I’ll see you first. Jim, you wait outside.’

The first thing he said was, ‘Bret, we’re going with you in singles.’ With the Tag belt I thought I had a rock-solid position, but now everything was uncertain again.

‘This is going to be the big push,’ he said. ‘The real push- the one I’ve always promised you. The one you’ve been waiting for. The one you deserve. You’ll be involved in all the major angles with all the top men, and it’s not going to be like all those other times where we didn’t come through. The plans I have for you are bigger than anything you’ve ever imagined.’

We studied each other, I asked, ‘What about Jim?’

Vince’s face grew serious. ‘I’ll be letting seventeen guys go today and Jim’s not one of them. I’m thinking I’ll try him at the announcing table for a while, putting him on salary with a pension and full company benefits. I can’t let him go- he owes me a lot of money from all his legal fees.’

Regarding the match, Bret continues, “What started out as a terrific match snowballed into a colossal clusterfuck after Jim accidentally broke the top rope. The match was taped and could easily be edited, but the ref, Freddie Sparta, couldn’t figure out that he needed to temporarily stop the bout and fix the rope, even though I explained it to him. Both teams needed the rope to do our best spots, and without it the whole match turned into an embarassing night of miscues until finally the Rockers beat us. I was furious at Freddie. I hoped that before the match aired in a couple of weeks we could somehow do it over. I wanted it to be a great moment for both the Rockers, Shawn in particular, whom I respected and who had admitted to being a bit of a Hitman fan.

Five days later in Milwaukee, Jim lugged his bags into the dressing room with a huge grin on his face. He’d had a long telephone conversation with Vince earlier in the day and was absolutely stunned when Vince told him that he’d changed his mind. He wasn’t going to air the Rockers winning the belts- the Hart Foundation would keep them, for now. To Jim it was a stay of execution, but my heart sank. What was to come of my push, the real push, the one that Vince promised me? I never thought I’d see the day that I’d be disappointed to find out that I was keeping a belt. I’d made the mistake of getting my hopes up.”

THE END OF THE ROCKERS

By the end of 1991, it was time for the Rockers to go their separate ways. While Shawn had always wanted to eventually break into singles competition, it was a behind the scenes incident that helped speed up the process. According to an RF Video shoot interview with Shawn Michaels, the WWF had several wrestlers do a photo shoot to appear on the cover of a Wheaties cereal box. Jannety found out that each wrestler was paid $5,000.00 for the shoot, except Marty and Shawn were paid $2,500.00 each. The office explained that was because the Rockers were paid $5,000.00 as a team. The only flaw in this reasoning was that Road Warrior Animal and Road Warrior Hawk were EACH paid $5,000.00 grand apiece, despite being part of a tag team. Marty Jannetty told Shawn that he had an offer from WCW with a very high guarantee. When Michaels kept pressing Marty for information, he finally admitted that their was no such offer. Meanwhile Marty was quitting the WWF on behalf of both Rockers. When Michaels learned about Marty’s exaggeration, he told Vince McMahon he was not interested in quitting the company. He decided that he wanted to guide his own career. They decided to split the Rockers up by turning Michaels heel.

Michaels’ heel turn was a slow process, as the duo started to argue in the ring, and make innocent mistakes that would cause dissention between the two. Their disagreements took a head in Brutus Beefcake’s interview show called “The Barber Shop.” The segment aired on January 12th, 1992. After it appeared that the team had worked out their problems, Shawn Michaels super kicked Jannety, and then threw him through the plat glass window of the “Barber Shop” set.

“The first thing we had to do to get my singles career off the ground was to break up the Rockers on television. Before everything with Marty went down, we were planning on doing an angle with the Nasty Boys. As part of that story line, I had suggested to Vince that the Nasty Boys throw Marty and me through the plate glass window on ‘Barber Shop,’ Brutus Beefcake’s interview segment. I loved the old cowboy movies where the guy gets thrown out of the bar and through the window. There’s something about hearing glass break that makes you take notice, and that window on ‘Barber Shop’ was an angle waiting to be done.

I suggested that Marty and I do the segment instead of us and the Nasty Boys. I also asked Vince if Marty could get a little color.

I described the idea to Vince the same way I describe ideas to him now. I became real excited. That’s one of the things I think Vince always liked about me. I’m like a little kid when it comes to new ideas. I love creating angles, and I know Vince got a kick out of the fact that I came up with it, that I was creative.

To build to the segment, Marty and I started having problems in our matches beginning at the Survivor Series. We did this for a couple of weeks and then at a television taping in San Antonio, we went on the ‘Barber Shop.’ I superkicked him and tossed him through the window. Fans everywhere were shocked. The company didn’t do things like that back then, and we got the impact we were looking for. I had serious heat now and started my singles career on a high note.”

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