Don’t Think Twice 09.20.08: My Back Pages, Part III

Well I guess everything dies,
Baby, that’s a fact.
But maybe everything that dies,
Someday comes back.
– Atlantic City by Bruce Springsteen

Ten weeks ago I set out on a journey to discover how and why I became a fan of professional wrestling. I first wrote about my father and my grandfather, two very different men who shared a common hatred of professional wrestling, and how because of them I was forbidden to watch professional wrestling as a child. It was my father and my grandfather that made professional wrestling taboo for me and thus inadvertently sparked my initial curiosity in the industry. But they are not the reason that I love professional wrestling today. I then wrote about my childhood love of G.I. Joe and the discovery that Sgt. Slaughter, a man that had been one of my heroes when I knew him only as a cartoon soldier, was also real-life professional wrestler. It was Sgt. Slaughter that first allowed me to question all of the derisive and derogatory notions that I had ever been taught about professional wrestling and begin to wonder if professional wresters could really be heroes. But he is not the reason that I love professional wrestling today. There is only one man that I can honestly identify as the reason that I love professional wrestling. And when it finally came time to write about him… I ran like hell.

I’ve always been intrigued when I hear people talk about their fears. Some fear heights, some fear enclosed spaces, some fear snakes, and some fear planes. Some fear deadlines, some fear public speaking, some fear mice, and some fear cheese (no, seriously, I lived with a guy junior year that I was freaking terrified of cheese). But I’ve always thought that those were rather superficial fears, mere symbols used to hide the real fears that are too frightening to admit. And I’ve come to believe that there are ultimately only two real fears in this world, namely failure and rejection, and that in many ways those two fears may ultimately just be two sides of the same coin. It is those fears that can do the most damage, that can paralyze us, that can keep us from being who and what and where we want to be. It is those fears that prevent us from trying out for the team and writing the paper and applying for the job and telling her how much you love her, even if you hope she’s always known. And it is often by overcoming those fears that we find our greatest success and our greatest happiness in life.

But as I said, when it finally came time for me to write about the one man that made me into a fan of professional wrestling, I ran like hell. I succumbed to the fear of failure, because I honestly didn’t know if I could find the words to do justice to this man. I wasn’t sure that I could live up to the standard that he has always set. And so I took a few detours and wrote about Brock Lesnar, and then the Olympics, and then Mick Foley, because with them I wasn’t afraid of failure. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely a big fan or Brock Lesnar. I respect Mick Foley as much as just about anyone in the world. And I firmly believe that watching Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor glisten in the sun is one of the great joys of being an American. It’s just that I wasn’t afraid to write about them, because none of them mean to me what that one man does. None of them have changed my life the way that he has. None of them are the reason that I’m a fan of professional wrestling.

And yet I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I could only run for so long. Sometimes you just have to turn and face your fears, because sometimes that’s the only way to really move forward. And yes, sometimes you’ll fail. And yes, sometimes you’ll get rejected. Sometimes you’ll get cut from the team, and sometimes you’ll fail the paper, and sometimes you won’t get the job. But sometimes none of that matters, because at least you took your shot. And so now it’s time for me to take my shot and try to put into words all that one man has meant to me. Others have written about him on many occasions, some far more eloquently than I ever could. He’s been described in many ways and given a veritable litany of evocative nicknames. Mr. WrestleMania. The Main Eventer. The Show Stopper. The Heart Break Kid. But to me, he’ll always be the man that made me into a fan of professional wrestling.

The first wrestling match I ever remember watching in its entirety was Shawn Michaels vs. Diesel for the WWE Championship from WrestleMania XI. Of course, given that professional wrestling was still forbidden in my household, I didn’t see the match live on pay-per-view. It was actually about half a year later when I stumbled upon the match being shown on Fox one night. I knew very little about professional wrestling at the time, but I knew enough to know that getting the chance to see the WWE Championship Match from WrestleMania on broadcast television was a big deal. And so despite my mother’s best wishes, I stayed glued to the set for the duration of the match. And for better or worse, it changed my life.

Now as I said, I knew very little about professional wrestling at the time. I didn’t know that Michaels and Diesel were former tag team partners or that Michaels had won the Royal Rumble in order to earn the right to challenge Diesel at WrestleMania. I didn’t know what a face or a heel was, let alone that in this case Diesel was the face and Michaels was the heel. I didn’t know what it meant to be a good worker, to carry a match, or to get a push. I didn’t know that WWE was in a transition period, stuck for the moment between the Hogan Era that I had missed and the Austin Era that I couldn’t see coming, desperately trying to find a star capable of keeping the ship afloat in the interim. I was essentially watching that match in a vacuum, devoid of any knowledge of the build or insight into the industry. And so all I knew was what I saw that night.

And the first thing I saw were the boobs. Hey, I was a sixteen year old boy at the time. Boobs were a big deal in my world. I mean, they’re still a big deal in my world today as I teeter precariously on the edge of thirty, but they were an even bigger deal back then. So while I had never heard of Shawn Michaels or Diesel, I was already quite familiar with the lovely ladies that accompanied them to the ring that night, namely Jenny McCarthy and Pamela Anderson. Now you have to understand, I was a Jenny McCarthy fan through and through. Some people like baseball, some people like football. Some people like vanilla, some people like chocolate. Some people like Jenny, some people like Pamela. It’s really just a matter of personal preference. And I certainly knew my preference. But given that I knew virtually nothing of the actual wrestlers in that match, I was forced to pick my side based on their choice of arm candy. Shawn Michaels was flaunting Jenny McCarthy, and that made him an excellent judge of character in my book. And so, based purely on my personal preference in cleavage, I chose to root for Shawn Michaels that night.

I’m still quite grateful to Jenny McCarthy’s boobs for leading me in the right direction. I would have become a fan of anyone who had walked the isle next to that glorious cleavage, and in 1995 an impressionable, indiscriminant young fan-to-be could have been led down a number of disastrous paths in WWF. Lured by that sweet, succulent cleavage, I could have become a fan of Adam Bomb or Duke Droese or Aldo Montoya. And one match with any of those guys might have been enough to persuade me never to watch another. But the fates smiled upon me that night in the fall of 1995, for Jenny McCarthy’s boobs led me to Shawn Michaels, one of the brightest rising stars in the WWF, a man who would go on to become arguably the greatest professional wrestler in history (and yes, Flair fans, I did say arguably).

And so as I began to watch the match, I began to see that Shawn Michaels had more to offer than simply fine taste in cleavage. I had no idea how to tell a good match from a bad match or how to tell a star from a jobber, but I knew that Shawn Michaels put on an exciting performance that night. He seemed to me to be the resilient underdog, valiantly fighting an uphill battle against the obviously larger champion. Of course, I had no idea that Michaels was theoretically booked as the heel in that match but had taken it upon himself to upstage the champion and steal the show nonetheless. That was kind of a dick move, and it was only through the magic of ignorance and naïveté that I was blissfully unaware of it that night. How unfortunate it would have been if my first impression of Shawn Michaels had been that he was a dick.

But all I knew on that night in the fall of 1995 was that I was intrigued by Shawn Michaels. He may have lost the first match that I ever saw, but he won over at least one new fan. I began to make whatever attempts I could to follow his career. I was too busy on Mondays to ever really watch Raw, but I tried to catch whatever syndicated WWF programming that I could on the weekends. It was right around that time, in November 1995, that Shawn Michaels was forced to retire, at least in kayfabe, due to post concussion syndrome. I didn’t watch Raw the night that Michaels collapsed in the ring during a match with Owen Hart, but I clearly remember seeing the Tell Me a Lie video at some point. And I clearly remember being heartbroken. I was still a complete mark at the time, and I couldn’t believe how unfair it was that the dynamic young star that I had only just discovered had been forced to retire before ever reaching his true potential. Shawn Michaels had entered my life by chance and then left it just as quickly.

I probably considered calling it quits right there, probably contemplated ending my ever so brief stint as a fan of professional wrestling alongside the ending of Shawn Michaels’ career. But my interest must have been piqued just enough to continue to compel me to catch bits and pieces of WWF programming from time to time. I was a casual fan to be sure, and at that point I probably could have wandered away from the industry without ever really noticing. But a few months later, in January 1996, Shawn Michaels returned to the WWF, and that was enough to keep me interested. I had been told that he was gone, gone for good, and being a total mark I believed every word of it. But now here he was, back in the WWF, winning the Royal Rumble for the second straight year, and readying himself for a shot at the WWE Championship. I was still far from what you would call a hardcore fan, but I was certainly hooked.

I followed Michaels’ career as he won the WWE Championship at WrestleMania XII and defended it for the better part of 1996. Michaels talent and ability and charisma would have been enough to keep me enthralled on their own, but the real reason that I was so enamored with his title run was that less that a year ago it seemed like he was gone forever. Shawn Michaels had gotten a second chance, and to see him make the most of it was nothing short of inspirational. I’m so glad I was still a mark. I hope that those of you who were smarts at the time were able to enjoy Michaels’ time as WWE Champion as much as I did, but I’m not sure if you could. I often wonder what it would be like watching today’s WWE storylines as a mark, but I suppose that I’ll never know. All I can do is remember my time in 1996 as a total mark and a total Shawn Michaels fan and be glad that I had the chance to tag along for the ride.

But all of that changed the next year, in February 1997, when Michaels lost his smile and walked away from the industry for a second time. This time I wasn’t as heartbroken as before, but I was definitely more confused. By that time I had gradually begun to become a bit smarter to the business, but I was still far from having any real understanding of how things worked. I couldn’t figure out if Michaels was legitimately injured or if this was just another work, and the fact that many true smarts couldn’t figure out the answer either probably didn’t help my cause. I was in the second semester of my senior year in high school at the time, and I was perpetually overbooked with speech team tournaments and advanced placement exams and college applications, so it took no small degree of effort for me to keep up to date on the events in the WWF. Professional wrestling was a fun diversion at the time, but it seemed more like just another burden once Shawn Michaels walked away. And so I parted ways with the WWF in February 1997. I didn’t know that Michaels had returned to do commentary at WrestleMania 13. I didn’t know that he partnered with Steve Austin to win the World Tag Team Championships in May or that he refereed the WWE Championship Match at SummerSlam. I was busy graduating from high school and moving down to Champaign to start my freshmen year at the University of Illinois. And as far as I knew, I was starting it without Shawn Michaels.

In retrospect, my first tenure as a fan of Shawn Michaels and a fan of the WWF had been remarkably brief. It began some time in the fall of 1995 when the WWE Championship Match from WrestleMania XI was shown on Fox and lasted until Michaels lost his smile in February 1997. But during that time, I had the chance to see a talented young star rise to the top of his chosen profession, and more important than that, I had the chance to see a man get a second chance to do what he loved. But that man, that Shawn Michaels, was really just a fictional character. It was Shawn Michaels’ career, not Michael Hickenbottom’s career, that was in jeopardy in late 1995. It was Shawn Michaels, not Michael Hickenbottom, who got a second chance in early 1996. And thus it was Shawn Michaels, the fictional character, that made me into a fan of professional wrestling all those years ago.

But when I got to college, I found that many of my new friends were far more knowledgeable about professional wrestling that I had ever thought possible, and I found that Shawn Michaels had once again returned to the WWF. In the years to come I would once again become not only a fan of Shawn Michaels, the fictional character, but also a fan of Michael Hickenbottom, the real man, and it was that dual fandom that made me into the die-hard fan of professional wrestling that I am today. But that’s a story for another time, so I’ll pick things up here in two weeks when I once again continue to turn my back pages.