Shawn Michaels Reflects on His Final WrestleMania Match Against The Undertaker, Notes How His Career Went Beyond His Expectations

– Sports Illustrated’s Justin Barrasso recently interviewed WWE Hall of Famer for his WrestleMania Series podcast. Below are some highlights (transcript via WrestlingInc.com).

Shawn Michaels on how it felt going into his WrestleMania 26 match with The Undertaker: “I’d certainly been in enough of those situations to where I knew enough to know that one. The stipulation in-and-of-itself would make it different, and I’d also been in that situation enough times to know it’s not so much about topping it as it is to make it equally as special from a storyline aspect.”

Shawn Michaels on how nothing else really worked for him to make a return to the ring: “There was one (angle pitched in the past) that was particularly interesting… but it just felt so complete, and it felt like doing anything else didn’t fit. I looked at the arch of the Heartbreak Kid character over the years, and to add anything to that last piece didn’t work for me. It wasn’t anything I was really interested in.”

Shawn Michaels on his slapping of The Undertaker’s face being a symbol of his attitude to go against the grain in the WWE: “That’s exactly what it was. Certainly as my career progressed, and especially as the WWE evolved and allowed me to evolve getting a little more subliminally artistic, it was those types of things I very much enjoyed bringing to my character. A little depth and, dare I say, sophistication in the world of storytelling in the WWE. And it’s small things like that I wanted to convey that about this character, and how [The Heartbreak Kid character] characterized and symbolically was… the Heartbreak Kid saw that the end was near, but he wanted to fall on his sword and go out with bravado. And that’s what that moment was supposed to replicate.”

Michaels on how he wasn’t supposed to do well for his career: “I’m a guy that wasn’t really supposed to do that well. Everything, honestly, after about 1993 was really, even though there was a time in my life I didn’t appreciate it, everything was all beyond my wildest expectations. When I came back in 2002, I just made it a point to make sure I really enjoyed absolutely every one of them. And I did that.”