Shawn Michaels Says Tony D’Angelo Has Carried NXT Men’s Division During ‘Tough Time’

Shawn Michaels has good things to say about Tony D’Angelo, praising the NXT Champion for carrying the men’s division through a “tough time.” The men’s division has been on notice in recent weeks — and really, further back — with the women’s division being seen as having surpassed them. The matter was brought into storyline with Grayson Waller’s return promo on NXT where he took shots at the men on the brand.

The division has added a number of stars of late including Cruz Montana and Zilla Fatu. Tony D’Angelo has been NXT Champion through much of the criticized period, and Michaels stuck up for his champion in an appearance on Busted Open Radio. He ocmpared D’Angelo’s carrying the division to his own reign as WWF Champion during WWE’s lean times in the mid-1990s, and noted that the additions to the division have released the pressure in some ways. You can see highlights below (courtesy of Fightful).

On Talking With D’Angelo About His Title Reign:

“I had a chat with Tony and one of the things you can enjoy about the job, I said, ‘Tony, the narrative on Shawn Michaels is he’s the worst-drawing WWE Champion of all-time,’ and I said, ‘Nobody says that’s when everybody was leaving. WCW was coming on, and Tony, you’re in that same boat; that everybody got called up. You’re the champion in this time.’ I said, ‘It isn’t fun,’ and I said, ‘But, I can tell you this much: I’m the one that’s still here… I created my space, and you can do the same thing. Once again, you just have to be able to silence the noise around you.’

“I told him exactly what I was told, which is, ‘Hey, you’re the guy who carried us through this tough time. That’s the difference.’ Yes, all those things went on but Tony D’Angelo is the guy who we knew that could carry us and had the shoulders strong enough to carry us through this time that we could rebuild this men’s division and he’s been the one that’s done that. Tony D’Angelo is one of the hardest workers in this place. He’s a phenomenal human being, and he has done a great job as champion. It is just, once again, one of those things that you can’t control, a narrative that goes out there about you but I will say that time usually begins and history begins to tell a different story when everything’s said and done and I think that’s gonna be the case with Tony D’Angelo.”

On the Men’s Division In General:

“The men understood the challenge that was in front of them. And like I said, with the additions we have, I think it also in a strange way, it challenged everybody. But I also feel like it took a lot of pressure off of our men’s division to where they now understood, like, ‘Oh, okay, this is going to take time. Yes, we can do this.’

“It’s tough. I think for a lot of them, it was their first time just really seeing us being stripped away of so much talent, and you’re kind of just shell-shocked for a little bit… It’s like being off after an injury. You still wonder, ‘Is it gonna be the same when I come back from injury? Can I still get in there and do that?’ But then you gotta get in there. You get that first one under your belt and you realize, ‘Okay yeah, this is the same stuff that I’ve always been doing’… It just takes time to get into your comfort zone again but that’s what our men’s division has done, and obviously our ladies are who they are which is fantastic.”