2002-2010 Shawn Michaels

[Gregor]

This is something I've always wanted to have done but never wanted to actually do. I generally assumed that Michaels was decent in this run, neither one of the worst wrestlers in the company nor one of the best in the world, but haven't really done a whole lot of exploring how true any of that is. Most of the stuff I've seen was from right after it happened, and I never watched it again after that one time. I don't really have any opinion or memory of the Angle matches or the Undertaker matches, for instance. This site seems to have moved on a bit from posts like this, but it's also the only place I know of to talk wrestling.

Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H
Summerslam, 8/25/02
This is a pretty good place to start, as it's one of Michaels' most famous comeback run matches and it lets me go through this somewhat chronologically. With this match, Michaels either convinced people that he was as great as ever or showed them that he was fully washed up and revealed some of the psychological flaws that had been there for his whole career. My thoughts going in were that he had an injured back, it was going to get worked over dramatically, and there would be no way for him to conceivably make a realistic comeback. The nip-up superman comeback would be the only sensible option. When it happened I felt like I was right, but then he did the superplex off the top and I started to agree with the no-selling criticisms.

My real issue, though, was that Michaels made his comeback and the match just went on and on for like ten more minutes, with no added drama. He kept beating on HHH, they did some Shawn Michaels tribute spots, and Michaels proved to the world that he could still do big moves. As this went on, the main issue of the previous fifteen minutes, Michaels' injured back, seemed to vanish. That to me was a bigger deal than any poor selling. It was that they simply dropped that aspect of the match to do some cool spots, none of which really pushed the match towards the finish. It felt like they set out to do too much. They wanted to prove that Michaels could still be the Shawn Michaels of old, but they also wanted the passion of a blood feud and the tension of a body part that might not hold up. I thought that they were going pretty well up until the comeback, even if everything was a bit more over-the-top than I'd have liked. I liked how Michaels sold the shots to his back. On the negative side, he didn't act like he hated the guy who had tried and was actively trying to cripple him, and it seemed like he'd been heavily influenced by the garbage-y late-'90s style that was already feeling dated by 2002. I thought the match was more good than bad, and they accomplished what they wanted to, but it definitely didn't hit me as a classic.

Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H vs. Rob Van Dam vs. Chris Jericho vs. Booker T. vs. Kane (elimination chamber)
Survivor Series, 11/17/02
For a while I was a fairly typical wrestling fan from the '90s boom. Got into it in late 1998, started losing interest in late 2000, had one last hurrah watching WM XVII with some friends, and was pretty much done with it after that. In 2005 I got interested in finding out what all those guys had been up to in the intervening time, and that sort of got me where I am now. I remember reading about this new elimination chamber match and thinking that wrestling was running out of ideas. With a casket match, there's a casket, and you have to put a guy in it. With a ladder match, there's a ladder, and you have to climb it. With a cage match, there's a cage, and you have to escape it. With the elimination chamber, six wrestlers are enclosed in a steel structure equipped with four glass holding pods, with two wrestlers starting and another emerging from his pod every five minutes, the match ending only once each wrestler has left his pod and five of the participants have been eliminated, leaving the one winner. It was an impressive looking thing, but it felt like a step too far.

I know he's never been highly regarded here, but RVD was by far the highlight here. He was the perfect guy to have in a match like this and get across the stuff you can do in it. On top of that he was super-over, and him taking it to the champ and then trying to beat the odds one-on-two was exciting stuff, to the point that I was wondering how they could possibly have Michaels win without it feeling anticlimactic. To their credit they actually did a decent job of that. Unfortunately the match hit a lull once RVD was eliminated, with everyone just coming in and hitting a move while two or three guys just lay around outside. Michaels made his entrance and almost immediately got cut off and started selling, which was kind of a let-down. Toward the end everyone seemed to be repeating spots from earlier, like jumping off the cage or going through the glass. None of the big spots mattered all that much, either. Jericho went through the glass for no reason, and Michaels was repeatedly taking bumps off the steel with no one, Michaels included, caring that much about his back. He was over, though. I'll give them that. This wasn't exactly Badd Blood '97 in terms of creating a lasting gimmick match, but I guess they spent a lot of money on the setup, and WWE has never been one to give up on its ideas easily.

[DMJ]

Just to pile on, I had very similar thoughts when I reviewed these shows on my blog. Here are some highlights...


SummerSlam 2002 Review

"...the most Shawn Michaelest of Shawn Michaels matches ever, with the Showstopper somehow managing to kip-up, dance around, and blatantly no-sell any of the damage that Triple H had inflicted upon him...Triple H pulls out his usual bag of tricks, essentially bleeding profusely and doing the kind of over-the-top bumps (one off the apron into the outside [into the] barricade is noticeably silly) that he learned from watching his opponent for so many years...[The] match is hard not to enjoy, especially for first-time viewers, but the more I re-watch the match (this had to be my 3rd or 4th viewing), the less impressed I am...[One] of the more overdramatic matches in WWE history and one that simultaneously celebrates the return of Shawn Michaels while completely destroying any legitimacy his 4-year back injury had built up with the audience. Entertaining as hell, but when the bell sounds, you'll need to turn your brain off to enjoy it as much as the Long Island crowd did."
 

Survivor Series 2002 Review 

"...The post-match celebration fell flat to me...Jim Ross goes overboard selling this as a historic moment, and while it was a big deal in the career of Michaels (and Triple H), its hard to ignore the feeling that this was two buddies playing keep-away with the World Championship while arguably more over talent, namely Van Dam, were stuck in the slightly-below-main event level. Had this been built around RVD overcoming the odds from the start, I'm guessing the crowd would have cared more about the belabored closing stretch."

 

[Gregor]

I thought the MSG crowd was actually pretty hot for Michaels. I was a bit surprised by that.

Shawn Michaels vs. Rob Van Dam
RAW, 11/25/02
I thought this had a reputation as a disappointing dream match, but it was okay. It was a bit awkward at first, and that moonsault whiff (not sure whose fault it was) was pretty bad. I liked Michaels going for the leg. He did a surprisingly good job as the savvy veteran, considering that I don't remember him ever taking on that role before this. Now, RVD barely acknowledged that legwork once he went on offense, but it's not as big a deal when it was only like three minutes of punishment and RVD's leg wasn't a big part of the story heading into the match. The biggest problem with it was that it never felt like a dream match or a title match. For Michaels' first regular match since coming back, though, it wasn't bad. I don't know what he was thinking with that haircut. He looked like a sporty middle school girl.

Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H (2/3 falls: street fight, cage, ladder)
Armageddon, 12/15/02
Michaels defending the WCW title belt looks so weird. Imagine someone fantasy booking that in December of 2000 and how crazy it would sound. I knew this was considered one of the many flops between these two, but I don't remember it being talked about much. Usually it's the hell in a cell match that gets brought up. This had me wondering if maybe there was something good here that time had been kind to, but, no, this was awful. It was less a match and more just a collection of random big spots. You couldn't even call it a spotfest, as that implies wrestlers working at breakneck speed, and this was painfully slow. The psychology was all off, too. They used a flaming 2x4 in the first fall. How do you keep going for 2+ more falls after that? Michaels won the second fall with a splash off the top of the cage through a table, and then he attempted a splash off the top of the ladder in the next fall. The match finally swung all the way around to total farce when Flair ran in, bladed, and started working spots with Michaels. The crowd was dead for almost everything. At this point it would have been pretty easy to write the Michaels comeback off, as they'd gotten the big return match and title win out of him, and now he seemed to have nothing left to offer.

[Gregor]

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho
WrestleMania XIX, 3/30/03
I had it in my head, and I don't know if it's right, that this was generally thought of as a good match that wanted to be better than it was. It was actually really good to start, and Michaels' wrestling exchanges looked much better than the few he'd attempted during that garbagey title defense against HHH. Eventually I started to get the knocks on this one, as Jericho didn't get a lot of heat on Michaels, and the finishing stretch went on for an unnaturally long time. Give credit to Jericho, though, for getting Michaels through an actual wrestling match and leading the way. That run of near-falls and stolen finishers had his fingerprints all over it. Michaels did a good job keeping up, but he still seemed a little unsure of himself and Jericho was the more compelling character here. Maybe they did want an all-time classic, but I'll take a good, well-worked match after the mess from the previous December.

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho
RAW, 7/21/03
Michaels and Jericho had good chemistry. Their WM match was the best match of Michaels' return when it happened, so it's to their credit that they had another match at that level a couple of months later. The matwork at the start really impressed me. I don't think I've ever seen Michaels work a bridging wristlock before. Again Jericho didn't work Michaels over all that much, and the home stretch was a bit overbooked (I preferred the one at WM, even if it was longer than necessary), so the previous match was better. This was still good, though. For one of the first times so far Michaels looked like the Michaels of old when he took that big backdrop over the top rope. These two matches have bolstered Jericho's stock in my eyes. He was a flawed worker, and it was evident even in strong performances like these, but I get why people have praised his work from these years. He really helped Michaels get over the hump.

Shawn Michaels vs. Randy Orton
Unforgiven, 9/21/03
This was disappointing, after the last two matches. In with a kid, Michaels presumably led the match and couldn't meet the standards of the Jericho contests. Physically, he looked much improved from where he'd been in late 2002, and he was even up for trying a German suplex. Unfortunately, Orton just worked the arm on offense and it didn't really play any part in the match. It's nice that Michaels continued selling it through his comeback, I guess, but I'd rather see it pay off somehow. Also he hit the elbow with his right arm and then had to sell like there had been some kind of impact on his left one. I complained about Jericho not getting much heat on Michaels, but the same applied to Orton here so it might be on Michaels rather than on his opponents.

[DMJ]

I'm not sure if its on your To Watch list, but I just watched Unforgiven 2005 for the first-time a few weeks or months (?) back and really liked the Shawn Michaels/Chris Masters match on that show. I'd be curious what you'd think of it as it is a bit of a "hidden gem" to me.

[Gregor]

Cool, I'll check that out, thanks for the recommendation. I'm trying to do about six matches per year, so that'll be one of the six for 2005.

Shawn Michaels vs. Goldberg
RAW, 10/20/03
This didn't click for me. Michaels isn't the kind of guy I think of when I think of wrestlers who maybe could take out Goldberg. He wrestled Goldberg as if Goldberg were Undertaker or a big man like that, bumping like crazy and getting overhead pressed a lot, but that's not really Goldberg. It reminded me of his PPV match against Shamrock. Goldberg-Michaels wasn't even a real dream match, as Goldberg really exploded after Michaels had gone home in 1998. Michaels bumped all over, which he hadn't done in any of the matches I'd seen so far, even attempting (unsuccessfully) an inside-out spin bump off a clothesline.

Shawn Michaels vs. Mark Henry
RAW, 11/3/03
Michaels matched up much better with Henry than with Goldberg. Henry's the kind of big man that Michaels' style of bumping and selling always worked best with. I don't need to say it here, but Henry wasn't some passive beneficiary of this. All of his offense looked terrific (those elbow drops in particular), and he even showed some of his own bumping ability. For some reason Michaels' stuff seemed extra-stiff. This looked like it would be a terrific little match, but Michaels' comeback attempts lacked creativity, and getting the knees up on Henry's Vader bomb should have caved Michaels' chest in anyway. They did throw a curve by having Michaels nip up and hit a superkick out of nowhere for the win, rather than actually getting a comeback run. Good match even if it started stronger than it ended. Austin was hanging around ringside during his time as co-GM or whatever. I can get why they tried that, but it's also obvious why Stone Cold as an authority figure was never going to click.

Shawn Michaels, D-Von, Bubba Ray, Rob Van Dam, and Booker T. vs. Chris Jericho, Christian, Mark Henry, Randy Orton, and Scott Steiner (elimination)
Survivor Series, 11/16/03
One of Michaels' most famous performances. Maybe it was just me, but it didn't grab me as one of the all-time classic sells in wrestling history. It was definitely strong selling, and not even the over-the-top selling that people associate with him. I just didn't feel like that was what was carrying things down the stretch, at least not any more than the blood, the layout, or the stipulations. This was just a very well done match overall, even before it came down to three against one. Michaels did have some awkward exchanges at points, but this was the first match he's had since coming back that I might think about listing with his best, so well done.

Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H
RAW, 12/29/03
For a long time, this was the only post-'98 Michaels match that I really loved. I'm happy to say that it held up for me, despite the fact that it turned into a bunch of lying around and shortcuts towards the end. Everyone was on, Flair included, and the San Antonio crowd took things to another level. They were going crazy for a two-count off a punch. Even the overbooking and repeated ten-counts in the final stretch were okay, because they'd earned it with the first three quarters of the match and because they had a receptive crowd (thanks in part to their own efforts). Just in terms of his performance, I don't know if I'd call this one of Michaels' very best. His selling was terrific, and he seemed to have found his character by this point. The cheeky low blow early in the match was probably my favorite thing he did. You can see that he's the clever veteran but also that he's still kind of a prick. Physically he looked much more in-stride than he did earlier in the year. On the other hand, the constant chops and back-and-forth slugfests got tiresome, and they didn't look good either. I preferred the hit-and-run stuff Michaels was doing with Mark Henry. Triple H gave what has to be one of the best performances of his career. I can't recall many genuine discussions about the best HHH showings. Jim Ross, both here and at Survivor Series, still had the presence and the know-how to add a lot to the match, but he was slipping from Stone Cold-era JR. Some of his lines here didn't click ("the maestro of maestros") and in the big elimination match he said, "That damn [heel's name]!" three different times.

[Gregor]

Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H (last man standing)
Royal Rumble, 1/25/04
Take two guys with a proclivity for lying down for the ten-count and put them in a match that encourages that very action. This was better than Armageddon '02 because at least it was sort of a normal match, just with thirty seconds between each of the wrestling moves, and the crowd was into it, but it still had some strange psychology. They did the bridging backslide spot in a match with no pinfalls. Michaels bladed after a missed dive rather than any act of violence. HHH bladed and the two men were soaked in blood even though there had been no visceral hatred on display at all. Michaels continued to take the Pedigree poorly and showed off some of his most overdramatic selling yet.

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Benoit
RAW, 2/16/04
Michaels psyching Benoit out with the stomps was cool, and Benoit's offense looked good, but this didn't really hook me. I don't know why. There was nothing really wrong with it. Maybe it was a little too back-and-forth, or maybe it was that it was Michaels who got worked over even though the crowd was for Benoit. Michaels has taken like five Pedigrees so far in the matches I've watched and this was the first one that looked good.

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Benoit
RAW, 5/3/04
This is the more heavily praised of the two Michaels-Benoit matches, and deservedly so. You could tell from just the opening lockups and headlocks that they wanted this to be intense. Michaels really stepped up his game here, giving probably the best performance I've seen from him in these matches. He was blasting Benoit with his shots and also brought out some offense that he hadn't used to this point in this run. Even the teardrop suplex made an appearance for the first time in some ten years. In fact this might be the best I've ever seen Michaels work over an opponent, despite the fact that he wasn't even a heel. The fans were into it, pro-Benoit but with supporters for each guy, and I've really been surprised by these post-Rock pre-Cena audiences. These have been some good wrestling crowds. I have to say, though, that I don't know if I'd call it a great match. It's on the border, and I wouldn't really argue with someone who saw it as four-plus stars, but it left me feeling a bit cynical. The layout brought to mind the somewhat infamous DDP-Benoit match, in that it seemed designed to make Michaels look like the better wrestler, with that being the sole reason the match even happened. He got most of the offense and hit Benoit with a bunch of moves that he didn't use regularly, whereas Benoit mostly just stuck with his signature offense (although to be fair I think he had already started doing that by this point). In the February match, Benoit got distracted and Michaels pinned him with Sweet Chin Music. Here, Michaels fought out of the crossface and had Benoit knocked out with the kick, but HHH Pedigreed him and Benoit simply put his arm on top to win. Michaels also quite noticeably started screaming at Benoit to get into position for a spot, which wasn't quite as bad as some of his '90s tantrums but did distract me a little.

[Gregor]

Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H (Hell in a Cell)
Bad Blood, 6/13/04
Well, I've finally watched/finished this one. Actually, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It didn't need to go almost 50 minutes, and there was no reason for it to be a Hell in a Cell match, but it was better than Armageddon or the last man standing match. They put some hatred into it, and I could accept all of the kickouts with this being the match to settle once and for all who was better. I wouldn't say that I enjoyed it. Michaels started making a comeback like 15 minutes in, so there was still half an hour left. The spot where they lay around waiting for applause from the fans for their sacrifice and never really got it was sad. Generic weapons ended up strewn all over the ring the same as they would have been in a regular match between these two. I just didn't think it was awful. Maybe that's because I went in with such low expectations.

Shawn Michaels vs. Kane (no-DQ)
Unforgiven, 9/12/04
I wanted to see what Michaels looked like against an opponent I had no interest in watching. They had a pretty average match together. Michaels did the most bumping I've seen from him in a while. I didn't like his approach on offense, though, as he treated Kane almost as if the two were the same size rather than as a big man. Despite his sadistic gimmick, Kane was just a WWE wrestler who used chinlocks and chairs, and Michaels bladed for no reason. Lita was funny at ringside. You could have taken everything away, the wrestlers, the crowd, the sound, just left a silhouette of her defiantly pumping her arms like that, and I could probably have pegged it as something from the mid-aughts. I was thinking that the famous Trish Stratus vs. Lita main event was a Loser Marries Kane match, but it was actually that Kane won a Winner Marries Lita match.

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho
9/20/04
A step back from their stuff in 2003, which is odd because Michaels has generally looked better in 2004 than he did going into the Jericho matches from the year before. They worked a back-and-forth face vs. face match, with no big offense or exciting exchanges to make any of it interesting. They actually seemed a lot more sluggish than in '03. Face Jericho didn't have much charisma.

Shawn Michaels vs. Christian
10/4/04
It's cool that they built this match up for a few weeks even though there was nothing on the line and Michaels was a level above Christian. Everything about Christian felt second-rate. His promo was forced, his offense was either generic or that early-'00s offense where it feels like the guy is trying hard to come up with a new move, and his in-ring mannerisms weren't convincing either. In spite of all that, he still came across as a good worker here, as this was a good match. Maybe his skill was in coming up with those fun reversal exchanges. He bumped pretty well and seemed like a good heat magnet, even if it wasn't an act that could work beyond the midcard. Michaels destroyed his finisher, though, for no real reason. That's something that he's done in this run that he never did back in the '90s. He's now kicked out of HHH's, Orton's, and Christian's, while fighting out of Benoit's and Jericho's submission finishers.

[Gregor]

Shawn Michaels vs. Edge
Royal Rumble, 1/30/05
A rare chance for Michaels to be the Showstarter. The finishing stretch was pretty good, but everything before that was forgettable. They didn't seem to have any ideas about what kind of match to have. When even the announcers are remarking on the length of the restholds, you know it's a problem. This didn't reflect well on Michaels for me. Not that Edge was great here, and I know that he was not well regarded on this site back in the day, but a lot of people also thought that he had the 2005 WWE MOTY. The guy wasn't a stiff, and Michaels should have had a better match with him, even if he did look like a long-haired Jim Carrey.

Shawn Michaels vs. Edge (street fight)
RAW, 2/28/05
This was better. The hatred here was a lot more palpable than in any of the HBK-HHH matches. I don't like how cartoony WWE street fights are, with wrestlers able to conjure up whatever weapon they like from under the ring, but at least they made them count. Even the ladder, which has become a staple of Michaels brawls even though it should have no place in a genuine fight, was treated more like a weapon than like a prop for stunts. Michaels' bladejob was disgusting. It definitely added to the match, as did his selling of it, but they could have gotten even more out of it. I'm not asking anyone to go all Pirata Morgan, but they came back from commercial and Edge had him in a rear chinlock. Work the cut at least a little. This was also the one time that I really wanted Michaels to sell during his comeback and show just how much the blood loss had taken out of him. Instead he had the typical rush of adrenaline before coming down to Earth once he got cut off. As usual the match slowed to a crawl towards the finish, but it didn't bother me that much after how violent it had been heading into that. As crazy as Edge tried to look, Angle looked twice as crazy and scary in the post-match attack.

Shawn Michaels vs. Kurt Angle
WrestleMania XXI, 4/3/05
Okay, here's the big one. This is probably the most important match of this whole run for Michaels. It's either an all-time classic or an exercise in self-indulgence. No matter what opinion you have of this one, someone thinks you're a clod for it. I saw it for the first time at fifteen, just after it happened, and thought it was amazing. I've watched it maybe once since then and really don't even remember much about it. It's not a match to which I have any personal attachment. My guess is that I'll like it more than SummerSlam '02 vs. HHH.

I thought that the match was very good up until Michaels did the dive onto the table. The headlocks were good, the slam into the post was good, and Michaels' armdrag counter to lead into a plancha was pretty awesome. The match started to falter with the big dive and the exhausted selling that followed. The spot felt out of place in the middle of Michaels' comeback and well before the homestretch, and the epic selling was too much for what they'd taken. Michaels hadn't hit Angle with anything, really, before the two dives. That set up about nine minutes of trading finishers and nearfalls. Some of it was interesting, like Michaels' victory roll counter, and a lot of it was predictable even if it was dramatic. I recall reading that Michaels reined Angle in here, which I didn't really see, and that Michaels dropped the selling of his back after beginning his comeback, which I didn't really agree with either. He was a lot peppier in the street fight with Edge. From a physical standpoint I thought he turned in a strong performance. If you'd told me about the armdrag and rollup counters beforehand I'd have envisioned them as being a lot sloppier than they ended up. This was the best his chops have looked, too. The crowd didn't add anything, and maybe that was the missing piece. I guess I'd call it good to very good. They accomplished everything that they wanted to and generally got the reactions that they were shooting for, even with the somewhat sedated audience. The psychology was sound, at least to me. They just didn't do anything fun or all that interesting. Right now, the list of matches that have added to Michaels' legacy for me consists of Survivor Series '03, the one excellent HHH match, and the second Benoit match. This one wasn't all that far off, though.

[MoS]

Wasn't the HitC so boring for the live audience that it famously killed the town for subsequent shows?

[Gregor]

Thehistoryofwwe.com has that show drawing 7,500 paying fans and their next show at Nationwide Arena drawing 5,000 (and then no more attendance numbers for the arena after that). I have no idea if they put the same number of seats on sale for RAW as they do for a PPV, though.

Shawn Michaels vs. Shelton Benjamin
RAW, 5/2/05
This was a complete success to me. It didn't have a middle, so you probably can't call it a genuine four-star match, but they nailed pretty much everything that they attempted. Michaels doesn't have a lot of famous matches in which he worked as the heelish babyface, a role associated much more with his eternal detractor Bret Hart, so that's something to check off for him. I thought he did a very good job bumping for Benjamin's big offense and timing his kickouts. That isn't something I notice very often, but the kickouts were a big part of what made this work so well, that and the fact that Benjamin had so many convincing moves in his arsenal. They didn't even kill Benjamin's finisher. Some of Michaels' selling, like the spasms after the elbow, was too eye-catching and babyface for a match that was about Shelton Benjamin (also, it was cheesy), and I wish the match had more of a body instead of taking a shortcut straight to the epic ten-count selling. Compared to the Angle match, though, this felt more genuine and fit within the promotion's natural flow. That was a match in which two legends promised a legendary match. This was an unannounced tournament match, by the end of which Benjamin was getting crowd reactions that happen only when the fans are eager to see a wrestler take that step to the next level. Of course it's the finish that everyone remembers. Benjamin may have gotten more over by going down like that than if he'd won. You could even see the fans who'd been rooting for him accept that, yeah, there's no shame in losing that way. After the match Michaels put Benjamin over in the most sexual way possible, placing his hand on Benjamin's chest and gazing longingly at his fallen opponent. I guess that signaled the beginning of the erotic undercurrents that mark Michaels' vision of pro wrestling to this day.

Shawn Michaels vs. Kurt Angle
Vengeance, 6/26/05
When you've already burned through finishers and gone as big as possible in the first match, it's hard to make a rematch seem like it has a point. Michaels got his win back, but that's about it. I actually thought this was fine up until they started doing the same ankle lock-SCM stuff that they did at WrestleMania. It was old hat and much better suited for a WrestleMania than a show like Vengeance. Michaels' superkick to win felt like a copy of the Benjamin finish, which was more impressive even without considering that it was the original. I did like Jim Ross correctly predicting that it was stupid for Angle to go up top, though. The coolest part of the match was when Angle was doing those kickouts but could get his arm up only for a second, so the referee would immediately start another count as soon as it fell back down. It's a good match to watch if you want to see Michaels work stiff, but otherwise not really.

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Masters
Unforgiven, 9/18/05
Not much of a reputation for this one, but I thought it was terrific, Michaels' best comeback match yet. Despite an overarching old vs. young theme, Michaels reached back for some of his favorite spots against power wrestlers, like the blocked crucifix. I actually popped a little when they did the sunset flip comeback tease only for Masters to blast him with a clothesline. That was the Michaels of old. This wasn't a match about Michaels' athleticism, though. It was about him having to both use his guile to find escapes to Masters' power holds, and bear down and fight his way back into the match. The slugfest that led into the flying forearm was so much faster than the countless titanic ones in even the good HHH match and had twice the impact. Even Michaels' prolonged stretch in the Masterlock wasn't problematic like it was with the Walls of Jericho or the ankle lock. That's how the Masterlock was always sold, as a fight to escape rather than an instant submission. I liked the way they got out of it without breaking it. The finish was slick, and that's something Michaels actually improved upon from his heyday. He still usually won with the kick, but he was more creative in setting it up. Really the only issue I had was with some of Michaels' doddering selling mid-match, when he'd throw a chop and then grab his back. Masters looked like a promising worker here (only 22) and not the stiff that the internet generally pegged him as back when this happened, although he didn't look like a guy who'd be having five-star two-minute matches, either. I remember how much of a disappointment it was when they aborted Michaels' heel character from the Hogan feud and transitioned him into this storyline with a guy who was viewed as a generic WWE steroid freak. They made it work, though, and kudos to DMJ for calling this out as something to watch. I don't know if I'd have given it a look otherwise.

[Gregor]

Shawn Michaels vs. Christian
RAW, 1/17/05
I've liked 2005 Michaels, and I don't see myself watching a whole lot of 2006 Michaels, so I checked out a few more matches from '05. Michaels and Christian had a good match in 2004, but this one was mediocre. The most interesting thing was the Toronto crowd pulling for Christian. He got treated like a punk again, as even interference from Edge couldn't help him. Somehow he was able to pass as a world title contender a few months later.

Shawn Michaels vs. Rob Conway
RAW, 3/21/05
This might have been the first match I saw when I got back into wrestling in 2005, Shawn Michaels against some guy I'd never heard of. I remembered it being pretty good. Watching it in 2021, I liked the start with Michaels' somersault plancha and the heel double-teaming, but the match was pretty formulaic after they got back from commercial. This was the first time that I've seen Michaels win with his finishing sequence during this run, so I guess that established that it could conceivably end a match instead of always getting cut off.

Shawn Michaels and John Cena vs. Carlito and Chris Masters (tables)
RAW, 9/26/05
I'm surprised that the tables match lived on after the Dudleys left. Has there ever been a casket or buried alive match without Undertaker in it? I guess tables became so ubiquitous that everyone forgot about the Dudleys' association with them. I wanted to see if Michaels and Masters had good chemistry together, but the only match I could find had only half uploaded in a watchable format. It was incredibly boring, so I didn't mind missing the ending.

Shawn Michaels vs. Rey Mysterio
RAW, 11/13/05
Michaels really bumped hard for Mysterio here. Other than that, nothing else stood out about this. Maybe they'd have done something with the size difference if the circumstances had been different. Instead it was just a pretty generic match with Mysterio scoring the surprise pin, and the nature of the show making it feel like it didn't really count.

[Robert S]

10 hours ago, Gregor said:

Has there ever been a casket or buried alive match without Undertaker in it?

Considering WWF/WWE only, I suppose? cagematch has three non-Taker casket matches: Mideon & Viscera beating Triple H (Smackdown, 1999-09-21), Kane beating Triple H (Raw, 2002-10-28) & Daniel Bryan beating Kane (Smackdown, 2015-01-29). All five buried alive matches in WWF/WWE had Undertaker in them (though there are a bunch of non-WWF/WWE buried alive matches, the earliest one in the database from Mr. Corey's version of Memphis Wrestling involving Abyss, Doug Gilbert (as Freddie Krueger) and Bull Buchanan (as Lord Humongous) in 2003. The non-WWF/WWE promotion that first ran casket matches was W*ING, sadly non involving Doug Gilbert (that would have been a nice coincidence).

[Gregor]

I think that Mideon and Viscera one started out with Undertaker in it, but before the match he ducked out and had them take his place. Maybe I'm confusing it with some other match, but I'm pretty sure that happened once. I guess Kane inheriting it makes sense. To me his match was the inferno match but that didn't really have any staying power.

Shawn Michaels vs. Shelton Benjamin
RAW, 1/23/06
Benjamin had regrettably turned heel and taken on a mama's boy gimmick by this point. It says something about WWE that I have no idea if this was punishment/sabotage or if they thought they were elevating him with this character. Michaels and Benjamin tried to recreate the magic of their match from the year before, but the dynamic didn't work with Benjamin as a heel and Michaels in a must-win situation. To their credit they did have some spots that played off the previous match. The problem was that Benjamin would pull these amazing moves out of nowhere, and the crowd couldn't really cheer them now. He did have some nice standard heel offense, but he didn't really seem to have the personality for it. Michaels got in almost nothing and won on a fluke rollup. I think that he actually did want Benjamin to come out of this looking okay. His selling was all over the place, though. He sold the back injury during the comeback even though that hadn't been the match's focus, and then forgot about it when Benjamin hit a backbreaker. Oh, well, at least Benjamin got to keep his awesome entrance music.

Shawn Michaels vs. Umaga
RAW, 7/31/06
This had some nice big man spots and some moments in which Michaels seemed to just want to do his normal stuff. He just kept chopping away. His clearest contribution to the match was a great bump off a kick. The YouTube video started skipping stuff during Michaels' comeback, so I didn't get the full picture, but the match was about as good as the Benjamin one, decent but underwhelming. Umaga himself seemed like an interesting wrestler, but the evil Cuban manager and the McMahons all surrounding the act didn't let it stand out much.

Shawn Michaels and Triple H vs. The Big Show, Vince, and Shane (Hell in a Cell)
Unforgiven, 9/17/06
I think I read someone call this a good match once. I really hope I did, because if I watched this for no reason then I'll be pretty mad at myself. It was a match worked around this embarrassing iteration of DX, the McMahons wrestling, and Big Show's bare ass. What did I think was going to happen? I'll say this much. This showed that Michaels wouldn't have been much of a deathmatch worker. Onita would have teetered and tottered on the edge of falling into Big Show's bare ass but just barely escaped, providing some drama and building up the bump for when it finally happened. Foley would have taken multiple unprotected head-first dives into Big Show's bare ass to satisfy the bloodthirsty fans and prove to everyone how hardcore he really was. Michaels never really went near it, which was understandable but didn't do much to get the gimmick over.

[DMJ]

9 hours ago, Gregor said:

Shawn Michaels and Triple H vs. The Big Show, Vince, and Shane (Hell in a Cell)
Unforgiven, 9/17/06
I think I read someone call this a good match once. I really hope I did, because if I watched this for no reason then I'll be pretty mad at myself. 

That might've been me. And I didn't just call it a good match, I called it a great match. If 2006 wasn't such a good in-ring year for the WWE, it'd probably be in my top 10 for the company. Off the top of my head, I remember really liking Stratus/James at Mania, RVD/Cena from ONS II, the various Edge/Foley matches from that year being wild fun, Angle/Taker, at least one of the Edge/Cena matches being great (might've even been the TLC match from this same show), and I'm sure I'm forgetting some good stuff from Rey.

But this match. This match is ridiculous fun. We get blood almost immediately as the McMahons know that to get this over, they're going to have to grab the audience by the balls from the start. Soon after, the numbers game causes to DX get beaten down and, as I said in the AEW thread, I'm a big fan of Big Show during his Extreme Giant run as he was adding all sorts of moves to arsenal (including a friggin' Vader Bomb and a Cobra Clutch Backbreaker). Perfunctory or not, Shane hits the Van Terminator on Triple H to a huge ovation. Michaels crawls back into the ring and is a bloody mess too, then Triple H is sporting a crimson mask. From here, Vince commits hubris and refuses to take the would-be victory, ultimately leading the babyfaces to rally (with help from chairs and stairs). People will always bring up the "comedy" of this match, namely Vince getting his face shoved into Big Show's ass, but really, what's more hardcore than putting yourself in tremendous jeopardy to contract hepatitis (or at least pink eye)? This match is not for everyone...but it kinda is for everyone. Its violent and bloody. It's the McMahons in full McMahon insanity mode. Its got comedy. Its got sledgehammers and Sweet Chin Musics and Big Show doing a Vader Bomb. Its food equivalent may be one of those pizzas where the crust is actually hot dogs and it comes with a dipping sauce that's just ketchup and mustard mixed together. Except I would never eat such an abomination (let alone call it great) and somehow this match works for me. Its probably the only legitimately enjoyable thing to come out of either of the DX reunions. And the crowd's reaction kinda backs that assessment up even if we don't want to admit it - like how when I see an ad for one of those grotesque "pizzas" I wonder "Who in the hell would buy that?" but somehow they're the top selling thing on the menu. 

[Gregor]

The McMahons being in full insanity mode might have been the worst part for me. They bled early on but managed to last like thirty minutes. Non-wrestlers shouldn't get to look that tough.

Shawn Michaels vs. John Cena
WrestleMania 23, 4/1/07
Michaels was disgustingly orange here, worse than Hogan ever was. This was a disappointment. Most of the spots were good in isolation, but this wasn't a match that was put together very well. Michaels started by slowly schooling Cena for like ten minutes before Cena came back with his finishing sequence. That was exactly what people were saying at the time, that all he had were those same old moves. It was like they were trying to highlight that. Almost everything from that point on was one-move-a-minute wrestling. Some of the reversals were fun but it wasn't a whole lot different from Michaels vs. Angle. They worked multiple spots in which they traded punches ("Yeah! Boo!"), which again just underscored how many people wanted Cena to lose. When it became clear that this was not a pro-Cena crowd, those spots should have been audibled out. Cena did some good underneath work, whereas Michaels mostly just did a nice job establishing himself as the heady veteran who was going to be hard to beat. I didn't think this was a good night for him. His work on Cena's knee lacked any real verve, he bladed for no reason, and he split Cena's head open with that piledriver.

Shawn Michaels vs. Randy Orton
RAW, 4/9/07
This had some nice technical work to start, but everything between that and the finish rated somewhere from forgettable to boring. Michaels tried working the knee like he was Bret Hart or something. For the finish they re-did the awful finish from HBK-HHH in San Antonio. I love when WWE does that. They'll take this idea that everyone hated the first time around and bring it back years later, because of either laziness or a dogged determination to have someone appreciate their brainchild. The most interesting thing about this was that the video that I watched was uploaded on April 10, 2007. For a long time the way I'd gotten to see wrestling videos was downloading them off Limewire or Megaupload, but that was starting to change around this point. It's also noteworthy because every other video I've watched so far was uploaded well after the match it featured took place, meaning that someone thought it was worth watching years afterward. This was uploaded just because someone wanted to show everyone the match from last night in case they missed it.

Shawn Michaels vs. John Cena
RAW, 4/23/07
After their last match, I wasn't looking forward to watching these two wrestle for over 40 minutes, but they won me over. Pretty much from the start they had a better match. Michaels locking in a hold and Cena countering, or Cena grabbing a hold and Michaels trying to get out, was so much better than the way they worked that last match that it wasn't funny. Cena looked like he was on Michaels' level here, and that made for exchanges in which I was wondering who would come out on top, and it actually felt like a match that could determine who the best was. Then Cena got to wrestle and dispel the rampant criticism of him at the time. I got a little worried when Michaels made his comeback at the fifteen-minute mark and they were already doing a ten-count spot, but the match picked up from there and felt more free-flowing than any of Michaels' matches since that one on RAW against HHH. It was still fairly slow. There were still multiple finisher kickouts. They incorporated those things into a much fuller match, though, rather than making them the focus for the last ten minutes. It actually fit somewhat naturally into the story of neither man, Cena in particular, knowing how to beat the other. Michaels was definitely slowing physically at this point, but he still managed to take some big bumps from straight out of his prime. Very strong match, just slightly below my favorites from this run.

[Gregor]

Shawn Michaels vs. The Great Khali
RAW, 5/7/07
This was a lot better than I thought it would be, but Michaels has always been good at these big vs. small matchups. Interestingly, he didn't do much of the Michaels bumping that people tend to associate with him. His bumps in this match were just him letting Khali throw him a long way. The desperation in his attack right off the bat made it clear that Khali was a force, and I liked how the spot in the ropes showed off the size difference between the two. The ref stoppage finish was weak, but this was the best short match that I'd seen from Michaels in a while.

Shawn Michaels vs. Randy Orton
Survivor Series, 11/18/07
This was an interesting match. Michaels wasn't allowed to use Sweet Chin Music, and Randy Orton would lose the title on a DQ. The latter stipulation never came into play, but the first one shaped the match for the most part. Michaels trying various front facelocks on Orton was a pretty cool way to start the match, and Orton did an outstanding job selling these. He was really good at all of his reaction spots. They didn't build much heat on Michaels here. On one hand, that was fine. The question of how Michaels could possibly win lay with the superkick ban, so they didn't need to have Orton dominate him to the point that you were wondering how he could ever come back. On the other hand, that's the most dramatic and visceral way to work a match, and there's a reason that building and building to a comeback is the standard format. I didn't like Michaels' later submissions much, once he started using ex-finishers (his Sharpshooter looked awful on Orton's long legs). I did like his fakeouts with the kick, though, as even if it would save Orton's title he still isn't the kind of guy who'd be willing to take a kick to the head to do it. Then Michaels went to the well once too often, or he instinctively set up for the kick before remembering he couldn't do it, and he paid for it. The announcers called it like it was the latter. I'd rather it have been the former. The idea behind this was a lot more ambitious than anything Michaels tried in the '90s.

Shawn Michaels vs. Ken Kennedy
Armageddon, 12/16/07
I was under the impression that Ken Kennedy was not good. He's definitely a ham. His selling can make Michaels' look restrained and subtle by comparison. There are many ways to react to a single-arm DDT, but yelling, "Omaha!" is not one that I would have been able to think of. He was really good in this match, though. Right away you could see how he'd get under someone's skin, and that led to Michaels doing some nasty work on his arm. With his physical ability on the decline (evident from that sunset flip counter), Michaels seemed to be trying to reinvent himself as a technical wrestler, and this was the best he's looked in that role so far. Kennedy responded by attacking Michaels' back, not the most novel strategy in the world, but you have to give both guys credit for continuing to sell the effects all the way until the end. In fact the body part work ended up playing into the finish. I genuinely didn't see that coming. Maybe that's just me being stupid, but I thought the wrestlers and announcers played it fairly low-key, at least by wrestling standards.

Some guy brought a sign that read, "HICKENBOTTOM BALDING KLUB." I'd always thought that "Heart Break Gimp" was the hardest any sign ever went at Michaels, but I think we all know which of the two hurt him more.

Shawn Michaels vs. Ken Kennedy
RAW, 12/31/07
Another good match. This might be the most chemistry Michaels has had with an opponent during this run. The PPV win seemed pretty decisive, so I don't know why Kennedy got a rematch here, but you could tell there was still some bad blood from the way Michaels went after the knee early on. Again Michaels sold his back during his comeback. This time, though, it got cut off and they went into a series of pinfall reversals that ended with Michaels bridging up and getting the backslide. That kind of undid the point of selling the back during the comeback, but on the other hand it was a pretty slick sequence.

[Gregor]

Shawn Michaels vs. Ken Kennedy
RAW, 1/21/08
This existed just to get Michaels his win back and was the least consequential of their three matches, but there were still some spots that evinced the inexplicably good chemistry these two had. For some reason Michaels would do more creative stuff with Kennedy than with anyone else. I was impressed by the fact that Michaels tuned up the band and missed the kick, and the match continued in a middle stage rather than in a finishing stretch. His punches have looked especially bad in these three matches, though.

Shawn Michaels vs. Jeff Hardy
RAW, 2/11/08 (taped 2/4)
Jeff Hardy being WWE's star on the rise at this stage was a sign that the company was far removed from having its finger on the pulse of pop culture. He looked like the kind of 30-year-old dude who would still have been active on MySpace in 2008. I can put that aside, though, because this was a great match. It was like a more complete version of the one Michaels had with Shelton Benjamin. Hardy, at least going on his performance here, was a really good wrestler at this point. His selling was much more natural than Michaels'. He was able to get over the effects of Michaels' work on his back without the tortured gestures, and there was one spot when he was trapped in a half crab and started yanking on Michaels' hair that I thought was a really nice touch. Michaels gave a good performance as the heel, better than what he did in the Cena matches, but what really struck me was how he seemed to get Hardy in the same way that he got Benjamin. That powerslam on the floor was the kind of spot that he'd taken on the way up. He had to be the only person in all of wrestling still doing that goofy spot of jumping off the rope and landing on his opponent's foot, but here they at least put a cool twist on it by having Michaels expect it and counter. Hardy got the big win, and as far as I can tell Michaels never even got it back. The only real criticism I had of the match was that one spot when it looked like Hardy was going for a flapjack and Michaels took it like an atomic drop. I bet I know what happened there. Hardy called for the Heretical Distortion and Michaels was like, "...Inverted atomic?" It wasn't that bad of a guess, actually.

Shawn Michaels vs. Ric Flair
WrestleMania XXIV, 3/30/08
I hadn't seen this before. It sounded sad to watch, so I never watched it. Going in, I was thinking that maybe it would be like one of those mask matches involving an older luchador, in which you suck it up and ignore the inevitable flaws in execution so that you can appreciate what they're going for. I did try that, and I did think that this was okay early on. Flair could barely bend his legs, but he still was up for some big bumps like a backdrop to the floor. His offense was actually a lot better than Michaels', with his punches and chops especially putting Michaels' to shame. Flair's charisma, too, smoked Michaels'. The crowd did not care about HBK, and it really showed when he made his comeback to a few scattered boos. He should have worked heel. The match dragged on, Flair started to look worse, and they actually thought that a man of almost 60 could catch a moonsault to the floor. There were moments in which I liked how true Flair was to himself, but other moments just felt like Ric Flair tribute spots. They went with the excruciatingly slow WrestleMania finishing stretch, and eventually Shawn Michaels said that he loved Flair and kicked the guy right in the head. There were actually a lot of spots with talking or over-emotional acting, not just that one. Michaels hadn't done much stuff like that before this, so I guess this is when he finalized his vision of professional wrestling in its truest form.

[Gregor]

Shawn Michaels vs. Batista (Chris Jericho as referee)
Backlash, 4/27/08
I got the psychology, but the match was slow, Michaels' offense was sloppy, and the match was mostly Michaels on offense working slowly and sloppily. The way Michaels did nothing but attack the arm during the first portion of the match felt really staged, like they'd written it all out ahead of time. Michaels' punches in the Kennedy and Hardy matches were bad, and I overlooked them because the matches had enough positive attributes for me to focus on. This didn't. His punches sucked. Between faking a knee injury, working the arm, and going down hurt to avoid a powerbomb, Michaels did his best Bret Hart impression. There's a reason that Bret was Bret and that Shawn was Shawn.

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho
Judgment Day, 5/18/08
The execution was better here, but it was still slow and I couldn't really get into the match. They just had a match, with no special story or psychology. The finish was ugly. I try to keep these things short, to avoid rambling and for my own sake, but I'm just not able to come up with much to say about the matches I watched today. I guess I'll say here that there's a noticeable difference between 2008 crowds and the much hotter 2005 crowds, and it's not like 2005 was considered a good time to be a WWE fan. Also, I never liked Lawler as an announcer, but he's been very good for this entire stretch. Human, relatable Lawler was always better than over-the-top Lawler, even as a wrestler.

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho
The Great American Bash, 7/20/08
Maybe I'm in a mood today or something. I didn't feel this either. The blood and the way Jericho went after the cut was definitely something different, but the way they did it felt strange. Even when all Jericho was doing was punching Michaels in the face they still slowed the match down in the closing stretch with the referee constantly pushing Jericho off. Michaels' selling didn't grab me, and I didn't think that Jericho was as violent as he could have been. So far I've preferred the 2003 version of this feud.

[Gregor]

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho (unsanctioned)
Unforgiven, 9/7/08
I liked this more than either of their previous two matches. Michaels showed more fire in the first few minutes than in the two other contests combined. When Michaels came in with a taped-up arm, I assumed that the whole match was going to be a bunch of arm work or spots in which Michaels' arm conveniently got hurt, but it wasn't. The match wasn't perfect. Michaels' facial expressions were ridiculous. The extended stretch of Cade's interference didn't fit what was supposed to be an extremely personal issue. The whole thing began to feel like a movie, with convoluted spots to get Cade out of the match and a long run of Michaels just torturing Jericho, which felt outside of the face vs. heel norms of professional wrestling. Michael Cole's announcing was a noticeable difference from that of Jim Ross. JR calls wrestling matches. Cole calls storylines. He still had the verbal tic from when he debuted of permanently affixing secondary figures' roles to their names, meaning that Lance Cade was always "Lance Cade, Jericho's protege." There was almost no excitement in the announcers' voices when Michaels was coming back after superkicking Cade. I get that they wanted to make this feel different, but calling it with quiet shock took a lot of the emotion out of what was supposed to be one of the hottest parts of the match. I realize that I've said more negative things here than positive, but I did like this, especially compared to what I expected after the first two matches from this feud that I watched. Even if I haven't liked all of the work, I have liked how you can see the progression of the feud just through the matches. Michaels got his win here, but in a way that was meant to feel unsatisfactory, and at the end of the PPV it was Jericho's night.

Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho (ladder)
No Mercy, 10/5/08
My memory of this match was reading a review that championed it as sheer brilliance, the rebirth of the ladder match as a violent gimmick rather than one that promised acrobatic and intricate spots. When there were two separate pinfall attempts within the first five minutes, I was ready to give up on it, but I ended up thinking it was probably the best match I've watched from this feud. It was still spotty to some degree. That twelve-year-old review did prove at least partially correct, though, as they did hit each other with the ladder and simply throw each other into it quite often. Jericho gave a lot of himself here. Those were some brutal bumps that he was taking, a lot of which he had almost no control over. Best of all, this had none of the acting and emotional moments of the previous two matches. Still, there was something missing. This program hasn't been the kind of wrestling I've wanted to watch, but it felt weird that the climactic match was just a title match that didn't have the emotion of some of the earlier ones. After beating each other into consecutive ref stoppages, they started this out with a standard tie-up. Even if it all made for a better match, it didn't totally work within the context of what they'd done up to that point.

[MoS]

I am not a particularly big Jeff Hardy fan, but I think you are underselling him. He was massively, massively over in 2007 and 2008. I believe he was outselling Cena in merchandise, he was spiking house show attendance and also spiked ratings. He connected. Thing is, later that year, Triple H beat him in 3 matches on back-to-back PPVs so he was never allowed to reach the tippy top level. They might have undercut him cuz they never expected him to get over so they had to cut him down to size, which is emblematic of everything wrong with WWE today, or because they didn't trust him to stay out of trouble, in which case they were absolutely correct, cuz hindsight proved them right. 

[Gregor]

Oh, I didn't mean that Hardy shouldn't have been pushed. It was more that I don't think his look would have worked with a bigger audience. To the shrinking WWE audience of 2008 who knew his backstory and everything, his shot at the top was probably exciting. Outside of the wrestling world, most people in 2008 would have seen him and thought he looked like a creep who was trying to dress the way 20-somethings had a few years before. It wasn't an act that would have drawn in new fans, and if the wrestling audience had been less of a niche crowd there's a good chance a large portion of it would have turned on him.

Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker
WrestleMania XXV, 4/5/09
I always thought that the four cornerstones of Michaels' comeback were the big return vs. HHH, WM vs. Angle, and the two WM matches against Undertaker. This one felt a lot like the Angle match, with 20 minutes of ideas stretched out to thirty thanks to ten minutes of finishers. Like WM XXI, the wrestling in the first part of the match was good stuff. Michaels' audacious hit-and-run offense fit who he was perfectly. Undertaker getting annoyed and finally making Michaels pay fit him perfectly. The first five minutes were faster than any stretch of the Jericho series. They fumbled a bit at points, but it was still a refreshing attempt after how slowly Michaels wrestled for most of 2008. The story moved a bit too fast. At the actual five-minute mark they'd gone through Michaels' stick-and-move stuff and Undertaker's retaliation and were already on Michaels trying to work the knee. I was impressed by how they sort of made it an old-school match, with the fans hanging on even the early moves as important. They didn't get them to buy into side headlocks but instead built their match with a lot of moves that were just below the finisher tier, like Undertaker's choke, Michaels' crossface, and that weak figure-four variation he started using in 2008. The cameraman spot is one of a few iconic ones, but more than just the crazy dive I liked how it led to Michaels showing how desperate he was to win. It was cheesy Michaels overacting, but like with some of his over-the-top back selling it got across the idea that it needed to. The finishers and two-counts were what I expected. Some of the spots were neat, but the match hit a level and stayed there for ten minutes. The fans were into it, though. The wrestlers were lying around after a nearfall and got a "This is awesome" chant. In 2004 Michaels and HHH tried that and got no reaction at all.

Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker
WrestleMania XXVI, 3/28/10
Maybe I shouldn't have watched two of these matches back-to-back. This was by far the least I've liked any of the big four Michaels matches, and in a way it made me appreciate the XXV match more. That's never going to be one of my all-time favorites, but it was more the template that I didn't like. The way they executed everything was quite good. Here, the wrestling at the start was sloppy, with simple moves like kicks to the knee looking weak. Undertaker got his leg worked over and made his comeback by simply standing up and chokeslamming Michaels. He got a two-count off that, not even ten minutes into the match, and gave us the first surprised face of the night. He acted like The Undertaker in the first match, but in this one he tried to match Michaels' overselling and overacting. Worst of all, the crowd just did not seem into it at all. They got hot by the end, but the year before the Houston crowd had been with them all match. The finishers might have been the most interesting part. I liked that the table spot for once seemed like a huge deal. That was played as a major part of Michaels' one big two-count. Other than maybe the ankle lock (ugh, stop stealing other guys' moves), I think that was the only time Michaels was close to winning, another twist on things.

This was far from an all-inclusive look at things, but here's what I got from it. Michaels definitely needed to re-learn wrestling after coming back, but he eventually found his footing and from late '03 through '05 was kind of a discount version of his '96 self, albeit less exciting from week to week and capable of a big, big miss. His physical ability noticeably began to slip after that, which he countered by trying to become more of a technical wrestler than before. He didn't have the slickness or the skill to consistently make that work, but he pushed through it and had some good matches in that role before really slowing down around the time of the Jericho feud. That's the point at which I didn't want to watch him anymore. I didn't love any of the matches from this run that have become part of his legacy, but there are a few others that I do think belong with his best.

[Gregor]

These were my favorites, ranked approximately by how much I liked them.

vs. Masters
vs. HHH '03
vs. Hardy
vs. Benjamin '05
vs. Benoit 5/04
vs. Kennedy (Armageddon)
Survivor Series '03