Shawn Michaels Named Best WWE Superstar Of All-Time By Former Rival
A former on-screen rival of WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels thinks the Heartbreak Kid was the best of them all.
To current WWE fans and superstars, Shawn Michaels is the executive who oversees the NXT brand and has a significant influence on how superstars are utilized during their time in NXT.
Many lifelong WWE fans, who have been watching for 20, 30, 40 years or even longer, think of Michaels as an outstanding performer in the ring, on the microphone, and everywhere else.
As “The Heartbreak Kid,” Shawn Michaels literally could do it all as a pro wrestler, and he proved it many times over the course of his 20+ years in the ring.
Kurt Angle had a dream match with Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 21 in 2005, when they were considered two of the best performers in the world. Sometimes dream matches don’t live up to the hype. However, that WrestleMania 21 match, which was the first-ever Angle-Michaels singles match, delivered the goods and is remembered as one of the best WWE matches ever.
When Kurt Angle was asked by Sports Illustrated about the best overall pro wrestlers, Kurt mentioned several great ones, but he singled out Michaels as the best of them all.
“Oh, I love technical wrestlers. Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho, the technical wrestlers. Undertaker was a great technical wrestler. Stone Cold Steve Austin. There were a lot of great ones. Now, The Rock could be technical, but he was more of an action-packed kind of guy, and I love working with him, because his pace was unbelievable, and that’s what I liked was a high-paced match. But no, I like technical-style matches the most. I have to say my best matches were with Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero.
“Overall, I consider Shawn to be the greatest in the sport. If you’re talking looks, promo skills, and wrestling ability, everything wrapped into one, that guy is perhaps the best of all time.”
Shawn Michaels Is Looking For Two Main Things When Evaluating WWE Superstars
In his role as “WWE Senior Vice President of Talent Development, Creative,” Shawn Michaels has to look at the NXT roster, as well as those yet to debut on TV, and try to figure out the best way to use them.
During a recent interview, Shawn Michaels mentioned what he looks for when he’s evaluating talent.
“I think when we talk about feel, and timing. Timing and feel are probably, in my opinion, the two most important things in this business. You can get by with so much more if you have those two aspects. You can be a little short in athleticism, you can be a little short in psychology, you can be a little short in, I don’t know, overall knowledge of the game, so to speak.
If you have timing and a real feel, because those are things that, I guess charisma plays a part in that. But if you have timing and feel, I feel like the charisma and all the other is going to sort of match that timing and feel, if that makes sense. I know sometimes when I talk about this, I know I don’t always make sense to a lot of people, but that’s the level that I’m at.”
At the end of this week’s September 30th episode of WWE NXT, Shawn Michaels appeared on camera to watch the chaos as the NXT superstars fought with TNA wrestlers to promote NXT-TNA Showdown on October 7th.