WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels was the latest guest on The Bump to discuss the upcoming Royal Rumble pay-per-view, and how important the match has become not only for WWE, but for building up a new star. Michaels, a two-time Rumble winner himself, also discusses how much the match type affected his career. Highlights are below.
Says he didn’t think the Royal Rumble would become such a landmark event:
“No. So gosh, the first time you hear about it like you said, it’s a Battle Royale essentially. But no, I had no idea that it would become — as everybody knows now the Royal Rumble comes, and it has so many implications now towards Wrestlemania. And that’s where you start thinking about, so no, I gotta be honest, I didn’t know that the event would be such the landmark that it is now, this unbelievable concept.”
How 30 years of longevity is tough:
“But at the same time, I don’t know. I guess you always feel that to have, I don’t know, almost 30 plus years of longevity in this line of work is pretty tough to do. But again, it’s something that to me, I feel like once the Rumble comes, that’s when everybody gets excited. And the roll to WrestleMania is right around the corner. And as I say, I don’t know that does justice to just how big that events become.”
Whether the Rumble had an affect on his career:
“Yeah. Oh, for sure. And again, look, it’s especially when we started talking about again that having a real attachment to WrestleMania. But look, I can say this, the first time that I really — it was watching Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig out there in the Rumble, and everything he did and how he made everything look so spectacular. He didn’t win; he never won a Royal Rumble. But he was the first guy that I watched to where I realized, oh my goodness, even in this event with 30 other people, you can become the focal point.”
How a talent can really get themselves over in the matchup:
“And that’s what I sort of saw him do that. That’s what I looked at it from the standpoint of the Rumble can now be a performance engineering-type event where you can really get yourself over in a way that I just thought was pretty challenging with 30 other people and so much else going on, on the show. But after watching Curt that night, it was stuck in my brain forever. It wasn’t so much about winning, and it was about everything that you did in the duration of the time that you are out there.”
(H/T and transcribed by WrestleZone)