Fellow WWE Hall of Famers Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels recently sat down together to record the latest edition of Flair’s podcast and did some serious reminiscing.
Michaels and Flair went all the way back to when they first met in 1985, while working for Central States Wrestling in Kansas City. Michaels said he met Flair at a very small bar when he was 19, and Flair bought him drinks the rest of the night. Michaels recalls taking the opportunity to tell Flair what he meant to him as a pro wrestler after having watched him for years before that night.
Later on, they faced off in the ring in December of ’91 for six minutes in what Michaels calls the biggest match of his career at that point.
“I think everybody knew that I just was such a huge fan of Ric’s, so just to give me the opportunity to be in there with him, I think, is probably somebody, a booker, or a producer, or somebody, an agent, that knew that and said, ‘Shawn would get a kick out of that opportunity, so let him do it,'” Michaels recalled. “Yeah, we had six minutes. There was very little time. You just do the best you can.” Michaels recalled his mindset at the time, “heck, I don’t know the future, so for me, this is a huge opportunity. You’re in there with the guy that you always dreamed about being in there with. It’s a huge opportunity and then, gosh, it was the fastest six minutes you ever have.”
Fast-forwarding to Flair’s retirement match against Michaels at WrestleMania 24, The Nature Boy took issue with repeatedly being called “Old Yeller” during the build-up to the match. Michaels explained the Old Yeller references, saying it wasn’t about age as much as it was having to kill a beloved character.
“For me, all the Old Yeller stuff was more about love.” Michaels explained, “it was about someone being put into a position that they did not envy and they were going to have to do something and put an end to something that they didn’t want to put an end to. And the reason they didn’t want to put an end to it was because that person, that everything about that meant so much. And again, that’s the conflict that ‘HBK’ and the character were going through in the whole storyline with Ric. And that’s what made it so, for me, enjoyable to do.”
You can listen to Michaels’ entire appearance on The Ric Flair Show here.
