WWE Hall Of Famer Shawn Michaels was the guest on this week’s edition of Jim Ross’ “Ross Report” podcast, and during the show, he spoke in-depth about nearly jumping-ship from WWE to WCW during the infamous “Monday Night Wars.”
“I thought about it,” said Michaels. “But there’s two things — I went to Vince [McMahon] and said, ‘Let me go. I’m miserable here. I wanna go down and be with my buddies.'”
Michaels continued, “[Vince] said no. I’m under contract under WWE, so I couldn’t. But, there was a time I wanted to go.”
HBK also said that McMahon warned him to look at the “bigger picture,” pointing out the way that other wrestlers were being used in WCW. He cited Michaels’ in-ring work as something he wouldn’t be able to employ as liberally in WCW as he did in WWE.
Michaels continued to explain the words of wisdom McMahon gave him when he was pushing to be let out of his WWE deal so that he could make the jump to WCW.
“He said, ‘You’re a creative guy. Once you get past being angry and it comes to working, you want to do things your way. They won’t let you do that down there, and that’s going to kill you. They’ll [kill] the one thing about this business you enjoy.'”
“I think he had some validity there,” Michaels stated, adding that as time went on, he agreed with the advice McMahon gave him.
You can listen to the complete Shawn Michaels interview on the latest Ross Report podcast at PodcastOne.com.
