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LOOKING AT SHAWN MICHAELS' CHAMPIONSHIP HISTORY

In my opinion, Shawn Michaels is the greatest performer of the 90s, and I would go so far as to say you could even make a case for him being the best of this decade as well. But for such a successful wrestler with the name recognition and resume of amazing matches that he has, nearly all of his title reigns are surrounded by some sort of controversy, and right now I'm going to take a look at his WWF/WWE title history and talk about the circumstances surrounding each of them.

WWF World Tag Team Title (w/ Marty Jannetty): defeated the Hart Foundation on 10/30/90 in Fort Wayne, Indiana

Shawn's first title victory in the WWF was totally disregarded as if it had never happened, and it set the stage for the controversial title history that was to come. Jim Neidhart's contract was up and it was expected that he was going to leave the WWF, but the Hart Foundation were the WWF World Tag Team Champions, so they would need to drop the title before Neidhart left. The Rockers got the nod, and they defeated the Hart Foundation at a TV taping. In a weird stroke of fate, the top rope broke during the match, so when Neidhart ended up resigning with the WWF before the match aired on TV, it was decided that the Harts would keep the title, and the broken rope would be the explanation given to the local fans who were there live. The reign did end up being recognized by WWE years later, but for a long time this was a phantom title change which was legendary in online folklore.

WWF Intercontinental Title: defeated Davey Boy Smith on 10/27/92 in Terre Haute, Indiana

This came out of nowhere as Davey Boy had defeated Bret Hart in one of the most famous matches of the 90s at Summerslam in Wembley Stadium just a month and a half earlier, and Davey Boy had already been booked in a title defense against the Mountie at Survivor Series. Davey Boy ended up leaving the WWF right around this time due to allegedly failing a drug test, and depending on the timeline you believe, this may or may not have been the reason Michaels got the title. Either way, Davey Boy was gone, the match with the Mountie never happened, and Michaels went into his WWF Title match against Bret Hart at Survivor Series with the Intercontinental Title. He held the title for seven months before unexpectedly dropping it to former partner Marty Jannetty on the 5/17/93 edition of Monday Night Raw when Jannetty came out of the crowd to challenge him after not being seen for months.

WWF Intercontinental Title: defeated Marty Jannetty on 6/6/93 in Albany, New York

As big as Jannetty's title win popped 14 year old me, his reign was not to last long, and he ended up dropping the title back to Michaels less than three weeks later thanks to interference by Shawn's new bodyguard, Diesel. Michaels and Diesel (aka Kevin Nash) would go on to have an infamous relationship over the years, and this was the beginning of it all. Diesel played a pretty major part in Michaels retaining the title through the summer of 93, but Diesel couldn't do anything about what eventually ended Shawn's second IC Title reign when he disappeared from the WWF in September of 1993. Depending on who you hear it from, he either failed a drug test, was suspended for no-shows, or was having contract issues, but the end result was that he would not be working and the IC Title needed to come off of him. He was stripped of the title and, even though he kept physical possession of the belt (requiring a new belt be made) and then went on to feud with Razor Ramon over who was the “real” Intercontinental Champion, a feud which led to the famous ladder match at Wrestlemania 10, Shawn was done as a champion for almost a year.

WWF World Tag Team Title (w/ Diesel): defeated the Headshrinkers on 8/28/94 in Indianapolis, Indiana

Another one that came out of nowhere, and again because of extenuating circumstances. The Headshrinkers were the champions, but Samu had some issues which resulted in his exit from the WWF. Because of this, the decision was made to take the title off the Headshrinkers, and once again Michaels became the the one who benefited from HR issues. He and Diesel got the title the night before Summerslam 94, and held them for about three months, until Survivor Series 94. During those three months, they ran an angle where Michaels would repeatedly and accidentally superkick Diesel during important matches, and Diesel finally had enough at Survivor Series and chased Michaels to the back. Michaels flipped out over Diesel turning on him and literally threw the Tag Team Title belt on the ground before driving away and severing the friendship and partnership.

WWF Intercontinental Title: defeated Jeff Jarrett on 7/23/95 in Nashville, Tennessee

By this point, Michaels really was above the Intercontinental Title, but the WWF gave it to him anyway because they weren't ready to give up on Diesel as WWF World Champion. He defeated Jarrett in a great match at the second In Your House PPV that nobody seriously expected him to lose, then went on to have a second ladder match with Razor Ramon for the title at Summerslam 95. Unfortunately for Michaels, he got himself beaten within an inch of his life by anywhere between four and twelve US Marines at a bar in Syracuse, New York. As it happens, he was scheduled to drop the title to Shane “Dean” Douglas the following weekend on an In Your House PPV, but claimed the injury prevented him from working the match, and he ended up forfeiting the title to Douglas instead. Many people think that Michaels was overstating the severity of the injury to get out of jobbing, but regardless of the truth of that, he lost another title without being beaten in the ring.

WWF World Tag Team Title (w/ Diesel): defeated Yokozuna & Owen Hart on 9/24/95 in Saginaw, Michigan

During that IC Title reign, Michaels and Diesel, who was the WWF World Champion, were booked into a match with WWF World Tag Team Champions Owen Hart & Yokozuna with all three titles on the line. Owen Hart was mysteriously absent when match time came, and Davey Boy Smith was booked as his replacement the night of the match. Owen finally appeared at the end of the match, running in just in time to get powerbombed and pinned by Diesel, giving Michaels and Diesel the WWF World Tag Team Title...or did it? The following night on Monday Night Raw, WWF President Gorilla Monsoon ruled that since Davey Boy was substituting for Owen in the Triple Header match, Owen was not a legal participant in the match, so Diesel effectively pinned a phantom wrestler. What does this mean? Diesel and Michaels did not defeat the champions of record that night, and therefore did not win the WWF World Tag Team Title. Unique way of backing out of a guaranteed title change, wouldn't you say?

WWF World Title: defeated Bret Hart on 3/31/96 in Anaheim, California

This was the big one for Shawn, his first run as the World Champion, but even this one didn't get off to a clean start, even though the controversy was at least kayfabed this time around. He wrestled Bret Hart in a 60 minute Ironman Match, which ended with neither man scoring a fall. President Gorilla Monsoon reared his edict-issuing head once more, declaring that the match must have a winner, and a minute and a half into overtime, Michaels hit the superkick and pinned Bret. Shawn may have won the match, but Bret always maintained (in kayfabe, of course) that he did his job by going the 60 minutes, so he should have retained the title on a draw. Bret disappeared from the WWF after this, leaving Shawn to go on a long, successful title reign where he pulled great matches out of anything that moved before dropping the title to Sycho Sid at Survivor Series 96 after Sid hit him with a TV camera.

WWF World Title: defeated Sycho Sid on 1/19/97 in San Antonio, Texas

Michaels came back two months later and won the title back from Sid at Royal Rumble 97, and would then go on to Wrestlemania to defend the title against the winner of a four way elimination match between Steve Austin, Bret Hart, the Undertaker, and Vader, with the plan being that Bret would win the match and then face Michaels in a rematch from Wrestlemania 12, getting both his win and the title back in the process. Problem is, Michaels developed a knee injury shortly after the Royal Rumble which he claimed would prevent him from working Wrestlemania, and he vacated the title on an episode of Raw a week before the four way. Much like when he vacated the Intercontinental Title before his scheduled match against Dean Douglas, there was some skepticism as to how severe Shawn's knee injury actually was, and there was speculation that he vacated the title to avoid doing the job back to Bret.

WWF World Tag Team Title (w/ Steve Austin): defeated Davey Boy Smith & Owen Hart on 5/26/97 in Evansville, Indiana

To add fuel to the fire of conspiracy theorists, Shawn's crippling knee injury miraculously healed up about two months after Wrestlemania 13 and he ended up teaming with Austin to defeat Davey Boy and Owen for the WWF World Tag Team Title on an episode of Raw. Michaels and Austin became the prototype for the long running “partners who don't like each other, but have a title to defend” gimmick that's been done to death since. Austin and Michaels may sound like a great and maybe even unbeatable team, and it's true, they never were defeated. Instead, the end of their reign came when Shawn and Bret Hart got into a fight backstage and Michaels was sent home for a while. Since he would again be out of the ring for a bit, the title was vacated. WWF European Title: defeated Davey Boy Smith on 9/20/97 in Birmingham, England

In a puzzling move at the time, Shawn Michaels defeated British wrestler Davey Boy Smith for the WWF European Title on Davey Boy's home turf of England, where Davey Boy was far and away the crowd favorite, on the first ever PPV they did in England. To make it even weirder, Davey Boy's wife and family, including his terminally ill sister, were at ringside for the match, which saw Michaels brutally work over Davey Boy's knee and make him pass out in the figure four to win the title. People were wondering why Michaels would be given such a low level title, especially while he was being positioned to challenge Bret Hart for the WWF World Title and the European Title was basically designed specifically for Davey Boy. Things got to making a little more sense when we got to his next title victory, but at any rate he was the European Champion, and that title reign came to an end when he was ordered by WWF Commissioner Sgt Slaughter to defend the title against his close friend Triple H, only to see Michaels lay down and allow Triple H to pin him without any semblance of a competitive match.

WWF World Title: defeated Bret Hart on 11/9/97 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

I'm sure we all know very well by now the controversy surrounding this title victory, so I won't go into too much depth here, but once again Michaels was the beneficiary of somebody else's departure, and since Davey Boy wasn't too far behind, this would also explain his loss of the European Title the month before since they wisely didn't want a title on Davey Boy (or Owen, who also lost the IC Title earlier in the evening) in case they walked out after what they planned to do to Bret. This may be Shawn's most controversial title reign ever, as not only did the victory come with an asterisk, but so did the loss, as Michaels suffered a back injury that forced him into retirement for several years, and he didn't wrestle once in the two months leading up to Wrestlemania 14 when he lost the title to Steve Austin. Even the day of the show, Michaels was running around backstage saying that he would refuse to lose to Austin until Undertaker calmly told him it would be in his best interest to drop the title as planned. Michaels did the job and didn't wrestle in a WWF ring for over four years afterward.

WWE World Title: defeated Triple H on 11/17/02 in New York City, New York

Five years after his last title win, Michaels came back to win the World Title (the new one created two months earlier by Eric Bischoff) in the first ever Elimination Chamber. This was perhaps Shawn's least likely title win, as this was only his second match back after returning from the back injury that had sidelined him for years, and when he got the title back here, it pretty much let us know that Michaels was really back as more than just an occasional attraction. That said, they were still being VERY careful with Shawn, and he wrestled VERY sparingly during this reign before dropping the title back to Triple H a month later at Armageddon 2002.

WWE World Tag Team Title (w/ John Cena): defeated Randy Orton & Edge on 1/29/07 in Dallas, Texas

Michaels and Triple H were feuding with Orton and Edge, but Triple H went down with another quad injury, so instead Cena stepped in and he and Michaels won the title. Problem was, they were set to face each other in the main event of Wrestlemania 23 for the WWE World Title, so it was another “wacky fighting partners” gimmick for about two months. After Cena beat Michaels at Wrestlemania, Michaels and Cena were ordered to defend the title in two consecutive battle royals. They won the first one, but then got to the second one and Michaels said screw it and tossed Cena himself, effectively throwing away the World Tag Team Title yet again.

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So here's out final tally, of the lucky thirteen titles that Michaels has held in the WWF/WWE...

Five were won because of issues resulting in the termination of the former champion's employment.

Two were overturned before he was even able to defend the title.

Five were lost without Michaels jobbing in a wrestling match.

Two were lost because of Michaels blatantly throwing the match.

Giving us a grand total of fourteen controversies, one more than the number of titles he actually held. That is a lot of controversy for one wrestler, and looking back over this list, it appears that his first and last World Title reigns were the only ones that didn't begin or end under any suspect circumstances. Also throw in two Royal Rumble victories, one of which ended when Davey Boy Smith (who seems to have become Shawn's personal bitch over the years) thought he had eliminated Michaels, but only one of Shawn's feet hit the floor, so he climbed back in and tossed Davey Boy as he was celebrating in victory. As much as we might like to see Michaels get another World Title reign, if history is any indicator, it'll most likely come if the current champion has some extenuating circumstances that require the title come off of him ASAP. Michaels has often been referred to as one of the most controversial wrestlers of the last decade and a half, and his championship history would certainly seem to bear that out.

Feedback can be sent to stuwrestling@hotmail.com and you can visit my wrestling blog at stuwrestling.livejournal.com. Thanks as always for reading.