Shawn Michaels On Proposed Match With AJ Styles, Not Wanting To Lose A Return Match, Wrestling Again
On the WWE Network's Table For 3 episode entitled 'Common Bonds', former world champions Shawn Michaels, Kevin Nash, and AJ Styles chewed the fat over a number of topics including the much bandied about dream match between Michaels and Styles.
According to Styles, when he got wind that Michaels was frequenting the WWE Performance Center, 'The Phenomenal One' thought that 'HBK' may be getting the itch to return to the squared circle and he asked WWE brass to look into it.
"I literally said, 'hey, did anyone ask Shawn if he wants to do something at Rumble?' I think they ended up saying, 'no', so I was like, 'can you? All he can say is 'no.'"
Michaels claimed that WWE Chairman Vince McMahon called to see whether he was interested in performing again and 'The Showstopper' credited Styles for keeping his name in the news.
"When [Michaels and Styles] finally got the chance to be talking at The [Royal] Rumble, I said, 'you're a bright young man. That's tremendous. Clearly, Old Man River here, I appreciate it because you're keeping my name out there.' But the thing is, in all the years, there has always been speculation about whatever, me coming back, it has never gotten so high as to where different writers or this person or producer, have asked. But for the first year ever, this is the first time Vince asked."
Ultimately, Michaels decided against making a comeback for a number of reasons, one of which is the fact that 'Mr. WrestleMania' is well past his prime at 51 years young.
"I'd do [Styles] no favors and I've given [Nash] my best. There's absolutely no way at 51 [years old] I'd [be at peak performance level]. Again, just because you can still do it, I still can't do it at the level that I did, I don't think."
Additionally, Michaels suggested that him going over Styles in their hypothetical match would have hurt 'P1', and Michaels would not be interested in returning to the ring just to lose a match.
"Let me ask you this: who wins? From a business standpoint, what do you do? Old sentimentality. Do you do that and kill [Styles]. It doesn't do anything for [Styles] and it hurts [Styles] bad." Michaels continued, "so fine, then you do it to me, and it doesn't do anything [to hurt Styles] and it's spectacular. But it's like, if you're going to come back and do something, why would I do that and lose, whatever, three, four, five in a row or whatever it was? I mean, creatively, that's kind of anticlimactic as well."
Finally, Michaels professed that his professional wrestling career is a cohesive story and tacking on another run, divorced from the rest of that story, would be a disservice.
"It's such a perfect story, so to do a sequel? if it were even creatively in the context of the character arc for me, creatively, it would be something interesting, but, like, it would be this whole thing, and this would sit here independently and it feels like a part deux, but it doesn't have anything to do with the [rest of the overarching story]."
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Source: WWE Network's Table For 3