Ronnie

As this was only weeks before the WCW purchase, I would have thought Vince would have seen dropping Michaels as an obvious cost-cutting measure.

 

I suppose a response depends on your line of thinking. There's the case that people have suggested that Michaels had some weird psychosexual hold over McMahon.

 

I'd look at it rather that Vince didn't have to cut costs, and so was loyal to a man who "broke his back" for the company and, like Undertaker, was a mid-90s main-eventer that didn't flee to WCW, when there was plenty of opportunity to head there.

 

This is the first i've heard of this. What was the whole story?

 

Near enough what Dopper said.

 

Michaels was scheduled to appear on TV during the night of the RAW/Nitro simulcast. Hunter, Taker and others were in Vince's office to watch the show on the screen when Shawn stumbled in, totally pilled up, drooling everywhere. Taker looked at Hunter and said "Can you believe this?" Hunter tried to get Shawn out of there but Vince saw him and told Hunter to find him and tell him he was done. Shawn cut a promo on Hunter for not sticking up for him and didn't speak to him until a year later, when he had become religious and discussed things with Nash, who directed him to talk to Hunter and apologise.

This supposedly happened during the time that Michaels was out for around four years, and I remember people saying it was one of the reasons why he had no need, financially, to bother trying to come back.

I hadn't heard the story of the will, though that seems to have been corroborated by daztraction.

 

During the four-year lay-off he was still receiving a fair bit of cash. (As best I recall, his downside at the time of his injury was reported to be $650k, which translates as $12.5k a week whilst he was injured.)

 

I remember reading somewhere seemingly reputable that when the cost-cutting measures post purchase of WCW came in, whoever was told to look at where to reduce downsides was told by McMahon that he was not to touch Shawn's, which came across as strange to him since he was cutting the lesser salaries of active members of the roster yet was forbidden to cut the bigger salary of someone inactive.

 

This being the case, he was perfectly financially stable during the lay-off and didn't need to come back. He genuinely doesn't need to work, but has delayed time off/retirement over the last couple of years at McMahon's request when other people are injured.

I think they played it out as Shawn had beat Bulldog for the IC Title and Bulldog had only beat Bret for the Title 3 months earlier. Shawn challenged Bret to the match stating if Bulldog could beat him then so could Shawn as he had beaten Bulldog for the IC Title.

 

Or something like that.

Yep, that was exactly what Shawn said leading into the match.

 

Bulldog beat Bret for the title, Shawn beat Bulldog for it after, ergo Shawn would beat Bret.

anal

 

MAT.

 

Now Mab's next use of the search function will be a success.

Except for the fact that the search function doesn't accept words less than four letters long.

Thorpe. Fixed for him

Dylan with just the one L is still a lovely name

That's kinda subjective. When I was growing up, it was an insult, so I wouldn't be naming my sprogs that. As was "ben", come to think of it. And "trevor", a little later on."He's a right dillon.""No, the other one, you ben.""No, don't pick that trevor, or we'll lose."

Haven't you got a demonstration to be at somewhere?

Nah. How's the comedy circuit coping without your blinding wit anyway?

I think it should be applauded if anythingI'm sick of all this PC bollocks

Ha! Let's get the old racist chants going too. Wouldn't want to perpetuate this "PC bollocks" thing that so sickens you. Woooo! Time to encourage some hatred!We'll have to remember to start a chant of "Smells like ga-as *clap clap clapclapclap*" next time we see a Jewish wrestler too. After all, being pig ignorant is a way to combat political correctness, is it not? Go you!