Shawn Michaels recently spoke to Brian Fritz of Between The Ropes about his WWE retirement and plans at one point that would have seen “The Showstoppa” on a retirement tour.
“I was thinking about it even prior to the (WrestleMania) 25 match, and I can remember driving back from Houston and looking over at my wife she goes, ‘Oh boy, maybe that should be the last one, that was pretty good’
“Not even knowing where we were going the next year, but I don’t know. On one hand, you’re chomping on the bit to get there, and then you get there and it was pretty surreal. It’s one thing to say you want to do it and another thing for it to really sink in.”
On the subject of a retirement tour, HBK stated, “We had a couple little backup plans. ‘If you want to come back maybe and do a little retirement tour and we could do it this way.’ I remember after that match, me and Taker and Michael Hayes were just sitting in a room by ourselves just sitting and taking it all in and Michael Hayes spoke up and said, ‘If that’s the last one, I’d understand.’
“I looked up at him and said, ‘That’s it.’ It’s one of those things where I knew. They sort of left it open. It’s one of those things that I was allowed to call on the fly. If I felt like that was it, that was okay, but if I wanted to do something, maybe we did a little retirement tour where I could go around to say goodbye to everybody, we could find a way to get that done too. But after that one, I just knew that was it. It really gets real then.”
Check out the complete interview online at BetweenTheRopes.com.
