Shawn Michaels spoke with Tim Fiovanti of ESPN, where he went into detail about his transition into a coach at the NXT Performance Center. In the interview, he spent time expressing the joy he gets encouraging the younger generation and how his relationship with his close friend, Triple H, continues to develop under their post-in-ring roles.
Here are excerpts from the interview can be read in full in the link above.
On becoming a coach at the Performance Center:
“For me to have a huge influence or impact on anybody is probably not a healthy thing. It’s 30 years later and I still have no idea why this company still has me employed or is letting me talk or instruct or coach younger talent because it’s obvious that it’s not good for the wrestling business in any way shape or form. They’re all going to be incredibly bad influences — and hopefully, that’ll all be because of me.”
“I always wondered, after wrestling for 30 years, and in a sense never having to have a real job or really have to work a day in my life, what I would do after I was done doing that. Then I get to stumble into this job at the PC, and clearly, I still do not have to grow up, which is phenomenal. You get to coach a bunch of other young men who you are encouraging not to ever have to grow up, and you can’t beat it.”
On how younger talent can be appreciative of his accolades compared to his generation:
“Not all of them, but the majority of them, at least, grew up watching me. I can see myself the way I was with Flair, and Tully Blanchard, and Arn Anderson. In my era, you weren’t allowed to talk about it — you couldn’t sit there and look at those guys and tell them, ‘Holy cow man, I never thought in a million years I’d get to be in the ring with you or talk with you.’ You couldn’t do that. That cat’s out of the bag with all of these guys — they all did interviews before I got the job here, so we already knew about that.”
On the evolving friendship between him and Triple H:
“It’s great. For he and I, other than the fact that he’s in a suit all the time… it’s very much the same relationship we had all those years on the road, that we sort of did in the car. Now we get to do it, in some form, in a much bigger, corporate setting. It’s honestly still the same guys, sitting around and driving up and down the road — that’s what we do. It’s just that now, somebody is actually driving us because he doesn’t actually drive himself anymore.”
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