Wrestler takes baseball, Bonds to mat
Shawn Michaels has plenty of jabs for opponents--and baseball.
WWE wrestler Shawn Michaels says there's an honesty to his sport.
Date published: 1/29/2006
By MICHAEL ZITZ
World Wrestling Entertainment star Shawn Michaels body-slammed Major League Baseball and Barry Bonds this week, saying pro wrestling is more real than baseball.
Bonds has pulled out of the World Baseball Tournament, saying he won't play for the USA team because he doesn't want to risk injury.
But some are speculating the real reason might be the stringent Olympic-style steroids testing involved.
Asked if WWE stars, most of whom are pumped up like Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, take steroids, Michaels declined to give a general answer.
"I can't speak for anybody but myself," Michaels said Wednesday in a phone interview. "I can pee in any cup any time, anywhere."
He said he thinks baseball stars like Bonds are given more latitude than pro wrestling stars.
"We do everything we can to make it legit, but people are on the WWE like white on rice," Michaels said.
He said wrestling, despite its scripted morality play dramatics, is honest with its fans.
Baseball, Michaels said, is not.
"If Barry Bonds can't hit [73] home runs without being on the gas, he should be a man and tell people that.
"The American public is very forgiving of people confessing they made mistakes," Michaels said. "Baseball isn't doing that."
The image of pro wrestling is over the top, but Michaels said that, in his case, what you see is what you get.
"My persona is who I am--a born-again Christian," he said. "Everything I do is real."
Michaels, who is scheduled to appear tonight on a WWE pay-per-view event, has just published a book, "heartbreak & triumph--The Shawn Michaels Story," with co-author Aaron Feigenbaum.
"A lot of guys younger than me in the wrestling business have written books," he said somewhat defensively. "I wanted to wait till I had something to talk about. and I think it's a good story. I'm happy with the finished product."
Sometimes known as "The Heartbreak Kid" and "The Showstopper" in the WWE, Michaels writes about the decision he made to leave college to pursue a career in pro wrestling.
"Thank goodness ignorance is bliss. I was 19 years old. I just knew I wanted to do this. I didn't have the ability to think about what a huge risk it was if it didn't work out. I had no conception of what real life is about. If I had, I might have been a little less ready to do it. I didn't think any farther than my first wrestling match.
"At that time in this industry, there was no real future," Michaels said. "Any other sport has agents and a players union. In the wrestling business at that time, there was nothing. It was a shark tank."
He said he's grateful his parents didn't try to dampen his spirits.
His father, an Air Force colonel, was dubious but kept quiet.
Michaels' father told him recently, "The idea of you coming to me years later saying, 'You never gave me the chance'--I didn't want that on me. I just wanted to shut you up.'
Michaels said he still has to occasionally remind himself he doesn't have anything else to fall back on.
"I have my relationship with this company--that's all."
But, he said, he has learned a lot about production, marketing and even dramatic directing in the WWE.
Wrestling is different from sports like baseball, he said, in that athletes can greatly prolong careers if they've become personalities.
"Those guys have become a part of your life," he said.
He cited 50-something Hulk Hogan as an example.
"Getting to see 90 percent of him is better than not seeing him at all. That's something we have that no other sport has."
Reply With Quote
