Je’Von Evans is the Young OG. How young? He doesn’t know what a Sega Genesis is and only became familiar with Shawn Michaels’ legacy by playing WWE video games.
Je’Von Evans is one of the top examples of the young talent in WWE NXT today. Shawn Michaels runs that brand. However, before he was running WWE NXT, Shawn Michaels was Mr. WrestleMania and one of the best performers of all time. Still, by the time HBK retired for good in 2010, Evans was about a month away from his 6th birthday.
During a recent appearance on the No Contest Wrestling Podcast, Evans explained that the first time he saw Shawn Michaels was when he picked up his first wrestling game, SmackDown vs. Raw 2009, which happened to have DX on the cover. Still, he didn’t become truly familiar with the legacy of HBK until the video games started letting young fans relive classic moments.
“The more I started playing games, the more I really started understanding who Shawn was. I mean, it wasn’t just DX, you know? He’s the Heartbreak Kid, Mr. WrestleMania, all that. Then I really discovered who he was in WWE 13 in Road to WrestleMania. Of course, he’s Mr. WrestleMania, so he had those matches, and I was like, ‘Oh!'”
WWE 13 featured the Attitude Era game mode, which allows fans to play as Shawn Michaels during the rise of D-Generation X in 1997. That mode replaced the Road to WrestleMania mode from the previous years. WWE 2K14 followed one year later and included the 30 Years of WrestleMania mode, where players can experience some of the best matches involving Shawn Michaels on the grand stage of WrestleMania.
O’Shea Jackson Jr. then explained that he was introduced to professional wrestling through WWF Raw on the Sega Genesis. Je’Von Evans had to ask what that console was because he was born three years after Sega stopped making home consoles.
Wrestling fans can check out more of what Evans had to say about Shawn Michaels at this link.
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