Shawn Michaels believes the WWE Performance Center would have been a useful resource for himself when he was younger.
Speaking on the post-TakeOver media call, Triple was asked whether the structure provided by the PC would have been beneficial to someone like Michaels when he was twenty years old. The Heartbreak Kid jumped in to answer first, saying the following:
"Yeah, you know what, it's funny, I've been asked that before and I do. I think me at that age, the structure would have helped me a great deal. Given my past and everything else, we talk very real with everybody and that is something that I think would have helped... So I do, I appreciate the question because it's something I've thought about before and I do, I really think I could have used this kind of structure, this kind of team, this kind of support. People not telling you this is cool when it really isn't. Not being afraid to be honest with you, to be open with you, and letting you know when you were screwing up. So I do, I really think that something like this -- and that's what I love about this place, again, is that everybody is really hands-on here. It gets very personal here. We're allowed to have relationships with these young men and women where you can really get to know them and that helps. It helps a great deal. It's certainly for somebody like me, who I've always said when I did this job it wasn't just business to me, it was very personal to me because it's that two loves of my life; wrestling and the woman I'm still married to. Again, it's one of those things I think that would have really helped to have people be open and honest with you as we do here."
Triple H continued on, talking about the influence Vince McMahon has had on countless talents and the way WWE's current support system operates. This is what he said:
"I would say this knowing Shawn, you hear it a lot and Vince takes a lot of unnecessary criticisms for a lot of things, but you hear a lot especially from the older talent that were in that period of time that Shawn was talking about where you'll hear Vince talked to almost like a father figure, to a lot of people that didn't have that in their life. The reason is because Vince would -- there were two things that he did; One: He told you, 'I believe in you.' Two: He told you stuff straight. He didn't mince words. Sometimes you might have hated him for it in the moment. He was probably the closest thing most guys had to a dad. He told them the truth whether they wanted to hear it or not. He set them straight when he needed to and he was a strong hand with them, but he believed in them and he let them struggle and fail and succeed and all those things. But he did it in a way that -- you know you hear it all the time, 'he was a father figure to me. I think there's so much of that here. I don't necessarily mean father figures but I mean that support system of people that believe in you but at the same point in time aren't here to tell you, 'You're great, don't worry about it, just do whatever you want to do.' They're here to tell you the truth. They're here to make you better. They're here to make you succeed, whether you want to hear it or not, and some people will struggle with that. Most people will thrive with it and grow from it. I do agree, I think this would have been really good for somebody like Shawn because it would have been a structured system around him as opposed to one voice."
Shawn Michaels currently works as a producer for NXT. You can check out the full media call at this link.
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