Shawn Michaels Says Issues With The Rock Were ‘Blown Out Of Proportion’ And ‘Not Even Accurate’

When The Rock made his WWE debut in 1996, Shawn Michaels was at the top of the promotion as the world champion.

As The Rock rose to prominence, Michaels was on his way out due to a back injury that caused him to briefly retire. The two never faced each other in the ring.

Speaking to Carmelo Anthony and Kazeem Famuyide on 7PM in Brooklyn, Michaels was asked why they never worked together.

“He didn’t like me [laughs]. I will say this…there is a big kerfluffle in the wrestling business about me and Hunter doing stuff to him and being mean. All of it way blown out of proportion, none of it even accurate. Things that, when he was younger, were said a lot. Later on, and to this day, we get along, and we talk about stuff. That’s one I think everybody would have liked to have seen. By the time I came back, he was well off into his Hollywood career,” he said.

Michaels admitted that he would even take The Rock over himself in the hypothetical one-on-one.

Asked about the issues between the two, Michaels replied, “When he first came in, he was just Rocky Maivia’s [Rocky Johnson’s] son. When he first went out there, he was getting the ‘Rocky Sucks’ chants. There is always ribbing and stuff like that in the locker room. When he came back, he might’ve had an injury, and he took time off. That’s when he really thought about how his career was going and wanted to change things up. He came back just as The Rock and no longer being the son of Rocky Maivia. I think that’s a lot of what it was, at that time. He was one of the first legacies and people at that time were rebelling against that kind of stuff. I think he recognized that and felt like he had to come back with something a little harder and more aggressive. He changed that up.”

Michaels served as a special guest referee for matches involving The Rock, and they were aligned when Rock was the corporate champion, and Michaels was the commissioner.

Michaels worked with the Rock’s daughter Ava while she was in NXT before she left the company earlier this year.

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