Shawn Michaels appeared as a guest on the latest episode of INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet.
While on the popular program, “The Heartbreak Kid” reflected on being in the Ric Flair retirement match at WrestleMania and the infamous “I’m sorry, I love you” spot.
The following are some of the highlights from the interview.
On the Ric Flair retirement match: “I’ve told the story with Ric where, again, it was many days out, that might have been a week out, waking up in the middle of the night and just having this, whatever you want to call it, a flow of consciousness about the end of the match and what it ended up being. I was writing it down, and I came to the end, it’s stuff that sounds like it’s a movie scene, and the little tear drops on the paper. I’m like, Oh my goodness. And I see that, and I think to myself, I don’t know if this is great, or if it’s I’m the biggest wuss in the world who thinks about pro wrestling like that. But the easy answer was, I do, and I did when I was a kid. Then as a grown man, I was at a place in my life to where I was able to sit back and see this picture, and I was able to talk to my buddy in high school who was another person, and he’s just sharing with me like, gosh, can would you have ever imagined when you and I were sitting there at my parents’ house watching Ric Flair on Championship Wrestling that you’d now be having his last match at WrestleMania. Those types of things, and being able to put that in perspective. And so all those thoughts in my head and trying to go to sleep and then all of a sudden, this comes of it. And again, it turns out to be a love story.”
On ‘I’m sorry, I love you’: “It was real that day, because he was weeping the entire time, and almost the entire match, but especially at that part. He knew it was the end, he knew it was the end of the match. I know people, they’ll even say, Oh, you’re gonna wrestle again, not at that moment. Everybody was so invested in that, because for that moment in time, to us, it was real. You go back to all the way to, maybe to your first question, and that is about the teaching and the coaching. Those are some of the things I don’t know. Only the talent of today or the talent of tomorrow, that when they come up, I don’t know how many of those things will be real for them. I don’t know how many of them will have this love affair with what we do, like we did, I say my generation or that I do, but that’s not for me to decide. I still teach or convey or coach, run, whatever word it is that describes what it is I do, I still do it with that aspect in mind, and I still have moments. I was fortunate to have one just the other day with Trick Williams to where we meet on a very human level, and I’m able to step outside of the boss and all that. And it’s just Michael Hickenbottom talking with Matrick Belton about things that are bigger than this business and hoping that that will move him in a way that helps him in his career. So I don’t know. As with everything I do, I do it with every ounce of my being in the best way that I know how, and that match that night with Naich, just like with Taker, were the ones that you know all of you, all of your heart, the fullness of your heart was into it, and it’s just hard for it not to go well.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below.
