There were a high volume of major stars from the 1990s who bounced between WWE and WCW, making huge sums of money and redefining the wrestling business. The defection of talent like Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, and Scott Hall was key to WCW becoming competitive and momentarily overtaking WWE as the top wrestling promotion in the US. Meanwhile, stars like Steve Austin, The Big Show, and Chris Jericho heading to WWE was key to WWE bouncing back. Shawn Michaels was a steady WWE-only talent, though, out of a combination of his own choices and Eric Bischoff purportedly not wanting him in the WCW locker room. Despite never signing with Turner, HBK still had his life impacted in remarkable ways by watching the WCW product, including making two of his closest friends and falling for his wife.
Shawn Michaels Recruited His New Bodyguard, Diesel, From WCW
In WWE’s The Shawn Michaels Story: Heartbreak & Triumph documentary, HBK discusses how early in his singles career, he was watching WCW and spotted Kevin Nash. The big man cycled through gimmicks including Oz and Vinnie Vegas in the early 1990s and Michaels identified a diamond in the rough—that this guy was not only an enormous physical presence, but had untapped charisma.
As Nash tells the story, Michaels got in touch to recruit him to sign WWE. In a calculating move that foretold Nash's shrewd sense for manipulating the wrestling business, Big Daddy Cool told the powers that be at WCW that wrestling wasn’t working out for him, so they let him out of his contract. Shortly thereafter, he debuted in WWE as The Showstopper’s bodyguard, Diesel.
The Kliq Identified Triple H, As Terra Ryzing, As Their Favorite WCW Talent
Not altogether different from Kevin Nash, the man who would become Triple H got his first break in wrestling appearing for WCW. He wrestled first under the name his trainer, Killer Kowalski, had assigned him—Terra Ryzing--before being rebranded as an arrogant Frenchman, Jean-Paul Levesque.
In WWE’s Thy Kingdom Come documentary about Triple H’s life and career, The Game recalled asking that WCW only sign him for one year on the premise that after a year, they’d either offer him a much better deal that he’d earned, or they could part ways. When that year was up, Helmsley took a deal for more dates and less money with WWE in the interest of having more time and better talent with which to build his skillset.
Related: Triple H & Shawn Michaels' Friendship Told In Photos, Through The Years
Little did Triple H know that Shawn Michaels and The Kliq were waiting on him, having identified him as their favorite WCW talent when they were watching the competition. As Triple H recalled it in his documentary, they took him under their wing. Kevin Nash recounted, they not only liked him as a wrestler, but recognized, given he didn’t drink or do drugs, that he had potential as a designated driver.
Triple H would not only become one of HBK’s closest friends, but an important professional connection. Working with Helmsley set up Michaels for his return to the ring 2002. Moreover, The Showstopper’s current work with NXT is largely rooted in Triple H having had the reins of the developmental brand and the WWE Performance Center.
Shawn Michaels First Developed Feelings For His Wife When She Was A WCW Nitro Girl
Shawn Michaels is married to a woman named Rebecca, but the first time he saw her was under the name of Whisper. As he reflects on in the Heartbreak & Triumph documentary, he spotted her doing a chair dance on WCW television, as a Nitro Girl. It was only after he let this initial attraction be known that mutual connections put the two in touch with each other and they wound up married in 1999.
HBK certainly isn’t the first man to have a crush on a Nitro Girl, but there are few men who were ever in a position to do something meaningful about it. Michaels wasn’t actively wrestling at the time, but was nonetheless still under WWE contract when he made the connection with the soman who’d wind up being his long-time spouse and the mother of his children.
Shawn Michaels is a self-professed lifelong wrestling fan who looked up to Ric Flair and others in his youth. Given his love of the business and long standing as a “student of the game” it’s little surprise that he’d watch WCW even when it was the competition and even when his homebase of WWE had the better product by most metrics. Still, it was for the long-term benefit of HBK’s career that he first spotted Triple H there, in addition to The Cerebral Asssassin and Kevin Nash alike becoming two of his closest friends. Add on Michaels falling for his eventual wife when she was a Nitro Girl and WCW may have had a greater impact on his life and career than anyone else who never worked for the company.
