World Wrestling Entertainment
|
The two went on to face each other in brutal singles matches, street fights, a ladder match, a Steel Cage Match, a Last Man Standing match, twice in an Elimination Chamber (in which Michaels won the World Heavyweight Championship from Triple H at Survivor Series 2002), and in a Hell in a Cell match. Michaels lost the World Championship a month later at Armageddon in December 2002, and proceeded to feud with Chris Jericho, whom he defeated at Wrestlemania XIX. Michaels went on to be in the main event of WrestleMania XX where he came up short in a match against Triple H and Chris Benoit. Later on in 2004 Michaels faced Triple H in Hell in a Cell, but eventually lost after several Pedigrees. He also lost a World Heavyweight Championship match against his long-time rival Triple H at Taboo Tuesday 2004 when the fans voted for him ahead of Edge and Chris Benoit to face Triple H one more time, a match Michaels wrestled with a torn meniscus in his left leg. Following this, HBK was out of action for a few months, returning in January 2005, when he was special referee in the Elimination Chamber match at the 2005 New Year's Revolution PPV. At the 2005 Royal Rumble later that month Michaels started a rivalry with Kurt Angle. Marty Jannetty & Sherry Martel where brought in to build up to the match at WrestleMania 21. With a big build up much was expected of the two and they delivered, in a match that Bobby Heenan descibed as the best he had ever seen Michaels lost tapping out to Angle's ankle lock. Michaels evened the score at the Vengeance PPV that year, however, beating Angle. On the July 4, 2005 edition of RAW, Michaels and Hulk Hogan fought Kurt Angle and WWE Intercontinental Champion Carlito in a tag team match. During the post-match pose, Michaels hit Hogan with his patented Sweet Chin Music, knocking Hogan down to the ground. Michaels just looked down at Hogan and walked away, turning heel for the first time since 2002. The following week on RAW, HBK appeared on the Piper's Pit where he superkicked the host Roddy Piper and then challenged Hulk Hogan to a match at SummerSlam 2005. Hulk Hogan accepted his challenge next week on RAW, setting up the match billed as "The Legend vs. The Icon". Prior to the 2005 SummerSlam, neither Hogan nor Michaels had lost in a one-on-one match at SummerSlam. Their main event match went back and forth, with two referees getting knocked during the match and Michaels using a steel chair in an attempt to gain an advantage. Even after hitting his Sweet Chin Music, Hogan still kicked out and took it to Michaels, finally hitting him with his legdrop and scoring the victory. Michaels extended his hand to him, saying "I needed to know, and I found out" and he and Hogan shook hands. Michaels left the ring to allow Hogan to celebrate with the crowd and Michaels turned face once more. Michaels began a feud with "The Masterpiece" Chris Masters on RAW the night following SummerSlam. Michaels would later take part in the Masterlock Challenge. While unsuccessful in breaking the Master Lock, Michaels did set a new record as he became the longest-lasting competitor to take the Master Lock Challenge so far. The pair faced each other in a match at Unforgiven 2005 where Michaels would win via pinfall. At WWE Homecoming, HBK wrestled Kurt Angle to a 2-2 draw in a 30-minute Iron Man match. This lead to vast dispute over the rightful #1 contender for the WWE title. After a victory over Carlito on the October 17th edition of RAW, Michaels' became a possible choice for a place in the main event of Taboo Tuesday 2005. Michaels would win the fans choice for the second year running and become a part of the Triple Threat Match with John Cena and Kurt Angle. Cena would win and retain his belt. On the RAW following Taboo Tuesday, Eric Bischoff announced that Michaels would be team captain for the 5-on-5 RAW vs SmackDown! elimination match at Survivor Series 2005. In the match, Shawn found himself as the sole remaining member of Team RAW, facing three wrestlers from Team SmackDown. After eliminating JBL and Rey Mysterio, Michaels was finally pinned by Randy Orton, giving Team SmackDown! the win. This was almost a replay of Survivor Series 2003, where HBK had to single-handedly face Christian, Chris Jericho and Orton and after eliminating the first two, he got pinned by Orton. On the December 5, 2005 edition of RAW, Shawn Michaels had an altercation with an impetuous Shelton Benjamin. The angle was continued the following week as the two were part of seperate qualifying matches for the Elimination Chamber main event at New Year's Revolution 2006. Benjamin tried to display his new attitude in his match with Carlito by attempting to spit an apple in his face (Carlito's trademark) but it backfired when Carlito rolled up Benjamin for a three-count. Later on, HBK competed against The Big Show for his shot in the chamber. HBK won the match on account of interference by Triple H, and thereby disabling a possible Benjamin-HBK match at New Year's Revolution. Shawn Michaels appeared at the Tribute to the Troops where defeated Triple H with the Superkick in a Boot Camp Match. On the following RAW, Michaels took part in a Beat the Clock match against Gene Snitsky to determine who was last to enter in the Elimination Chamber. He won with a time of 5:56 minutes but didn't beat Kane's time. After the end of the night he was told by Vince McMahon, that he can screw him just like he screwed Bret Hart, anytime he wanted. As of January 9th's edition of Raw, Vince McMahon scheduled Micheals to have his fourth match against Kurt Angle for the following week. Angle won Smackdown!'s World Heavyweight Championship in an impromptu Battle Royal on January 10th in Philadelphia, PA. Despite Kurt Angle winning the World Heavyweight Title at the January 10 Smackdown taping, the WWE has stated on their website that the match will still take place. Warning: fopen(http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=%22World+Wrestling+Entertainment%22) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 999 Unable to process request at this time -- error 999 in /home/shawnmic/public_html/World_Wrestling_Entertainment.php on line 255 could not open XML input | |