The opening segment to this week’s Monday Night Raw made me a little sad. Not because it didn’t have any, you know, wrestling in it – that’s pretty much par for the course, and if you’re not going to start your wrestling show with, you know, wrestling, a promo from Shawn Michaels is actually a pretty good consolation prize. No, I was bummed out because for the second time in about a month’s time, I’ve been reminded of how much I miss having the Heartbreak Kid around.
I’ll admit I got pretty damn tired of that guy his last few years in WWE, but that was largely because of the incessant DX reunions. Fact is, not only is he a tremendous worker, but he’s also great on the microphone. He’s not a world-class talker like the Rock or “Stone Cold,” and he’s not even as good as Triple H, I wouldn’t say, but when he’s invested in a storyline, he pulls you in and is more relatable and identifiable than most anyone else I can think of. Like an old, evangelical redneck Loki, HBK showed up to stir the pot with the whole Triple H/Undertaker thing, and is singlehandedly making me care about the angle. My only problem with it now is that I wish Triple H would just become a full-on heel already. How much more powerful would that segment have been if it ended with a big old Pedigree to Michaels?
Also, it doesn’t really bother me ALL that much – you have to let a certain amount of logic fly out the window when you’re watching wrestling – but who exactly authorized HBK as the special referee in Taker vs. Triple H the Threquel, and how did they keep the Chief Operating Barbarian King from finding out about it?
