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MITCHELL'S TAKE
MITCHELL'S MEMO: A Prayer For The Business - Michaels delivers profound message during Jericho promo Jul 9, 2008 - 12:59:32 PM
We've heard for years that anything can happen in World Wrestling Entertainment. Monday night, during one of the most effective face-to-face segments on any pro wrestling show in years, Shawn Michaels pulled off a miracle.
First, though, let's detail what made the verbal showdown on Raw between Michaels and Chris Jericho so entertaining and, simultaneously, such good business. Their showdown was a model for what wrestling promos can and should do for both main event heels and babyfaces.
Jericho has done the best promo and acting work of his career in this feud, as his character slowly reveals the roots of his bitterness at never quite being able to reach the levels of success and popularity that all-time WWE great Shawn Michaels has. He's doing something very tricky in almost but not quite making his case that Michaels's character isn't a talented underdog with a ton of heart, but a manipulative egotistical liar who low-class fans excuse because they have no moral base of their own.
Jericho knows what makes a real heel - that frustrating, jealous knowledge that, in the end, you're just not as good as the opponent you have to beat to get everything you want. That means you'll pull any trick, stab every back, and tell any lie - all the while knowing that, no matter what you do, you're going to lose anyway.
Michaels, who has already been injured by the desperate Jericho, talked Monday night like a man who has come to grips with who is and what he has done in his life. He put over Jericho, his hated opponent, as a man who had won every championship in the sport and drawn sell-outs all over the world. (Whoever thought Michaels and his Clique would ever give Jericho credit for that?)
In doing so, Michaels put Jericho over as a real superstar (and in comparison looked like the legend he became WrestleMania night.)
In today's wrestling world, where the same old superstars are booked by increasingly volatile writers who get farther and farther away from their purpose every month, what Jericho is doing would be enough of an accomplishment. It pales, though, in comparison, to what else Michaels did on a Raw.
You may see anything on Raw - or any other programming Vince McMahon runs - as long as it's not subtle. Somehow, miraculously, Shawn Michaels found a way to send a subtle Christian message to millions of Raw fans, one that rang true to Michaels's claims that his faith has changed his life.
Whether it's the Hulkster using the cross as part of his Hogan Trinity, along with training and eating vitamins, to get himself over in the '80s, wrestling con-men admiring TV evangelists like Robert Tilton for their ability to fleece the flock, the likes of Jake Roberts passing the plate to pay for his crack cocaine, or the egotistical TV writer Vince Russo finding Jesus and immediately making himself the head of his own church/promotion - pro wrestling and Christianity can be a nauseating misunderstanding/mix.
Michaels didn't help matters after his own conversion by doing things like almost but not quite telling everyone to "suck it" or smirkily taking his leave while his Degeneration X buddy Triple H got a televised blowjob under a table. Hammily putting his hands together under the fireworks before he headed to the ring to beat someone up hardly balanced things out, either.
Monday night, though, Shawn Michaels did something I would have said was impossible: He let Chris Jericho, and everyone watching, know that Unified Title and all those other belts and all those sell-outs will never give Jericho the peace he doesn't even know he's seeking.
Whatever else Michaels does, or has done, in his career he knows that at least once, in the midst of the vulgarian blood circus where he makes his living, with that one observation he found a way to live the Christian word he has talked all these years.
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