Shawn Michaels Talks Raw 25, Classic One-Hour Raw Match With John Cena, Brief Stint In The nWo

Ahead of tonight’s celebration of the 25th anniversary of Monday Night Raw, Shawn Michaels spoke to NBC Sports about some of the memorable matches and moments he’s had on Raw throughout his career. Highlights from the interview are as follows.

Potentially returning to the Manhattan Center tonight after wrestling Max Moon at the venue on the first episode of Raw:

“Well I gotta tell you, I hope that’s where I get to go. No one has made any decisions yet as far as I know. As much as I love the Barclays Center, I would rather get to go back to the Manhattan Center.

I don’t know that at the time I was mature enough to appreciate how unbelievably cool and awesome that building was.

It’s sort of like a rock band. They start out in those places and then you want to get to play in stadiums. As phenomenal as it is to be in front of 80 or 90,000 people in a stadium, it’s really hard to beat going back to those intimate places, filling them up, and feeling that electricity, that passion, that excitement in that environment.

For me if I were to get to pick, that’s where I would want to go back to, especially on that night.”

His classic near one-hour match with John Cena on April 23, 2007, from London, England:

“So that turned out at the very end of our European tour that year. We had already been on the road there for over a week.

I found out what we were doing when I got to the building and was like, ‘Oh my goodness!’

When you hear that the match is going an hour, it seems like a long time, but when you’re working with someone like John so much … I’ve had the opportunity to go back and watch that match and it just flows right by. That’s obviously a testament to John and heck I’ll even pat myself on the back a little for that one (laughs).

It’s amazing how trying to do that hour-long match didn’t seem like such a big mountain to climb. It really helps when you have a history with someone. John and I were coming off of the WrestleMania [23] match and because of that, we had a decent amount of story points to work around, so it was easy.

It obviously doesn’t hurt when you’re in a phenomenal environment as well. Let’s face it, the folks in the U.K. are pretty easy to wrestle in front of. They are a very passionate group.

I gotta say that’s one of my favorite matches.”

His return to WWE television in 2002 as a member of the nWo and having no knowledge of what the storyline was supposed to lead to:

“I honestly don’t know where it was supposed to go because I had just gotten back to WWE. The extent of it, that I knew, was that Kevin [Nash] was supposed to work with Hunter at the next Pay-Per-View.

I know that we had turned on Booker and then we turned on [Big] Show, but I honestly don’t know where it was going because I was just finding my footing and didn’t know enough to be asking someone, ‘Where is this going?’

I had no intention of wrestling at that point and then of course, so many things changed after Kevin went down. I need to hunt someone down and find the answer.”

HBK also discussed his role in developing WWE’s future stars. For the full interview, click here.