Wasn't a big HBK fan in his early run, but I was also in Middle School/High School at the time, and I marked out for Stone Cold. After he came back from retirement I went back and watched a lot of his old matches, as well as his new ones. He's GOAT in my opinion now. There's a lot of great wrestlers, like Steamboat, Flair in his prime, Angle, Eddie Guerrero, can't possibly name them all. HBK was as athletic as any of them, but he had the charisma to be entertaining on the mic too, and he was one of the biggest innovators in every style and match type he participated in. Whether it was a newer gimmick, like the Ladder match, or Hell in a Cell, or the Elimination Chamber, or if it was just adding twists to the established stuff like Royal Rumble and basic tag matches, he put his own stamp on it and set the bar. I honestly haven't watched much pro-wrestling since he retired again. He was the Jordan of his craft, imo. Like Jordan, plenty of great players come and go since he exited the game, but I don't know if there will be another wrestler that will leave his mark like Shawn Michaels did.
This was his first match back 5 years after back surgery that nearly ended his career. He came out looking like he had no ring rust at all, delivering a great 35 minute match that stole the show.
<iframe frameborder="0" width="480" height="270" src="//www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xx8r8e" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx8r8e_summerslam-2002-triple-h-vs-shawn-michaels-full-match_sport" target="_blank">SummerSlam 2002 - Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels...</a> <i>by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/Maxi_AguayoCopeland" target="_blank">Maxi_AguayoCopeland</a></i>
