Shawn Michaels

Michael Shawn Hickenbottom (born July 22, 1965), better known by his ring name Shawn Michaels, is an American retired professional wrestler.

He is signed to WWE, where he is the Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative and oversees the creative aspects of the NXT brand, the promotion's developmental territory.

Regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, he is known by the nicknames "The Heartbreak Kid" (often abbreviated as HBK), "The Showstopper", and "Mr. WrestleMania".

Michael Shawn Hickenbottom was born in Chandler, Arizona, on July 22, 1965.

He has an older sister named Shari and two older brothers named Randy and Scott.

He was raised in a military family and briefly spent some of his early years in the English town of Reading, Berkshire, but grew up primarily in San Antonio, Texas.

As a child, he disliked the name "Michael" and convinced his family and friends to address him by his middle name.

Ever since, he has been referred to as Shawn.

Additionally, Hickenbottom moved around frequently since his father was in the military.

He knew he wanted to become a professional wrestler at the age of 12 and performed a wrestling routine at his high school's talent show, complete with fake blood.

He was a keen athlete while growing up, and his sporting career began at the age of six when he played football.

He was a stand-out linebacker at Randolph High School on Randolph Air Force Base and eventually became captain of the football team.

He attended Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, but dropped out to pursue a career in professional wrestling.

His cousin Matt Bentley is also a wrestler.

Hickenbottom began to train under Mexican professional wrestler Jose Lothario.

During his training, Hickenbottom adopted the ring name, "Shawn Michaels".

After his training with Lothario, he debuted as Shawn Michaels with the National Wrestling Alliance's (NWA) Mid-South Wrestling territory on October 16, 1984, against Art Crews, losing to Crews via swinging neckbreaker.

Michaels's performance in his debut match impressed many veterans, including Terry Taylor.

Michaels made his televised debut on October 20, 1984, teaming with Jim Hornet in a losing effort against the tag team of Hercules Hernandez and "Dr. Death" Steve Williams.

Michaels also wrestled in the American Wrestling Association (AWA), where he founded The Midnight Rockers with Marty Jannetty in 1985.

In January 1985, he debuted for World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW), the NWA territory in Dallas, Texas.

In April 1985, Michaels went to work for another NWA territory in Kansas City called Central States Wrestling.

There, he and tag team partner Marty Jannetty defeated The Batten Twins for the NWA Central States Tag Team Championship, later losing it back to the Battens.

After leaving Kansas City, he returned to Texas to wrestle for Texas All-Star Wrestling (TASW).

During his time with TASW, Michaels replaced Nick Kiniski in the American Breed tag team, teaming with Paul Diamond.

Michaels and Diamond were awarded the TASW Tag Team Championship by Chavo Guerrero Sr.. The team was later renamed American Force.

While in TASW, Michaels and Diamond feuded with Japanese Force.

Michaels made his national-level debut, as Sean Michaels, at the age of 20 in the American Wrestling Association (AWA), in a victory over Buddhakhan on ESPN.

In WWF/WWE, Michaels headlined pay-per-view events between 1989 and 2018, main-eventing the company's flagship annual event, WrestleMania, five times.

He was the co-founder and original leader of the successful stable, D-Generation X.

After winning the AWA World Tag Team Championship twice, the team continued to the WWF as The Rockers and had a high-profile breakup in January 1992.

Within the year, Michaels twice challenged for the WWF Championship and won his first Intercontinental Championship, heralding his arrival as one of the industry's premier singles stars.

Michaels is a four-time world champion, having held the WWF Championship three times and WWE's World Heavyweight Championship once.

Michaels wrestled consistently for WWE, formerly the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, renamed in 2002), from 1988 until his first retirement in 1998.

He performed in non-wrestling roles for the next two years, resuming his wrestling career with WWE in 2002 until ceremoniously retiring in 2010.

Michaels has been a participant in several first installments of a number of WWE's signature gimmick matches--namely the first Hell in a Cell at the Badd Blood: In Your House, the first Ladder match during a taping of WWF Wrestling Challenge (and subsequent first pay-per-view installment at WrestleMania X), both the inaugural (as part of The Rockers tag team) and first televised (at WrestleMania XII) Iron Man matches, and Elimination Chamber at the 2002 Survivor Series.

Michaels won the Pro Wrestling Illustrated "Match of the Year" reader vote a record eleven times, and his match against John Cena on April 23, 2007, was ranked by WWE as the best match ever aired on the company's flagship television program, Raw.

He is also a two-time Royal Rumble winner (and the first man to win the match as the first entrant), the company's first Grand Slam Champion and fourth Triple Crown Champion, as well as a two-time WWE Hall of Fame inductee (2011 as a singles wrestler and 2019 as part of D-Generation X).

In 2016, he began working as a coach at the WWE Performance Center, and from 2018 as a producer on NXT, before becoming the Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative for the NXT brand itself.

He returned for a one-off final match in 2018.