I'm going to take a break from the Vince Russo memoirs and switch to another wrestling related topic. I'm going to do a review on the Shawn Michaels biography, "Heartbreak and Triumph". In 1986, Shawn burst on to the national scene as a new member of the American Wrestling Association (hereby called the AWA). The AWA was carried by ESPN at that time and Shawn used that chance to the utmost along with his new tag team partner, Marty Jannetty. Together they formed the Midnight Rockers and established themselves as the most influential tag team of their era. I've read his book before after borrowing it from a friend but I found it at a Border's that was going out of business. I enjoyed reading through it again as there were many things I forgot from when I read it the first time.
The Midnight Rockers are a HUGE reason I started to watch and love wrestling the way I do. As the Rockers in the World Wrestling Federation, they were the most entertaining tag team, to me, of all time. The formats of their matches were almost always the same but it always seemed like they broke out some kind of new move in every match you saw. Nobody used the team aspect better than they did. That was what made it so easy for them to come up with new moves all the time. When alot of teams were just wrestling as two singles wrestlers, the Rockers were double teaming, using their athleticism and aerial skills to re-write how tag team wrestling would be done from then on. Future stars like the Hardy Boyz and Chris Jericho have listed the Rockers as major influences and a big reason they had the desire to wrestle.
Reading throuth this book before, I just wanted to skim through certain parts and so I started with, obviously, my favorite part. The part of the book where he meets Marty Jannetty and they form the friendship that would change wrestling history.
They first met in Kansas City working for Central States Wrestling and the promoter actually had them ride together. Later on they tagged together and that's where they realized that they had something together as they worked like a well-oiled machine together. The foundation for the Midnight Rockers was laid that night. It would pick up again as Marty would get a call from the AWA in early 1986 and he instantly told Verne Gagne about this young kid named Shawn Michaels and said they should hire him. They did and as was Marty's plan, the Midnight Rockers were officially born.
Shawn also goes into what happened the first time he and Marty were hired by the WWF and how they were fired two weeks later. He also talks about how they won the WWF tag belts and how they were stripped of them because of the broken top rope that totally messed up the entire match. I loved re-living these memories through the book and hearing about how in this time he was also married. A fact I didn't know growing up and watching them on TV. He also went into detail about some of the road stories like their visits to Graceland.
I really enjoyed revisiting these memories of my youth and reading about my favorite era of wrestling. This era was also my favorite in large part because of the tag team division in the WWF back then. You had the Hart Foundation, Demolition, the Powers of Pain, The Rougeaus, the Brainbusters and the Rockers. A great blend of size, strength, and athleticism that the WWF has never seen since then.
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