Shawn Michaels reveals the inspiration for his iconic Heartbreak Kid nickname in WWE.
Shawn Michaels and Triple H recently interviewed each other for Variety at the WWE Headquarters. During the conversation, Michaels reflected on how he got his iconic nickname, the Heartbreak Kid. He revealed that the first nickname suggested to him was “The Idol,” when the creative team worked out the details of his character. However, he wasn’t initially a fan of the gimmick.
“I was always so appreciative of how I got to come about being HBK, the Heart Break Kid. I was an individual that started to go singles, and I can remember at that time there was still a form of creative services and someone had drawn up this biker guy with the glasses and sort of my first original look,” Shawn Michaels began.
“But they wanted to call me The Idol,” he revealed. “First, it was going to be Shawn Michaels, The Idol, but then it was just going to go straight to the idol. And that just really scared me because I didn’t want to ever stop being Shawn Michaels, and I can remember asking like, ‘Geez, I like the look, can I start to at least go with that, but then try to find out whatever this other character is going to be.’
Shawn Michaels says the inspiration for the nickname came from a Chris LeDoux song
Speaking further, Shawn Michaels revealed that despite his early reservations, he liked the character after WWE legend Curt Hennig mentioned Heartbreak Kid on commentary and after the success of a promo segment. He then noted that the inspiration for the nickname came from the 1991 Chris LeDoux song “Shot Full of Love.”
“As time went on, and the music, it just kind of organically came about, and then of course, Hennig mentions the Heartbreak Kid during color commentary one time. Yeah, it was Curt Hennig. Well, it’s in a Chris LeDoux song, ‘I used to be a moonlight bandit, I used to be a heartbreak kid,'” Shawn Michaels said.
“When he first told me about it, I was like, ‘Yeah it’s all right.’ You picture yourself being, I don’t know, tougher, more rugged, and I wasn’t sure. But then I was just doing a promo one time, and all of a sudden, you know, one of those things where you don’t really know what you’re saying and it just comes out. From that point on, it kind of stuck, and as you know, somebody knows me in real life, you know, I don’t have that much coolness in me,” Shawn Michaels said.
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