8 injuries that changed the face of WWE

#1 Shawn Michaels

HBK was put on the shelf for four years due to this awful injury

At the 1998 Royal Rumble, Shawn Michaels suffered a debilitating back injury that would keep him retired from in-ring competition until 2002. At the time, Michaels was the WWE World Champion, and was arguably the company’s top heel in the aftermath of the Montreal Screwjob.

While HBK did wrestle against Austin at WrestleMania XIV as he was supposed to, he left the company immediately afterwards, and didn’t actually wrestle in any major capacity for four years. This changed the landscape of WWE for that time period as HBK wasn’t able to enter into feuds with wrestlers properly because he wasn’t an active performer at the time.

While this did allow for other wrestlers to rise up and fill the role of WWE’s top heel that Shawn once held, WWE was still forced to completely change many of their plans and book entirely different people because Michaels was too hurt to wrestle for an incredibly long time.