8 Superstars whose last WrestleMania match was their WWE pay-per-view finale

#2 Shawn Michaels

There's only one place that's appropriate for

Mr.

Wrestlemania to say his goodbyes

Previous Wrestlemania Resume

Wrestlemania 5 - with Mary Jannetty (as The Rockers) lost to Akeem and The Big Bossman (the Twin Towers)

Wrestlemania 6 - with Marty Jannetty (as The Rockers) lost to The Orient Express by countout

Wrestlemania 7 - with Marty Jannetty (as The Rockers) defeated Haku and The Barbarian

Wrestlemania 8 - defeated El Matador Tito Santana

Wrestlemania 9 - lost to Tatanka via countout in an Intercontinental Championship Match

Wrestlemania 10 - lost to Razor Ramon in a Ladder Match for the Intercontinental Championship

Wrestlemania 11 - lost to Diesel in a WWF Championship Match

Wrestlemania 12 - defeated Bret Hart 1-0 in overtime in an Iron Man Match for the WWF Championship

Wrestlemania 14 - lost to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin in a WWF Championship Match

Wrestlemania 19 - defeated Chris Jericho

Wrestlemania 20 - lost alongside Triple H in a Triple Threat Match for the World Heavyweight Championship to Chris Benoit

Wrestlemania 21 - lost to Kurt Angle

Wrestlemania 22 - defeated Vince McMahon in a No Holds Barred Match

Wrestlemania 23 - lost to John Cena in a WWE Championship Match

Wrestlemania 24 - defeated "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair in a Career Threatening Match

Wrestlemania 25 - lost to The Undertaker

HBK technically qualified for this list twice, as a broken back nearly caused his Wrestlemania XIV loss to be his final match.

His Finale

The Heartbreak Kid was riding a career renaissance in the 2000s, having come back from a career-ending back injury suffered in 1998 to win the World Heavyweight Championship in November of 2002, then become a full-time competitor again as 2003 dawned.

Michaels created a new legacy for himself starting with 2003's event, stealing the show alongside Chris Jericho and sowing the seeds for a reputation to steal every Wrestlemania until his retirement.

Michaels clashed with The Undertaker, against whom Michaels had originally broken his back during his first run, in a legendary Wrestlemania 25 match which Michaels just barely lost. Unable to suffer that indignity, Michaels taunted the Undertaker incessantly for a Wrestlemania rematch, which the Deadman accepted under one condition: should Undertaker prevail yet again, Michaels would be forced to retire.

At Wrestlemania 26, the pair squared off again in a No Disqualification Streak vs. Career Match; echoing the emotional end to his Wrestlemania 24 clash, the finish would see a running-on-fumes HBK beg Undertaker to put him out of his misery with another Tombstone Piledriver. The Undertaker would oblige, and put an end to one of the greatest careers in the history of professional wrestling.

An emotional goodbye, one which has remained a goodbye for the past eight years, and will likely stay a goodbye indefinitely.

It Was the End Because

Unlike Flair, retirement to Shawn Michaels meant retirement; the career-threatening stipulation was reportedly added to this match when a backstage employee asked Michaels about his son. When Michaels said his son was nine years old, the employee noted HBK's son was "halfway gone," meaning that he was halfway to 18 years old and leaving home.

Having a strained relationship with his own father, and seeing the way the demands of full-time professional wrestling destroyed many of his colleagues' parent-child relationships, Michaels says he decided then and there to end his career, and wanted to do so against his greatest opponent on the biggest stage.

Save for some guest referee appearances, a cameo at Wrestlemania 32 (where Shawn looked in better physical shape than he ever had in his wrestling career), and a new role in Orlando as a Performance Center trainer, Michaels has kept to his word: retirement meant retirement. His focus has shifted in the intervening years to acting, ministry, and hunting.