The WrestleMania 14 main event between Stone Cold Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels remains a pivotal moment in WWE history, despite one attendee admitting he wasn’t particularly invested. Austin’s victory over Michaels marked his first WWE Championship win, launching him into superstardom, while the match also served as a farewell of sorts for Michaels. Earlier that year, Michaels had suffered a severe back injury in his Royal Rumble bout with The Undertaker, which led to a four-year absence from the ring.
The injury was so critical that the match’s occurrence was almost jeopardized. Bruce Prichard revealed on “Something to Wrestle” that WWE nearly removed Michaels from the event, but multiple doctors cleared him to compete. However, considering the advancements and stricter protocols around wrestler health today, Prichard doubts that Michaels would be medically cleared to perform in 2026 due to the severity of his spinal injury.
“Given today’s medical standards, I’m not sure it would be the same no matter how you look at it,” Prichard explained. “He probably would have been stopped from the moment he was hurt… this is a different world. So, no, I don’t know if we could have had that WrestleMania match.”
While Prichard acknowledged Cody Rhodes managed to fight through a torn pectoral muscle in 2022, he highlighted the difference in injury severity, noting Rhodes’ was muscular and less likely to worsen, unlike Michaels’ spinal damage, which posed far greater risk.
Fan Take: This insight from Prichard underscores how much wrestler health and safety have evolved, making iconic moments like WrestleMania 14 even more remarkable. For fans, it highlights the physical risks wrestlers took to create history and signals a hopeful shift towards better protection and longevity for today’s superstars.
