In the world of the WWE, sometimes WWE Superstars get paid to do nothing.
PAC was a case of this really, as after his dispute with the company, they paid him to sit at home until his contract ran out so no one could capitalize on him yet. It’s not the first time they’ve done that and it won’t be the last. One interesting star that got paid to sit at home without a lot of people knowing was Shawn Michaels.
Jim Ross was the head of WWE’s Talent Relations for a period of time and knew all about that little detail, and recently talked about it on his Grilling JR podcast. Shawn was getting a $750,000 annual paycheck to sit at home simply because of one reason.
Vince McMahon loved him.
“I don’t know if it was pressure from Vince or not. Vince loved him. It’s proven. We paid Shawn $750,000 a year for about four years to do nothing because he was Vince’s guy. Every time we go over budgets and things, where are we at with the Shawn contract? Nothing, leave it alone. Ok.”
Of course, there were ulterior motives to Shawn getting to sit at home and get paid almost a million dollars a year. Shawn had a lot of interest in going to WCW to work with his old friends Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. So Vince took care of Shawn and didn’t think twice about it because as JR said on the podcast, “that’s just Vince.”
“That’s just Vince. Vince didn’t have to do that. Here’s the deal. All Shawn wanted to do was go work and go play with Kevin (Nash) and Scott Hall. So that would have been for WCW nice to get a gift of Shawn Michaels, wouldn’t you think? So he took good care of him.”
It wasn’t like the loyalty wasn’t returned by HBK. Shawn eventually returned to the ring and gave Vince an exceptional second act of his career after returning in 2002. Not only was the loyalty returned by him eventually returning to the WWE, but Shawn also has found another great chapter in his WWE legacy by becoming a driving force at the WWE Performance Center, working with several NXT and NXT: UK stars.
h/t to Wrestling News for the quote
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