Come Over to the Darkside, Shawn: A Heel Turn for HBK?

On Black Monday (you know the date: Jan. 4, 2010), we got what may have been a glimpse of a promising future development. Something that could significantly improve the quality of Monday Night Raw.

Sheamus's credibility as WWE champion improving? MVP resuming his stalled push? Legacy breaking up?

I see those and raise you one better: a Shawn Michaels heel turn.

Anyone who saw Raw this past Monday no doubt caught a glimmer of the possibility:

• his reaction to seeing Bret Hart again (which managed to be both heartfelt and just a touch hateful);
• his annoyance in the backstage DX skit with Hornswoggle (which managed to be both funny and subtly threatening);
• and the far-too-close call in their tag titles match (which I had thought they were going to lose due to a botched Hornswoggle run-in).

All of these things point in the direction of Michaels ditching the slapstick sidekick role and returning to the cocky loudmouth antagonist at which he so wonderfully excels.

There have been tons of rumors about a DX breakup and feud, but, if given the option, I’m sure most people would’ve thought it would HHH doing the turn and not HBK.

If it is HBK that goes over to the darkside, we as fans would be lucky. Many younger fans may not remember, but once upon a time HBK was arguably the best heel in the business.

When I started watching wrestling in the mid-1990s, Michaels was just beginning his rise to the main event. I started tuning in right around the time of the 1995 Royal Rumble, where HBK went coast-to-coast to win the Rumble match and set up his Wrestlemania title match again Diesel (aka Kevin Nash).

Say what you will about this particularly dark time in WWE’s history, but it’s impossible to ignore the fantastically irritating Boy Toy persona Michaels put on during that period (sort of what The Miz wishes he could be).

While Vince McMahon’s company was still mired in over-the-top, cartoonish characters and feuds, Michaels was giving us a character that fans loved to hate simply because he was arrogant, flashy, and better than you.

This kind of character would eventually transition seamlessly into the Attitude Era, a time in which HBK’s smarmy heel prototype became the norm as opposed to the exception. Michaels would expand his edgy character as a member of the original D-Generation X; if not for his unfortunate back injury, it’s entirely possible that Michaels’s DX heel persona would have matched Hollywood Hogan at every turn, perhaps making the Monday Night Wars turn earlier in favor of WWE.

Back to the point at hand: A possible HBK heel turn seems to be in the works, unless what we saw on Raw was a one-time deal. Naturally, given the more PG direction of the current WWE product (as well as the fact that Michaels is now born-again), it’s fair to say that we wouldn’t see the crotch-pointing, pants-dropping HBK of old.

However, if his 2005 spot-duty heel turn and feud with Hogan was any indication, Shawn is still very much capable of bringing it as a bad guy. Plus, HHH-HBK has always proven to be a money feud, and Shawn’s presence would solve some of the issues of Raw’s thin cadre of main event-level heels.

So, while a Shawn Michaels heel turn may not be in the works, the fact that it may be coming might be far more effective at livening up Raw than the egregiously asinine guest host concept (paging Dennis Miller...to a locked room, please) or bringing back washed-up stars from yesteryear (hi, Dixie Carter!).

Plus, it would do away with Hornswoggle.

Fingers crossed.