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What's the story?
On a recent episode of his podcast, Steve Austin stated that he was never fully satisfied with his first WWE Championship win, which came against Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 14.
In case you didn't know...
During a casket match with The Undertaker at Royal Rumble 1998, Michaels suffered a serious back injury, compromising him significantly.
The leader of DX missed the following pay-per-view and was unable to have a match that lived up to his standards at WrestleMania 14. He subsequently announced his first retirement and didn't return to the ring until Summerslam 2002.
The heart of the matter
Even though Austin wasn't fully satisfied with his outing at WrestleMania 14, the combination of his meteoric rise and the presence of Mike Tyson was enough to draw a huge buy rate on pay-per-view, laying the foundation of what would become the biggest boom period in WWE history.
While the loss of a big star such as Michaels would've ordinarily been a huge loss to a promotion, his absence, in fact, had the opposite effect on the WWE as Vince McMahon proceeded to emerge as the perfect foil for the Texas Rattlesnake.
The Austin-McMahon rivalry became the most lucrative in professional wrestling history and remains iconic to this very day.
What's next?
Here is a video of Mike Tyson knocking out Shawn Michaels after the main event of WrestleMania 14:
Author's take
The likes of Jim Ross and Paul Heyman, close friends of Austin, have labelled him "an insatiable perfectionist" on several occasions.
Even though the Attitude Era legend will never be happy with his WrestleMania 14 match, there is no question that his first coronation and interaction with Mike Tyson were instrumental in his rise to the summit of professional wrestling.
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