Shawn Michaels Praises Shelton Benjamin, Encouraged Him To Lobby For More From WWE

Shawn Michaels reflects on the legendary match he had with Shelton Benjamin on WWE Raw in May 2005.

Shawn Michaels and Shelton Benjamin created history on the May 2, 2005, episode of WWE Raw. Not only is the match remembered for the hellacious finish, where Shelton Benjamin jumped halfway across the ring to be nailed with Sweet Chin Music, but it’s also remembered for being a great WWE TV match during an era when those weren’t as common as they are today.

Shawn Michaels recently spoke with Chris Van Vliet on Insight. During the interview, he was asked about his match with Benjamin. HBK praised Benjamin as a great athlete and the match as fantastic. He also noted that after the match, he pulled the former WWE Intercontinental Champion aside and encouraged him to push for more opportunities for himself.

“Shelton was a hell of an athlete. He could do anything under the sun. We were obviously doing everything we could to have a good match… It’s a finish that certainly I’ve thought about before, but it’s such a timing issue; it came up, and then, of course, where we had it set, which was almost all the way across the ring, you’ve got to get a long way. You’re with Shelton. So there’s a part of you that knows he can do it, but you’re into the match, there’s so many possibilities for things to go wrong. We have athletes up and down our PC. But after they’ve been in a 15-minute match, you don’t know that by the time they go through 15 minutes or 10 minutes, whether they’re going to be able to do at the end of the match what they say they can do at the beginning.

“If you could have said, ‘I could do that with no sleep and half awake,’ that would have been what he said. Because he could, because Shelton is just an amazing athlete, and he certainly was even that good then, but then it’s all about the timing. It’s me getting the foot up there, and all you can do is go out there and do it and hope that all that timing is right. That was one of those moments where everything comes together.”

Shawn Michaels says that, on top of the magical finish, he’s also proud that the match that built up to it was a great one as well.

“What’s great is that it was also on top of a really fantastic match. you can have a finish like that, and it’s still going to look spectacular, but if the build up to it has not been overly glorious, it’ll still get a reaction, but it doesn’t quite mean as much, and it was such a good match to where people didn’t know who was going to win, and then being able to pull it off out of the blue like that, out of something, and stealing it, if you will. A lucky last shot was just a perfect ending to it.”

Shawn Michaels then spoke about wanting and encouraging Shelton Benjamin to build off of what they created in the match, and his ability to have good matches. HBK says he urged him to “lean on them” to see if more could be done with him. While he doesn’t know if Benjamin ever got the chance to do that, he is forever proud of the match that they had that night in 2005.

“I will always say this about Shelton. He was a guy that was so good with such natural ability. I can remember saying to him after the match,’Hey, just to throw this out there, but this is what I’ve learned over the years, is that you can have a great match, and that’s always awesome when it puts you on the map, and not to imply that you’re not already on the map. You certainly are. But I have found that how you follow that up is sometimes almost as important as, again, what it is you do in that match and how it ends.’ I don’t know if he ever remembered that, but it’s one of those things where I was trying to suggest that, like, ‘Hey, you might want to see if you can lean on them to get them to maybe do something about that, or do something more with that, or have somebody you know get you into another story off of that.’ Certainly, it’s not for me to say, because I don’t know if Shelton did or didn’t have the opportunity to do that, but I was always very proud of that match, and it’s one that everybody remembers. I don’t think I see more finishes repeated more than I do that one.”

Shelton Benjamin is currently in AEW as part of the Hurt Syndicate. He will be in action at AEW All Out 2025. He teams up with MVP and Bobby Lashley against Ricochet and GOA.

Shelton Benjamin still aspires to become a World Champion one day. Learn more about that here.

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