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http://www.fresnobee.com/lifestyle/story/7855352p-8737084c.html

WWE wrestler is back to his high-flying ways 

By Mike Osegueda
The Fresno Bee 
(Published Friday, December 5, 2003, 6:28 AM)

Shawn Michaels woke up one day nearly paralyzed.
He couldn't move. He couldn't get out of bed. So he sure couldn't fly
around a wrestling ring.

He called an ambulance. He was wheeled out of his San Antonio home to
a hospital. He was told he'd never be able to fly around a wrestling
ring again.

That was it. The end. His career was over. He was the most popular
grappler in what was then the World Wrestling Federation.

And two days earlier he was the champion.

Maybe that's why it's so amazing that when World Wrestling
Entertainment (after a 2002 name change) comes Sunday to the Save Mart
Center at Fresno State, Michaels' name is on the list of competitors.

It was Jan. 18, 1998, and Michaels (real name: Michael Higgenbottom)
was wrestling in San Jose in the main event at the Royal Rumble, one
of the WWE's top events of the year. He was facing the Undertaker in a
casket match and hit his back on the edge of the casket during one of
his high-flying moves.

He finished the match. Even won it. Everything seemed fine.

But his back wasn't right. He didn't know it until he woke up back in
San Antonio and couldn't move. He had ruptured a disc in his lower
back.

This wasn't scripted. This was real.

"I don't think anyone every actually believed that it was really over
for me," Michaels says.

"I think that because it's the wrestling business and we do things
from a storyline standpoint, it took them a long time to accept that
this guy is really hurt and he's really done."

Especially considering the source. Michaels was the perfect underdog.
Wasn't too big. Used his body as a weapon. Flew around like a ragdoll,
but he always got up again.

Not this time.

After two years of fighting the injury, trying to rehab, trying to
avoid surgery, Michaels gave in and had fusion surgery to repair his
back.

"With spinal fusion, your career is over," says Rick Lembo, the
director of athletic training at Sierra Pacific Orthopaedic Center in
Fresno, and former trainer for the San Francisco Giants.

Lembo saw it happen with a Giants relief pitcher named John Johnstone.

So Michaels had his surgery. He slipped away into retirement. He spent
time with his wife and new baby boy. He started his own wrestling
school in San Antonio. He started doing sports on the local TV news.
He even had a couple of on-air, nonwrestling roles for the then-WWF.

And the biggest change: He became a Christian.

All the while, wrestling fans kept hoping the high-flyer known as the
Heartbreak Kid would return.

One day he got a call from WWF head honcho Vince McMahon asking if
Michaels wanted to return to TV again. He did. Then one of his
friends, Kevin Nash, got hurt during a match.

Michaels was reading his Bible on the airplane home. The Book of
Joshua struck him. In it was a passage about Moses being gone and
Joshua being asked to lead.

"It was the first time I ever felt like I could get back in the ring
and everything would be OK," Michaels says.

At first he returned in a limited role, wrestling mostly at
pay-per-view events. But he'd be just as daring as he was in the past.

Recently, he told McMahon: "Use me; nothing's going to happen."

"I feel as good now as I've ever felt, says Michaels, now 38. "That's
why I know I'm right where I'm supposed to be. Physically, I feel
unbelievable.

"I've experienced healing that only comes from miracles. I know for
some folks that's a stretch. I was told I'd never wrestle again. Not
with that type of back injury. And I am."


--- Internet Rex 2.29