Bruce Pritchard opens up about infamous Shawn Michaels bar incident
On a recent episode of his podcast, WWE legend and executive producer Bruce Prichard discussed the infamous Syracuse bar fight involving Shawn Michaels in 1995.
Prichard gave his account of what happened including when he found out about about it. Speaking about the incident, Prichard mentioned that there were different stories but the what really happened is not known because Sean Waltman and Davey Boy Smith (who were with Shawn Michaels) weren't in a state to recall the events of the night:
I got the call later that night at home, so we were made aware of it in the wee hours of the morning. No one really knew what condition Shawn was in at that point other than he had the hell beat out of him and was in a local hospital. Anything more than that, we didn’t really know. We didn’t know how bad his head injuries were or anything else. So, it was Jim Myers I believe – George “The Animal” Steele – who was the agent on record that was there that night that I believe was the one that went to the hospital to try and find to what the hell happened. But there have been so many different stories and so many different versions of what actually took place and the people that were involved in it, I dare say they weren’t in any condition to remember what the hell actually took place. So, your guess is probably as good as mine as to what really happened that night. I think that from all the different versions, somewhere in the middle lies the truth, but all we really know for sure is that at the end of the day, Shawn had the living s*** kicked out of him and had a bad concussion and a lot of injuries coming out of it and f****d up a lot of s***. H/T: 411Mania
A quick look at what went down in Syracuse with Shawn Michaels
Shawn Michaels was pretty wild when he was younger. Along with the added pressure of having to carry the WWE on his shoulders in the mid 90s, he had his own personal demons. He was also known to sometimes rub people the wrong way.
Things came to a head one night in 1995. Michaels was with Sean Waltman and Davey Boy Smith at a club in Syracuse. One thing led to another and the wrestlers got into an altercation with a group of men in the parking lot. Shawn Michaels was barely conscious when the assault started and ended up with a torn eyelid and two black eyes along with other injuries.
In the wake of the Syracuse incident, Shawn Michaels was forced to relinquish the Intercontinental Championship as he recovered.