Mike Chioda Thought Shawn Michaels Was ‘F*cking Around’ During Big Match

WWE SummerSlam 2005 featured a dream match-up between "The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels and "The Immortal" Hulk Hogan. With years of iconic wrestling in the ring that night, only one word can be used to describe that match and that's overselling.

The match will forever be remembered as the night Michaels took it upon himself to dramatically oversell every one of Hogan's big moves, reportedly taking a shot at the fact that Hogan refused to lose to him that night. Legendary WWE referee Mike Chioda was the third man in the ring and explained what he saw from his point of view during an AdFreeShows.com Exclusive episode of the "Monday Mailbag."

"I remember during that match thinking holy sh*t, he's selling his ass off for f*cking Hogan," Chioda said. "And then I'm like wait a minute, is he f*cking around here? Knowing Shawn, sometimes he'll do whatever he wants to do. I'm sure he got paid huge for it but I just didn't know which way Vince was going with Shawn at that point.

During the lead-up to the match, Michaels mocked Hogan's appearance on the Larry King Show, dressing up as Hogan and sporting a walker. Hogan would wrestle one more match a year later against Randy Orton, defeating the young star in under 11 minutes in his final WWE match at SummerSlam 2006.

"Shawn had so much left in the tank for wrestling and stuff, I couldn't believe that Hogan went over on Shawn," Chioda said, continuing to talk about the match. "I remember there were always problems about if they're going to have a rematch. Supposedly Hogan didn't even want to job out if there was a second rematch. I don't know if it had anything to do with way back in the day, because they never worked together before."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Monday Mailbag with Mike Chioda with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.