Shawn Michaels Keeps Up With Online Trends On Day-To-Day Basis, NXT Is A ‘Give-And-Take’ Process

Shawn Michaels says it’s all about balance.

During the NXT Heatwave Media Call , WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard asked Shawn Michaels about how much online research he does on people coming into NXT, whether it’s a wrestler like Joe Hendry or a celebrity like Sexyy Red .

“I won’t lie to you, I play dumb a lot of the time when it comes to that stuff but I’ve got Twitter. I just don’t spend my entire life on it,” Shawn Michaels said. “The thing is, it’s something that, at the very least, you’re going every Tuesday and you’re looking at what’s trending and how things are going and feedback on the show. Those are things that I regularly keep up with on a day-to-day basis, so I’d be lying if I told you I never pay attention to that stuff because clearly, I do.

“I saw Joe Hendry long before we ever had him on the show, and again, my algorithms are the same as maybe a lot of you. It’s a lot of times it’s based around wrestling, so anything from a wrestling standpoint that’s going to be viral or at least gaining a bunch of interest comes across my timeline as well, and those are things that I pay attention to.”

Shawn Michaels On NXT’s Collaborative Team

Shawn Michaels continued by explaining how it was a balance of looking at viral things but prioritizing those that would stand the test of time. He went on to highlight NXT’s social media team.

“For me, I think it’s a balance of knowing that not everybody, when you’re speaking of trending and stuff like that, as awesome as that is, you might be talking 100,000 people to make something trend, but we’re talking about 600,000-700,000, from a ratings standpoint, and clearly there’s millions more out there watching. So it’s balancing the viral moments with something you feel that’s not a fad and something that’s gonna stand more the test of time. Look, I’ve obviously taken our social media team’s input, we run analytics on that stuff every week.

“I look at those things every week. I guess I have to go back to [saying] I’m not as dumb as I pretend to be sometimes, but also again, no different than having good people around you as well. We have numerous young people on our creative team, so that helps me. When I might call somebody a narc, somebody else says, ‘Nobody says that anymore, Shawn,’ and we change the word. So it’s a give-and-take process. I never try to come to the table thinking I know is everything under the sun, but I think we have a really good balance, we’ve got a pretty collaborative operation going down here in NXT.”

Logging on

Pritchard then joked that the ‘Shawn Michaels and computers’ memes over the years probably gave people a certain impression about his tech skills. Again in the interest of transparency, Michaels admitted he’s still slow to adapt to desktop computers and prefers using his phone.

“Well look — and I’m always honest with you guys. Believe me, if I still have to do it on the keyboard, I’m still pecking. I’m better about it with my phone, though,” he clarified. “But if I’m keyboarding it [pretends to type with his index fingers], I’m better about it on my phone though, but if I’m keyboarding it? I don’t do too many emails [on a keyboard], I mostly do it on my phone.”

The full call with Shawn Michaels can be seen here:

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