During the late-80s and into the early-90s, two men redefined what cool was in the WWE tag team division, Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty, better known as The Rockers. Despite their Tiger Beat magazine good looks and charisma, the duo never held WWE Tag Team Championship gold and eventually parted ways in 1992. It was no normal parting of the ways, mind you, as Michaels infamously superkicked Jannetty and threw him through Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake’s Barber Shop window.
These days, Jannetty is largely known for his outlandish social media behavior and upcoming Dark Side of The Ring special, which is said to be “insane.” In a recent interview with Bill Apter for Sportskeeda, Jannetty gave fans an update on how he is holding up physically.
“I’m recovering from a couple of ankle surgeries,” he revealed. “Man, every time I get so close to rehabbing or working out, and we’re feeling like we’re there, and then the infection crap comes in. They’ll have to open it up and scrape the bone, and we did this again recently and had to take the artificial joint out because there’s metal near it, and the sepsis crap attaches to it.
“And we were almost ready to put it back in just recently, about a week ago. We did an MRI and they said the infection’s back, and we got to open it and scrape the bone again. So, another five months of downtime. Outside of that, I’m doing great.”
Jannetty’s WWE career did not end when Michaels tossed him through The Barber’s window that day. The Rocker got a measure of revenge on his former teammate when The Heartbreak Kid put his title on the line against him on Raw, coming up short and handing Jannetty his lone Intercontinental reign. He would also go on to finally win WWE tag team gold but with The 1-2-3 Kid, not Michaels.
Apter pressed Jannetty about whether he feels he’ll be stepping in the ring one more time to create another pro wrestling memory.
“No, I did want to,” he confided. “I wanted to, once it was fixed, and my doctor even said, he goes, ‘I’m going to fix you up where you could walk again without pain. but please don’t jump off top ropes. And if you mess it up again, I may not be able to fix it.’ So, I thought, okay, I’ll tell him okay but then I went through the rehab and the pain, and I’m like, okay. I’ll still do stuff like signings.”
You can find Jannetty’s full interview with Apter courtesy of the embedded YouTube player below.
If you use any quotes from this article please give a h/t to Haus of Wrestling for the transcription