WWE Reportedly Offered Shawn Michaels Huge Payday for Greatest Royal Rumble Match

WWE is pulling out all the stops to make the Greatest Royal Rumble, its first pay-per-view event in Saudi Arabia on Friday, one of the biggest spectacles of the year.

The titular main event match, a 50-man version of the Royal Rumble, has the likes of Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, Mark Henry and The Greak Khali all returning to the company for one night to bring the match as much star power as possible. And according to Sean Waltman (aka X-Pac), the WWE even tried to bring back a showstopper.

Waltman said on the latest episode of his podcast X-Pac 12360 that WWE officials reached out to “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels to come out of retirement. But the former WWE Champion reportedly shut down all talks before an offer was on the table.

“You know they wanted to get Shawn, and he was just like, ‘you know what, don’t even bother sending me an offer and trying to tempt me,’” Waltman said. “Cause there’s huge money offers. And he’s going, ‘I got a thing with one of my kids, and I’m doing that and that’s all there is to it’. So good for him.”

Michaels lost a retirement match to The Undertaker back at WrestleMania XXVI in March 2010 and has been adamant about keeping his retirement permanent ever since.

Along with the 50-man main event, the show features a stacked card with seven championship matches and mutliple special attraction matches, including John Cena vs. Triple H and The Undertaker taking on Rusev in a casket match.

The title matches include two WrestleMania rematches in Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns (this time in a steel cage) and AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, a four-way ladder match for Seth Rollins Intercontinental Championship, Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt taking on The Bar for the vacated Raw Tag Team Championships and newly-crowned United States Champion Jeff Hardy facing former champ Jinder Mahal.

The event takes place at the King Abdullah International Stadium in Jeddah with an unusual start time of 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

The card will noticeably not have any women competing, as it is not allowed under the nation’s laws. Triple H addressed that controversy days before the event.

“I understand that people are questioning it, but you have to understand that every culture is different and just because you don’t agree with a certain aspect of it, it doesn’t mean it’s not a relevant culture,” Triple H said in an interview with The Independent.

“You can’t dictate to a country or a religion about how they handle things but, having said that, WWE is at the forefront of a women’s evolution in the world and what you can’t do is affect change anywhere by staying away from it.”