The Rockers, originally the Midnight Rockers, were an American professional wrestling tag team consisting of Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty who teamed from 1985 to 1992. The team worked for NWA Central States Wrestling, the American Wrestling Association, Continental Wrestling Federation, Continental Wrestling Association and the World Wrestling Federation. In 1992, the team had a violent kayfabe breakup that helped propel Michaels into the singles ranks with "The Heartbreak Kid" gimmick that he used until his retirement in 2010. After the breakup Michaels and Jannetty had an on again, off again feud due to Jannetty leaving the WWF on more than one occasion. In 1996, Jannetty teamed up with Leif Cassidy (later to be known as Al Snow) to form The New Rockers, but the team never achieved much success in the WWF and ended later that same year.
In 2005, The Rockers reunited for one night, but nothing more came of it because Jannetty was released by WWE. In 2006, Jannetty was slated to return and work an extended angle, teaming with Michaels against Mr. McMahon and Shane McMahon, but only made two televised appearances before being released from his contract again. Instead, WWE reformed Michaels' other team, D-Generation X, to fill the storyline.
History
Midnight Rockers (1985–1988)
NWA Central States Wrestling (1985)
Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels first met and struck up a friendship when they both competed for the National Wrestling Alliance's Central States Wrestling territory in Kansas City in 1985. Initially they would only travel together (along with Dave "D.J." Peterson) since Jannetty was either teaming with Tommy Rogers (not to be confused with Tommy Rogers of the Fantastics - and better known as Tommy Lane of the Rock 'n' Roll RPMs) as the Uptown Boys, or he was teaming with Central States booker ”Bulldog” Bob Brown. After the team of Jannetty and Brown broke up Michaels and Jannetty started teaming up, although they were not given a team name. On May 15, 1985 Michaels and Jannetty defeated The Batten Twins (Brad & Bart) to win the NWA Central States Tag Team Championship. Their first title reign was short-lived as the Batten Twins regained the title only a week later on May 22, 1985. Shortly after the team lost the CSW tag team title, Michaels left Kansas City and the NWA, and returned to his home state of Texas to work for Texas All-Star Wrestling. In TASW Shawn began teaming with Paul Diamond as ”American Force” and the team of Jannetty and Michaels seemed like it was never meant to be a permanent thing. The two were paired up by the AWA bookers; Greg Gagne (son of the owner and one of the bookers) suggested the name ”The Country Rockers”, another idea for a name was the "U.S. Express" (as told by Marty during an interview on AWA television that aired in 1986) not keen on the idea the two of them came up with the name The Midnight Rockers inspired by Judas Priest’s ”Living after Midnight”. AWA owner Verne Gagne did not seem to understand the idea, (in fact he is quoted as wondering if fans might confuse the name with rocking chairs) but let the team go ahead and use the name. When Somers and Rose beat Scott Hall and Curt Hennig for the AWA World Tag Team Championship the Midnight Rockers suddenly found themselves chasing the tag team champions of the world. The Midnight Rockers teamed up with Curt Hennig to defeat Somer, Rose and Alexis Smirnoff at ”Battle by the Bay” on June 28, 1986 to prove that they were indeed capable of beating the champions. The Midnight Rockers would repeatedly challenge Somers throughout the rest of 1986 but never quite be able to get the win when the title was on the line. Finally near the end of that year, Jannetty and Michaels defeated the champions in a ”non-title” Steel cage match on December 25, 1986 on the AWA's ”Brawl in St. Paul” show. A month later on January 27, 1987, at the Met Center, in Bloomington, MN, the Midnight Rockers defeated Rose and Somers for the AWA Tag Team title. Four days later the Midnight Rockers wrestled at their first TV taping for the show WWF Wrestling Challenge defeating the team of Jose Estrada, Sr. and Jimmy Jack Funk. This match was their one and only taped appearance for the WWF as they were fired after only a few short weeks with the federation, the Rockers also had some matches house shows against The Shadows. The team was fired because of excessive partying and not enough focusing on their in ring work. Their first feud in Memphis was against a recently formed team known as The Nasty Boys (Jerry Sags and Brian Knobs) whom they faced in several brutal matches all over the CWA territory. Their villainous personas were that of self-obsessed, glory seeking ”superstars”, the same persona Michaels would later adopt as ”The Hearbreak Kid”. They officially made their television debut on the June 18, 1988 edition of WWF Superstars of Wrestling in a squash match. The Rockers made their pay-per-view (PPV) debut at the 1988 Survivor Series as part of the 10 team tag match. They eliminated The Bolsheviks from the match before being eliminated by a double-disqualification in a brawl with the Brain Busters. The brawl between The Rockers and The Brain Busters led to a match taped for WWF Superstars of Wrestling where both teams were disqualified once again, this time before the match could really start. This led to a series of house show matches between the two teams, a series of matches that drew rave reviews from the fans. The feud continued to rage on as they clashed at Saturday Night's Main Event XX in a match that saw both teams counted out for brawling on the floor.
They competed against The Twin Towers, Akeem and Big Boss Man, at WrestleMania V. According to Michaels' autobiography, he was nursing a severe hangover in the hours before this match. In spring 1989, The Rockers started a storyline with The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers that kicked off with an underhanded attack on Michaels during a match. The Rougeaus assaulted Michaels with manager Jimmy Hart’s megaphone and drew blood. This storyline put The Rockers' issues with The Brain Busters on the back burners while The Rockers and the Rougeaus fought. The issue between The Rockers and Rougeaus was the storyline reason for introducing the “Iron Man match” to the WWF. Despite wrestling 5 Iron Man matches against each other none of the matches were ever televised or released on a commercial tape. On August 28, 1989, the Rockers/Rougeau feud made it to PPV as the Rougeaus teamed with Rick Martel to defeat The Rockers and Tito Santana at SummerSlam.
In December 1989, The Rockers feuded with The Powers of Pain until February 1990.
At the Royal Rumble in January 1990, both men competed in the Royal Rumble match. However, neither Michaels nor Janetty was victorious in their attempt, being eliminated by the Ultimate Warrior and Ted DiBiase, respectively.
In April 1990, The Rockers faced new competition in the form of Pat Tanaka and Akio Sato, the newly signed team known as The Orient Express. The two teams kicked off a prolonged feud that started at WrestleMania VI and continued off and on for well over a year. When Sato decided to leave the American wrestling scene in December 1990, the WWF decided to team Tanaka up with his former partner Paul Diamond under a mask. Tanaka and Diamond had previously teamed as Badd Company and won the AWA Tag Team Championship from The Rockers. The Rockers and The Orient Express had a high profile, high flying match at the Royal Rumble that to this day, is considered one of the best matches in Royal Rumble history.
Tag team title controversy
By current WWE records, The Rockers never officially held the WWF Tag Team Championship, but on October 30, 1990, Jannetty and Michaels did actually defeat the reigning champions The Hart Foundation in a two out of three falls match in Fort Wayne, Indiana to seemingly win the titles. The WWE (WWF) has never officially recognized The Rockers' champion status. During the match, the top rope broke by accident making the match a disjointed affair that would require serious clean up before it could be shown on TV. The Rockers defended the WWF Tag Team title against Power and Glory (Paul Roma and Hercules) on November 3, 1990. Shortly after November 3, it was decided to not air the title change and that the title would revert to the Hart Foundation. In his book, Michaels claims that the Hart Foundation had politicked to keep the title. At the 1991 Survivor Series Jannetty caused Michaels to be eliminated by accidentally slamming one of the Nasty Boys into him after which The Rockers argued. After the buildup, The Rockers wrestled one last match on television, a title shot at The Legion of Doom which The Rockers lost after which Jannetty and Michaels argued over who was to blame.
A DVD extra on Heartbreak And Triumph, and in Michaels's autobiography of the same name, titled The Rockers "Fight" reveals that they got into a legit fight in May 1991 that was instigated by Roddy Piper. The incident according to Michaels happened as the boys were intoxicated, Piper, also drunk, started talking about how Michaels would be an even greater competitor in the business, that he would even be the future of the business. Piper stated, that "Michaels had had a great future in the business and that Michaels had all this talent". Jannetty, believing that to be an insult to him challenged Michaels to a fight to which Michaels declined. Jannetty, however, would not take no for an answer and attacked Michaels which started the fight. Piper pulled the two apart, and Michaels passed out right after, and wouldn't come to until the next day. The story, told by Jannetty, reveals that police were called to the scene and arrested Jannetty. As they were arresting him though, Randy Savage stepped in and prevented him from going to jail by telling the police that it was all part of a storyline even though in reality he did not know the cause of the fight in the first place. Michaels almost quit the WWF over the incident, and Jannetty believes that this incident was one of the factors in the WWF's decision to break up The Rockers.
The final split came on Brutus Beefcake’s "Barbershop" (taped on December 2, 1991, and aired on January 11, 1992) where Beefcake interviewed The Rockers about their recent problems. After seemingly working out their problems, Michaels suddenly superkicked Jannetty, and then threw Jannetty through the plate glass window of the Barbershop. Michaels also proceeded to rip a magazine centerfold picture of the group in half, signifying the separation. The turn had the desired effect of making Michaels a hated heel especially since the WWF agreed to let Jannetty "blade" (make himself bleed) after being thrown through the window something which was not very prevalent in 1991. It also prevented Jannetty from entering the Royal Rumble in 1992. This led to Sherri being hospitalized from the glass shards (only in storyline terms) when Sherri returned from her “recovery” she turned on Michaels and actually backed Jannetty in his unsuccessful attempt to take the Intercontinental title away from Michaels at the 1993 Royal Rumble. After the loss, Jannetty was fired by the WWF for supposedly being drunk or hungover during the match however, Mr. Perfect reported that it was actually due to a lack of sleep and Jannetty was brought back.
During an episode of Monday Night Raw on May 17, 1993, Jannetty returned to the WWF during an impromptu challenge. Jannetty defeated Michaels to win the title (with the help of Mr. Perfect). Three weeks later Jannetty lost the title back to Michaels in an untelevised house show thanks to the interference of Michaels’ new bodyguard Diesel. After losing the title the Michaels/Jannetty feud petered out with Michaels focusing on other title challengers while Jannetty wrestled on the mid-card until leaving the WWF in the Spring of 1994.