>>8188057That's the old post hoc ergo propter hoc (after which, and therefore because of which) fallacy. There were a lot of factors at play, and its hard to pin any of it on Michaels specifically.
The WWF was in trouble in '95 because two of the biggest draws in the business (Hogan and Savage) had jumped to WCW. Then the NWO angle happened in '96 and WCW was on fire. The pair of guys who formed the core of the NWO, Hall and Nash, had never drawn like that in WWF, but now, teamed with Hogan and given better booking, they were the hottest thing in wrestling.
By '98, when Michaels went on hiatus as an in-ring competitor, the bloom was coincidently off of the proverbial rose of the NWO. Furthermore, the main event scene still regularly dominated by aging '80s stars like Hogan, Savage, Piper, and the Warrior were starting to get stale for WCW. Idiotic booking decisions like turning Bret Hart heel less than six months removed from Montreal, and Bischoff actually promoting a match between himself and Vince McMahon for Slamboree (which was obviously never really in the cards), weren't helping. Nor was holding multiple PPVs with no world title match on the card at all. Meanwhile WWF had caught its own lightning in a bottle with Austin vs Mr. McMahon and DX vs The Corporation. For most of '98, it was just Goldberg's streak that was preventing WCW from fading faster than it did. Once that ended, and was followed eight days later by the Fingerpoke of Doom, it was all over but the crying.
And yes, HHH was part of DX, but he was really the least important part at this point: it was X-Pac (instantly over as soon as he returned from WCW) and the New Age Outlaws (who were as over as any tag team in history) that really got the DX Army over more than Hunter. Even Chyna might have been a bigger draw than him for part of that period. It took until 2002 for HHH to be an actual main event draw in his own right, despite being booked like one for the previous three years.
