Hulk Ranks Every WrestleMania PPV From Best To Worst
Mar 11, 2020 7:17:19 GMT -5
Wieners=$$$, Bo Rida, and 8 more like this
Post by Hulkshi Tanahashi on Mar 11, 2020 7:17:19 GMT -5
Hulk Ranks Every WrestleMania PPV From Best To Worst:
1. X-Seven: The Greatest WrestleMania Of All Time. Why? Because it had something for every wrestling fan. Do you like good technical wrestling that looks like a real, athletic competition? Well, the PPV began with Chris Jericho taking on William Regal AND had a great bout between Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit. Do you prefer wild brawls where the competitors beat each other up with all manners of weapons? There was a fun Hardcore Title match among Raven, Kane, and The Big Show. And, The Undertaker and Triple H beat the shit out of each other in a fun fight. Do you go wild spotfests where the wrestlers damn near kill themselves to entertain you? Then, there’s TLC II, where Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boyz, and The Dudley Boyz put on an even better sequel to their great Ladder Match from the year before. And, Rhyno, Lita, and Spike Dudley showed up for some added fun. Do you want your wrestling matches to be wild spectacles with a lot of storyline drama? Well, Vince and Shane McMahon gave us that in their fun Street Fight with some assistance from Stephanie, Linda, Trish Stratus, and special guest referee Mick Foley. Do you like to see all of that in a lovely paud dei due of wrestling madness? Then, there’s the main event. The Greatest WrestleMania main event saw The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin pull out all sorts of wrestling holds and weapons, ending with Austin selling his soul to the devil by joining forces with McMahon. The heel turn has proven to somewhat controversial, with some people seeing it as a mistake. But, Austin had become stale as a babyface. The heel turn reinvigorated his career and led to some interesting storylines until The Invasion came along. Speaking of which, X-Seven is seen as the end of The Attitude Era as WCW had been bought by WWE just a week before the PPV. With the Monday Night War over, things started to sour. But, WrestleMania X-Seven gave the most profitable time in wrestling history a wonderful send off.
2. III: It wasn’t the first WrestleMania, but it was the first to FEEL like WrestleMania. After the failed experiment of WrestleMania 2 with its 3 venues, Vince McMahon came up with a much better idea for WrestleMania III: hold it in a large stadium and make the main event a huge dream match that fans wanted to see. Sure enough, we got Hulk Hogan VS Andre The Giant for the WWE Title inside the Pontiac Silverdome. It was the hype job to end all hype jobs, and it delivered. While it may not have been the best match in the world (or on the card), Hogan VS Andre was a huge spectacle as Hogan faced his biggest challenge. There was a lot of drama involved, especially with fans wondering if Hogan could bodyslam The Giant. When he did, the crowd went nuts; and wrestling got one of its most iconic images. As good as the main event was, there was a better match on the undercard as Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat and “Macho Man” Randy Savage stole the show with a fast-paced, back-and-forth encounter for the Intercontinental Title. It was very different from the slow-paced matches that had dominated wrestling in the past, a huge step forward for the industry that would lead to more exciting matches in the future. The rest of the card was basically filler, but there were entertaining moments throughou, like King Kong Bundy dropping an elbow onto Little Beaver, “Adorable” Adrian Adonis getting his head shaved by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Brutus Beefcake (becoming The Barber in that moment), and Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Alice Cooper terrorizing Jimmy Hart with Damien the snake. It was the “Goldfinger” of WrestleMania, setting up the formula for the event for years to come with the right amount of action, drama, and spectacle.
3. XIX: 2003 was not a great year for WWE. Some of their worst PPVs came out of this year. Luckily, WrestleMania XIX did what all good WrestleManias are supposed to do: live up to the hype. XIX was just a great show for one simple reason: a lot of great wrestling matches. Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon had a fun little street fight. Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho stole the show with an excellent match. Even better was the ending when Jericho hugged Michaels and then kneed him in the crotch. The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin completed their WrestleMania trilogy with another great match, one that worked perfectly around the hindrances that Austin’s injuries. Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle damn near killed themselves in a terrific main event, Angle working with a broken freakin neck and Lesnar pulling off the greatest botch in wrestling history. It was just a good show from top to bottom. Not even that stupid segment with the Miller Lite catfight girls could ruin this show. But, the real mark of just how great this PPV was was, funny enough, the World Heavyweight Title match between Triple H and Booker T. I know that sounds weird, especially considering the racist storyline they had for the match and the fact that Triple H winning made it 10 times worse. But, the match itself wasn’t that bad. They had one of the best matches with a shitty ending in wrestling history. And, that’s the mark of a great PPV: when you can say something positive about a PPV’s mistakes.
4. XIV: Things looked bad for WWE following The Montreal Screwjob. With Vince McMahon having screwed over Bret “The Hitman” Hart, robbing him of the WWE Title, it looked like WWE was falling apart. Soon after, WWE and WCW would hold their most important PPVs: WrestleMania XIV and Starrcade 1997. At Starrcade, WCW blew it: the nWo beat WCW in most of the matches on what was supposed to be WCW’s revenge PPV; Bret Hart, having come in red hot, had a bucket of ice water dumped on him as his 1st WCW appearance saw him refereeing a match between Eric Bischoff and Larry Zbyszko; and the Sting/Hollywood Hogan match ended in such bullshit that the stink wouldn’t wash off of WCW until its death. At WrestleMania XIV, Stone Cold Steve Austin took his place as the new top dog by defeated Shawn Michaels in a classic match; The Undertaker just barely won a war with his brother Kane, who came off looking like a million bucks despite losing; The Rock took another step into becoming The Most Electrifying Man In Sports Entertainment by creating one of his signature catchphrases; and the rest of the roster put on an entertaining show. After the Screwjob, it looked like WWE was finished. But, that one moment ended up turning WWE’s fortunes. Not only did it allow Stone Cold to take over but also gave him his greatest rival and led to Mike Tyson coming in thanks to all that money Vince saved from Bret’s contract. WWE stepped up its game and took its first steps to being the most dominant company in North American wrestling by putting on an excellent PPV that gave the fans what they wanted instead of ticking them off.
5. X: Sandwiched in between 2 terrible WrestleManias is this gem. WrestleMania X took place during one of WWE’s lowest points and delivered a great show with 2 killer matches. First up, Bret Hart taking on his brother Owen in a technical classic. Easily the best WrestleMania opener, Bret and Owen pulled out all manners of scientific submission wrestling moves to put on one of the greatest matches in both their careers. And, the kicker: Owen won, beating Bret on the same night he’d take back the WWE Title he lost a year earlier. This just added gasoline to the fire that was their great sibling rivalry feud. That match alone would have been enough to get this WrestleMania ranked high, but then Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon had to go and steal the show later on. They would put on another 5-star match with their classic Ladder Match for the Intercontinental Title. This awesome match wasn’t the first Ladder Match held in WWE, but it would set the template for Ladder Matches to come after. Besides these classics, Yokozuna defended his WWE Title twice in 2 entertaining matches. In fact, there wasn’t really a dud on this show. I mean, when a Mixed Tag Match where Bam Bam Bigelow and Luna Vachon have to take on babyface Doink and his little buddy Dink is pretty good, you know you’ve gotten a great WrestleMania.
6. XX: It’s hard to look back at WrestleMania XX. The PPV ended with Chris Benoit, having just won the World Heavyweight Title, celebrating with WWE Champion Eddie Guerrero. Two lifelong friends who had to deal with so much backstage political bullshit were finally getting the respect and titles they deserved. A little over a year later, the ending would become melancholic after Guerrero suddenly died of a heart attack. Three years after that, it would become tainted by the tragedy that Chris Benoit unleashed onto the wrestling industry. As tarnished as this PPV is, I still couldn’t rank it any lower because it was a really good PPV. That Triple Threat match where Benoit won the title was fantastic. Benoit, Triple H, and Shawn Michaels worked their asses off to put on a great match, and seeing Triple H actually tapping out was a thing of beauty. Guerrero had a great match himself as he and Kurt Angle pulled out all their technical moves to put on a highly underrated match. Speaking of underrated, this PPV also features the most underrated match in WrestleMania history as Chris Jericho and Christian put on a classic that has been overshadowed by other better remembered matches. The Rock and Mick Foley showed no signs of ring rust in their match with Evolution’s Randy Orton, Ric Flair, and Batista. John Cena won the United States Title off of The Big Show in a good opener. Sure, there were some lowlights: the Playboy Evening Gown Match, Kane and The Undertaker’s 2nd WrestleMania couldn’t live up to the classic they’d had at XIV, and Goldberg and Brock Lesnar stunk up the joint. But, other than that, WrestleMania’s 2nd trip to Madison Square Garden was a damn good show.
7. VI: It’s a huge disservice to this PPV to call it a one-match-show. Though, it pretty much is one. The show was built around the epic encounter of The Ultimate Warrior putting his Intercontinental Title on the line in order to challenge for Hulk Hogan’s WWE Title. And, this match certainly lived up to the hype. These 2 men put on an incredibly well-booked match, made even better considering they were the best workers. But, they beat the crap out of each other, and the Toronto crowd ate it up. But still, WrestleMania VI shouldn’t be remember just for that one match. The rest of the card was stacked with a lot of talented wrestlers who could put on entertaining matches that weren’t meant to last very long. “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Bad News Brown had a brief brawl. The Mixed Tag Team Match between Dusty Rhodes & Sapphire VS “Macho King” Randy Savage and Queen Sherri was pretty entertaining. The Tag Team Titles match was really good; Haku worked his ass off to pull off a good match as his partner Andre The Giant couldn’t really work much because of his health. And, Jake “The Snake” Roberts and “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase tore it up in the 1st Million Dollar Championship match. Of those early one-match-show WrestleManias, VI was easily the best.
8. VIII: This WrestleMania shouldn’t have been as good as it was. The business was taking a huge downturn. The steroids and sex scandals had rocked WWE. Wrestling wasn’t as cool as it was in the 1980s. And, to make matters worse, backstage politics prevented Vince McMahon from putting on the main event he wanted: Hulk Hogan VS Ric Flair for the WWE Title. They had the opportunity to put on the ultimate wrestling match of the time: WWE’s biggest babyface VS the NWA’s biggest heel. And, they let it slip through their fingers, allowing WCW to do it 2 years later. But, somehow, everything came together to put on a spectacular show. While we didn’t get Hogan VS Flair, there was a great consolation prize with Flair instead taking on “Macho Man” Randy Savage. They put on a great match that damn near stole the show. I say “damn near” because there was an excellent Intercontinental Title between Bret “The Hitman” Hart and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper that did steal the show. It was a great match with an amazing little story as Piper came very close to turning heel by hitting Bret with the ring bell only to be talked out of it by the crowd. The other matches were basically filler, but they were terrible. Funny enough, the one that match that really left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth was the main event. Instead of fighting Flair, Hogan took on Sid Justice. The match itself wasn’t awful, but the finish was. Sid had to kick out of Hogan’s leg drop, the most protected move in WWE history, because Papa Shango missed his cue. This led to Harvey Wippleman interfering for a clumsy DQ finish that saw Shango finally come out followed by The Ultimate Warrior, looking a little smaller and creating an enduring urban legend that he was an imposter and the real Warrior had died. It was the one letdown of a great PPV.
9. 23: It’s not often that WWE will put on a WrestleMania where all the big hyped-up matches end up living up to the hype. Here, WWE booked this show around 3 big matches: a WWE Title match between John Cena and Shawn Michaels, a World Heavyweight Title match between Batista and The Undertaker, and a Hair VS Hair Match where Bobby Lashley, with Donald Trump in his corner, took on Umaga, with Vince McMahon in his corner. The Cena/Michaels match was a great main event with both guys putting on a hell of a show. Sadly, it’s been overlooked because Cena and Michaels would have an even better match on RAW about a month later and because of an even better match at 23. That match would be The Undertaker VS Batista. Rumor has it, both of them were upset that they would be main eventing, especially since Taker won the Rumble that year. So, they purposely tried to steal the show. And, good Lord almighty, they stole the f*** out it. It helped that both men had such great chemistry with one another that the ring must have been covered in salt after they were done. Then, there was the Battle Of The Billionaires. It’s weird to look back and see a future U.S. President shaving Vince McMahon bald at WrestleMania, but it happened. And, it was pretty entertaining. And, the match that came before that entertaining spectacle wasn’t that bad either. There was also a pretty good MITB Ladder Match to begin the show. The only thing that brought this PPV down were the other matches, which were treated like filler matches and came off as such. But, other than that, this was a damn good WrestleMania.
10. 21: WrestleMania should go Hollywood more often. This was a damn fine PPV. Even before it began, 21 was doing good stuff thanks to the best WrestleMania ad campaign with those hilarious movie parodies. It got off to a great start with Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio just fighting for bragging rights, which began a good feud where Eddie became obsessed with beating Rey. Of course, WWE would ruin it with all that shit about Eddie being Dominic Mysterio’s real dad. After that, we had the first Money In The Bank Ladder Match, which was a great spot fest that let Shelton Benjamin do his thing and show off his skills while also giving Edge one of the biggest wins of his glorious career. Someone finally realized that The Undertaker had never lost at WrestleMania and decided to book his WrestleMania matches around The Streak. He had the perfect opponent for this with “The Legend Killer” Randy Orton in a pretty good match. Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle were booked to steal the show, and they did just that with a fantastic match that they made up on the fly because they are wrestling freaks. And, Batista brought an end to the Reign Of Terror by defeating Triple H and bringing his stranglehold on the World Heavyweight Title to an end. And, there were some cool moments like Hulk Hogan beating up Muhammad Hassan and the Piper’s Pit with Stone Cold. Though, there were some turds in the punchbowl: Trish Stratus struggled to get a decent match out of Christy Hemme, the Sumo Match with Akebono and The Big Show’s ass, and that disappointing WWE Title match. But, they couldn’t drag down a great WrestleMania.
11. Play Button: Not many people had high hopes for this one. I mean, Brock Lesnar VS Roman Reigns for the WWE Title!? Rusev VS John Cena for the United States Title!? Seth Rollins VS Randy Orton!? The Undertaker VS Bray Wyatt with no Streak on the line!? Sting VS Triple H instead of The Undertaker!? A ladder match with a bunch of guys thrown together because they have nothing for them on the same show as a battle royal with a bunch of guys thrown together because they have nothing for them!? They even got rid of the number, forcing us to call it “WrestleMania Play Button.” On paper, this PPV was gonna suck. In practice, this exceeded expectations. Rusev and Cena had a good match, and Rusev came to the ring in a f***ing tank! Rollins VS Orton was pretty good, too, and had one of the great RKO counters out of nowhere. It was a thing of beauty how they executed it off of Rollins’s Curb Stomp. Wyatt VS Undertaker was good, but it would have been better if The Streak was still around. That ladder match, which had an awful build with every guy just stealing the Intercontinental Title, was an entertaining spotfest, which was, honestly, to be expected since WWE is good at putting on those kind of ladder matches. As for Sting VS Triple H, it looked like it was going to suck, and… it did suck. It sucked eggs. Triple H won for no damn reason. It was just another excuse to put WWE over WCW yet again. As good as the PPV was, it still had its downsides. But, despite that, Play Button was still a really good PPV, and the thing that put it over the top was the main event. It wasn’t the match itself; Lesnar and Reigns just don’t have good chemistry together. But, the ending made it great. Having Seth Rollins run in, cash in his MITB briefcase as the match was going on, and win the WWE Title was a very pleasant surprise. No one was looking forward to seeing Roman win nor wanted Lesnar to keep the title. Luckily, they still had the MITB briefcase as their Get Out Of Jail card and ended the PPV with pleasant surprise. Rollins pulled off the heist of the century, and everyone was happy to see him take the title and run.
12. XXX: WrestleMania has a good track record with numbers ending in 0. Though not as good as X or XX, WrestleMania XXX was still a good PPV. Sure, it had it’s bad spots. As good as John Cena VS Bray Wyatt was, having Cena win was a big mistake. And, having Brock Lesnar end The Undertaker’s Streak was probably a mistake in the long run. It killed Taker’s aura at WrestleMania, and it would have been better served for him to lose to someone who could use the rub in what should be Taker’s last match at WrestleMania. And, the other matches were basically filler. So, why rank this WrestleMania so high? Because of the incredible story it told with the first and last match. After shitting the bed at the 2014 Royal Rumble, WWE realized that it might not be a good idea to have Batista win the WWE Title off of Randy Orton, especially when every single one of their fans was telling them that they wanted Daniel Bryan. So, WWE gave them what they wanted. The story was simple: Bryan had to beat Triple H in the opening match to even get into the main event. And, he did only to get attacked by Triple H afterwards, teasing that he might not make it to the main event. But, he did only to get double teamed by Orton and Batista and seemingly taking him out of the match with a Batista Bomb/RKO combo through a table. Only, he came back, pulled off the Upset Of The Century, and had the entire Superdome chanting “YES! YES! YES!” It was electric. Sure, WWE blew it with his reign and feud with Kane; and it took years for them to undo the damage thanks to his awesome heel vegan run as WWE Champ. But, that one night was probably the most cathartic moment of joy in WWE history.
13. XXIV: “I’m sorry. I love you.” It’s the most famous quote in WrestleMania history and for good reason. Shawn Michaels constructed a perfect match for Ric Flair to go out on. It was well worked and told a great story. Too bad Flair had to go and ruin it by working in TNA. At least he hasn’t wrestled in WWE again, so it’s not entirely tainted. And, it’s good enough to make you forget about Flair’s TNA time. Of course, that Flair/Michaels match wasn’t the only thing WrestleMania XXIV had going for it. The Big Show/Floyd Mayweather match exceeded expectations. WWE did a good job of booking a match that was entertaining and worked around Mayweather’s limitations. Once again, the MITB Ladder Match was an entertaining spotfest. And, the two World Title matches were pretty good; not as good as the previous year but they were entertaining nonetheless. Though, XXIV does have its down spots: the 11 ECW Title match, the Playboy BunnyMania Lumberjill Match (that title only will give you cancer), Batista and Umaga’s filler match. But, they couldn’t drag down this PPV too much.
14. X-8: Sandwiched in between two pieces of artisan bread (X-Seven and XIX) is this slice of cheap fried Spam. It ain’t gourmet, but it’s not exactly terrible either. Sure, WrestleMania X-8 has its lowlights: the main event between Chris Jericho and Triple H may have been a serviceable match, but the build to it where Jericho, the WWE Champion, was an afterthought playing dogsitter was awful. Booker T and Edge fought over a shampoo commercial. And, the rest of the card was basically filler. But, there were some good highlights. The Rock and Hulk Hogan made this show with their great match. It more than lived up to the hype and was incredible when you considered that they threw out their original plans and made up a new match on the fly because the crowd surprisingly cheered for Hogan, the heel, and booed The Rock, the face. The Undertaker and Ric Flair had a damn fine underrated match, with a boost from Arn Anderson and his famous spinebuster. Kurt Angle and Kane had a pretty good match. The multiple Hardcore Title changes on the show were fun. And, Scott Hall’s selling of the Stone Cold Stunner made that match worth watching. While it was a pretty good show, it just had the misfortune of coming in between 2 of the best WrestleManias ever held.
15. XII: WrestleMania XII is a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of that has to do with the main event, the Iron Man Match between Bret “The Hitman” Hart VS Shawn Michaels for the WWE Title. Some, like me, see it as a great hour of two of the best wrestlers trading wrestling moves back and forth until an exciting final 10 minutes with both men desperately trying to get a pinfall as neither one had scored in the previous 50 minutes. Others see it as a slog of a match until that final 10 minutes. Either way, it was a better main event than a lot of other WrestleMania main events. Besides that, there are some good things about this PPV. The Undertaker finally had a good match at WrestleMania and with Diesel of all people. The Hollywood Backlot Brawl was a lot of fun. And, Triple H got bitched out in less than 2 minutes by The Ultimate Warrior. On the bad side, Vince decided to poke some fun at the competition by having a joke match between The Huckster and The Nacho Man. It was weird of him to call Hogan and Savage old when Hogan would go on to rejuvenate his career with the greatest heel turn of all time and Savage was still putting on quality matches. Also, XII had Jake “The Snake” Roberts, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, and The Ultimate Warrior, 3 of their peers, booked on the card, which made the whole thing look incredibly hypocritical of McMahon. Still, I get the idea behind it, making WWE look like a place for young talent to rise to the top of card. Though, he didn’t need to do all that; just having Shawn and Bret in the main event was good enough.
16. V: A lot of the early WrestleManias were basically one-match-shows built around the main event. Of course, WrestleMania V had one hell of a main event: “Macho Man” Randy Savage VS Hulk Hogan for the WWE Title. The Mega-Powers exploding was easily one of WWE’s best long build stories. For the better part of 2 years, Savage and Hogan had been good friends. The story picked up steam at IV when Savage won the WWE Title in the finals of a 14-man tournament, with Hogan helping Savage win. But, the partnership didn’t last. Slowly, Savage’s jealousy with Hogan’s friendliness towards Miss Elizabeth would heat up. It eventually boiled over during a tag team match against The Twin Towers when Elizabeth accidentally got hurt and Hogan took her backstage for help. Unfortunately, Savage was left alone. Though Hogan came back, Savage was still pissed and left Hogan alone to face their opponents. After Hogan managed to win, he confronted Savage, which led to the infamous quote "You've got lust in your eyes, and your black heart, for Elizabeth!" and Savage attacking Hogan. This would all lead to a fantastic match lived up to the hype. It was easily the best match of Hogan’s career, thanks to Savage’s well-known penitent for meticulously planned matches. The main event really elevated the show, but the rest of the card wasn’t all that bad. There were some cool moments, like “Ravishing” Rick Rude stealing the Intercontinental Title from The Ultimate Warrior, Strike Force breaking up in dramatic fashion as Rick Martel left Tito Santana to get beat up by The Brain Busters, and that infamous Piper’s Pit where “Rowdy” Roddy Piper sprayed Morton Downey Jr. with a fire extinguisher. Though, the undercard was just an appetizer for the excellent main event.
17. Jolly Roger: I just love that after one full year of PPVs with no audience, the 1st time WWE puts on a show with a live audience; it gets rained out for like half an hour. It’s almost as if God was trying to tell Vince McMahon something. Also, it was weird to see the show have a pirate theme 2 years in a row. Of course, it took place in a stadium with a pirate ship built in it; and if I bought a bunch of pirate crap for my biggest PPV, I’d keep them in storage until I could use them. Anyway, besides some technical difficulties and a reused theme, this was a pretty good show. Again, WrestleMania was a 2-night affair, which I like. If they’re gonna overload the show, then I’d rather have a 2-night event rather than an 8-hour show. And, the matches were good. The highlights included Bobby Lashley VS Drew McIntyre for the WWE Title, Cesaro VS Seth Rollins, Bianca Belair VS Sasha Banks for the SmackDown! Women’s Title, Kevin Owens VS Sami Zayn, Rhea Ripley VS Asuka for the RAW Women’s Title, and the Triple Threat Match for the Universal Title. Plus, 2 matches that looked like duds (Braun Strowman VS Shane McMahon and the match with Bad Bunny) were pleasant surprises. And, I enjoyed The Fiend’s hijinks, even though it made no sense that he’d lose to Randy Orton (maybe Bray Wyatt should just stick to wrestling Orton at WrestleMania). Really, the only bad thing about this PPV was the build. I mean, one of the match’s feus (Strowman VS Shane) was built around Strowman being an idiot who didn’t know the difference between the WWE and Universal Titles. The build to the show made it seem like it was gonna be lame. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.
18. XXVIII: It’s pretty amazing that this PPV has not 1, not 2, but THREE!!!! matches with nicknames. First, there was 18 Seconds: The awful World Heavyweight Title match where Sheamus Brogue kicked Daniel Bryan and won the title in just 18 seconds. This pissed off all the fans there and did a lot of damage to Sheamus, who was basically a one-dimensional bully WWE wanted fans to cheer. Though, Bryan would benefit a lot from this as the fans rallied around him, feeling he was getting railroaded by WWE. 2 years later, he was winning the WWE Title while everyone in the Superdome screamed “YES! YES! YES!” Second, there was The End Of An Era: The Hell In A Cell Match between The Undertaker and Triple H with Shawn Michaels as the special guest referee. This was a pretty entertaining bout as Triple H was doing everything he could do end The Streak only to fail miserably. It was a great send off for both guys. Too bad they had to go and ruin it at Super Show-Down AND Crown Jewel 6 years later. Finally, there was Once In A Lifetime: The Rock VS John Cena. I gotta hand it to WWE. When they made this main event all the way back at the RAW after WrestleMania XXVII, I thought for sure they wouldn’t have the patience to wait a whole year before giving us this match. But, they did it. While they did give us a taste at Survivor Series, they didn’t blow their load prematurely and end up with a big mess on their hands. Instead, they waited, and we got a very good main event. The only downside was the freaking nickname, “Once In A Lifetime,” which implied that this would be the ONLY TIME Cena and Rock would face each other. Of course, we got it again the next year. Outside of those 3 matches, XXVIII had some other highlights (CM Punk VS Chris Jericho for the WWE Title) and a lot of filler (Kane VS Randy Orton, Team Johnny VS Team Teddy, a match with Maria Menounos). All in all, it wasn’t a bad WrestleMania, but there were a lot of parts that either enraged people and just didn’t leave a big impression.
19. Lone Star: On paper, this WrestleMania looks terrible. Ronda Rousey VS Charlotte Flair. THREE celebrity matches. Seth Rollins VS a mystery opponent so that he can get a WrestleMania moment, because apparently The Heist Of The Century doesn’t count. Another Brock Lesnar/Roman Reigns main event, a match people weren’t all that interested in the first time WWE booked it back at Play Button (hence The Heist Of The Century; ARE THESE PEOPLE f***ING WITH US!!!!?). However, it turned out to be a solid show. There were a lot of good matches: Bianca Belair winning the RAW Women’s Title from Becky Lynch was great. Edge VS AJ Styles was a dream match that lived up to the height. While Rollins’s match had a shitty build, his match with a returning Cody Rhodes was very good. Stone Cold Steve Austin’s return match against Kevin Owens was fun (major props to Austin for taking bumps on concrete). And, the celebrity matches exceeded expectations. Plus, it led to Vince McMahon giving the worst Stone Cold Stunner sell ever, one so bad it circled around into being great again. Though, it wasn’t all great. The Charlotte/Rousey wasn’t as great as their last encounter at Survivor Series 2018. Bobby Lashley couldn’t do shit with Omos, who may just be the worst giant WWE has ever had. At least, The Great Khali and Giant Gonzalez had a presence to them; Omos is just a big doofus who can barely move right. And, that Reigns/Lesnar match was as big of a letdown that people thought it was going to be. Reigns easily won to take both titles and keep his never-ending, untroublesome reign going. It was a huge wet fart of an ending. But, the rest of the PPV was pretty good. And, it could have been so much worse.
20. XXVI: Another mixed bag WrestleMania, this one had a lot of good things going for it. The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels had another great WrestleMania match. Though, this one was as great as the one they had at 25. Then again, it would have to be the Greatest Wrestling Match In The History Of The Universe to top that. But, this was still a good match, and it was smart to finish on this since the previous year saw these 2 put on a classic that burnt out the crowd for the rest of the show. As for the World Title matches, XXVI’s pair topped 25’s as John Cena and Batista showed off the great chemistry they have together in their WWE Title match, and Edge and Chris Jericho had a very good World Heavyweight Title match. In fact, I think it might be impossible for those 2 to have a bad match with one another. And, of course, the MITB Ladder Match was an entertaining spotfest. But, the rest of the show wasn’t so great. Much of it was just filler. Bret “The Hitman” Hart wrestled his 1st match in WWE since Survivor Series 1997, against Vince McMahon, the man who screwed him over at that PPV. And, the match sucked. It was God Awful. Though, when a man who hadn’t wrestled since 1999 and had been recovering from a stroke took on a 64-year-old man, it was inevitable that the match would suck. And, there was this awful moment in the PPV when Vickie Guerrero performed a frog splash as a tribute to her late husband Eddie, and Michael Cole called it a bullfrog splash. It was supposed to be funny because Vickie isn’t conventionally attractive and a little overweight and who gives a shit if she’s doing a tribute to her husband who suddenly died and left her to support the female by taking a job where she’d get humiliated week after week. Ha ha ha!!!! (f*** this f***ing company up the ass with a barbed wired covered dildo!!!!)
21. Pirate Ship: If WrestleMania is held in front of no live audience, it is really a WrestleMania? That’s what happened here. To be fair, the coronavirus f***ed up everything, causing all the sporting events in the country to be cancelled. WWE could have easily just postponed the event until they could have had a proper WrestleMania, but I can see why they didn’t: they don’t know how long that could be, and people do need a distraction now. But, it’s just weird to see WWE’s biggest show being held in a training facility with no fans. I mean, Drew McIntyre finally won the WWE Title and erased his 3MB joke legacy; but he had to celebrate with no one cheering for him. It really deflated the moment. Not to mention that Braun Strowman finally winning a World Title (the Universal Title) was also disappointing since he only got it because Roman Reigns backed out and because it came way too late (WWE loves to strike when the iron is freezing cold and no one knows there’s an iron to be struck). But, it wasn’t a total loss. There were some good matches, like Rhea Ripley VS Charlotte Flair for the NXT Women’s Title, Kevin Owens VS Seth Rollins, and the Ladder Match for the SmackDown! Tag Team Titles. Also, I loved that it was 2 nights. Since WWE had decided to overload the event with matches, having them take place over 2 nights is much more enjoyable to watch than 1 8-hour block. But, the best parts were the 2 insane cinematic matches. First, the Boneyard Match, which played like a more serious take on the Broken Matt Hardy matches, with The Undertaker and AJ Styles beating the hell out of each other in a fun match. If the Broken Matt matches are David Lynch surreal arthouse flicks, then this was a really good James Cameron blockbuster. But then, there was the Firefly Fun House Match. Good God Almighty was this thing glorious. It managed to outweird the Broken Matt matches, with John Cena cycling back through his various looks through the years, homages to the nWo and Saturday Night’s Main Event, and so many puppets. Honestly, the whole event could have stood to be as weird and fun as those matches. I mean, if you’re not gonna have any fans in attendance, then you may as well shake things up.
22. I: It’s interesting to look back at the first WrestleMania. Its very existence was a big step forward for the wrestling industry as it would help solidify the PPV market as the driving force in making money until The WWE Network came along. It featured celebrities like Mr. T, Muhammad Ali, and Liberace. And, it featured a crop of young talented wrestlers like Ricky Steamboat, Barry Windham, Mike Rotunda, and Wendi Richter who would bring a much more faster-paced style of wrestling to the sport. Though, a lot of it is still a product of its time as most of the matches have the slow 1980s style. And, it doesn’t feature much of the ballyhoo that today’s WrestleManias have. Still, it was a fun show. And, the main event, Hulk Hogan & Mr. T VS “Rowdy” Roddy Piper & “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff, delivered on the hype. It was an exciting match, Mr. T held his own, and the ending where “Cowboy” Bob Orton accidentally hit Orndorff to cost the heels the match was well done and would lead to one of the company’s angles when Orndorff became friends with Hogan only to turn on him out of jealousy While it might not live up to modern day standards, it was okay for what it was at the time. Though, it has been surpassed by other WrestleManias, which is why I ranked it so low.
23. Roller Coaster: Some people call this “WrestleMania Sun,” but I prefer “WrestleMania Roller Coaster” since roller coasters were much more prominently featured and because it was an accurate description of the PPV itself. The pre-show built things up slowly and then we got an exciting rush down through some cool dips thanks to AJ Styles managing to get a good match out of Shane McMahon without any No DQ stipulation to give Shane an excuse to jump off of something. Then, a couple of loops with Kevin Owens VS Chris Jericho (which should have been for the Universal Title instead of the United States Title) and Fatal 4-Way RAW Women’s Title Match. Then, another exciting drop with a Ladder Match for the RAW Tag Team Titles with the Hardy Boyz returning. Then, another slow build with a stupid Mix Tag Team Match as The Miz & Maryse, after doing some of the best heel work in ages by impersonating their opponents, getting jobbed out to John Cena & Nikki Bella just so Cena could propose to Nikki. And, it was all pointless as they ended up breaking up. Then, another cool drop with Seth Rollins beating Triple H in a surprisingly good match. Then, another slow part with Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton fighting in awful match with a bunch of stupid special effects from Wyatt to try and distract Orton only for it all to fail and be pointless. Then, the final slope down with an exciting Universal Title Match as Brock Lesnar and Goldberg beat the shit out of each other in just 5 minutes. Then, the PPV came to a slow end with another Women’s Title match and an awful main event as Roman Reigns struggled to get a good match out of a way past his prime Undertaker. Basically, it was a thrilling as a roller coaster but unfortunately just as nauseating and not as fleeting (it was nearly 7 hours)/
24. 25: Much like 13, WrestleMania 25 had one great match that was let down by the rest of the PPV. Shawn Michaels VS The Undertaker had arguably the Greatest Match In WrestleMania History. These two men put on a match for the ages, one that exceeded all expectations everyone had for it and made me look like a f***ing idiot because I thought both men at their ages couldn’t have as good a match as they did back in 1997. Boy was I incredibly wrong. It was a stone cold classic, and it deserved a much better PPV than the shitshow it got. Even before the PPV had aired, it annoyed people as WWE insisted on calling it “The 25th Anniversary Of WrestleMania” even though it was actually the 24th Anniversary and would have been more accurate as “The 25th Annual WrestleMania.” The two World Title matches weren’t that great. The World Heavyweight Title Triple Threat with Edge, John Cena, and The Big Show was a big disappointment considering all involved. And, the WWE Title match between Triple H and Randy Orton was easily the Most Boring WrestleMania main event of all time. The build to the match saw Orton beating up every McMahon in sight and Triple H breaking into Orton’s house. So, one would think that WWE would let these 2 beat the shit out of each other with all sorts of weapons. Instead, they stipulated that Triple H would lose if he got DQ’ed. That sapped all the momentum from the match and turned it into a big snoozefest. Then, there was that awful Kid Rock mini-concert that went on for so long that it got a Tag Team Title Unification match bumped to the dark match and cause the Miss WrestleMania Battle Royal to compress its time to just 7 minutes, causing a bunch of returning women and current Divas to barely get any screen time. And, that women’s Battle Royal was won by Santina Marella, Santino Marella in drag. Yes, a man won the 1st women’s Battle Royal in WrestleMania history. As bad as 25 was outside of The Undertaker/Michaels match, it did have a couple of matches that tried to elevate the PPV: the MITB Ladder Match and an Extreme Rules Match between Matt and Jeff Hardy, both of which were entertaining spot fests. So, those matches plus The Greatest Match In WrestleMania History are the only reasons this PPV got ranked so high.
25. 13: Bret “The Hitman” Hart VS Stone Cold Steve Austin in a Submission Match. Say it loud, and there’s music playing. Say it soft, and it’s almost like praying. Hart and Austin put on one of the greatest and bloodiest battles in WWE history. It was an excellent mix of technical wrestling, brawling, hardcore action, and great storytelling. What really put this match over the top was how well they pulled off the greatest double turn in wrestling history. Austin would become a huge babyface for his determination and defiance in submitting while Hart would turn his back on the fans for choosing such a ne’er-do-well like Austin. It was a perfectly crafted wrestling match. And, it is a huge f***ing shame that I have to talk about this match so freaking low on this list. As great as this match was, the rest of the PPV was just as equally awful. Before they had crowds cheering like crazy as The Rock and Rikishi, they stunk up the joint as Rocky Maivia and The Sultan. And, in an Intercontinental Title match no less. The other matches were unmemorable bores. I mean, how in the hell could a tag team match where Vader & Mankind took on Owen Hart & The British Bulldog be so boring!? And then, there was the main event. The Undertaker and Sycho Sid had to close out a show with one of the greatest matches of all time, and the only thing in that match that has been worth talking about all these years later is an urban legend where Sid may have crapped his wrestling trunks during the match. The only reason this WrestleMania got ranked so high was because of The Hitman and Stone Cold. Everyone else should be ashamed of themselves for putting on a show that couldn’t equal its quality.
26. 2000: The year 2000 was a great year for WWE PPVs. So, you’d think that that year’s WrestleMania would be one of the best. You’d be wrong. Oh sure, it did have that great Triangle Ladder Match with The Dudley Boyz, Hardy Boyz, and Edge & Christian tearing it up and nearly killing themselves in the process. And, WWE had the great idea to have Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, and Chris Benoit fight each other in a Triple Threat. And, the Hardcore Battle Royal was fun. But, other than that… eh. There was only 1 singles match, and it was a Catfight between Terri Runnels and The Kat. The other matches weren’t that memorable, except for Pete Rose’s 3rd beatdown by Kane. And then, there was the main event. At first, WWE got it right: Triple H VS The Rock. Then, they had to add The Big Show into the match. Then, they threw in Mick Foley as well. Then, they put a McMahon in the corner of each wrestler. The match itself wasn’t bad, but it was way too overbooked. And, on top of it all, Triple H walk out with the WWE Title still around his waist. It wasn’t great. What really made his a bad WrestleMania is this fact: it just didn’t really feel like WrestleMania. It was basically just another PPV. Hell, Backlash delivered what WrestleMania didn’t and felt much bigger by having The Rock overcome the odds and take the title off of Triple H. When Backlash is better WrestleMania than the actual WrestleMania, then you’ve put on a bad WrestleMania.
27. XV: Or, as I like to call it, RussoMania. Vince Russo’s fingerprints are all over it. You had Billy Gunn winning the Hardcore Title and Road Dogg winning the Intercontinental Title a few weeks before the PPV when they had been fighting for the other title. So, you’d think that Gunn’s match with Goldust, Val Venis, and Ken Shamrock would become a Hardcore Title match while Dogg’s match with Al Snow and Hardcore Holly would become an Intercontinental Title match since those were the guys they were feuding with. But, no, they just switched matches for no real reason. Chyna started the night as a heel with Kane and The Corporation but turned face when she reunited with Triple H and D-X only to to back to a heel when she and Triple H cost X-Pac the European Title to Shane McMahon. And, Big Show got fired from The Corporation for getting DQ’ed in his match with Mankind to see who’d referee the main event even though he took out Mankind and made it almost impossible to referee the match (Mankind only showed up at the end). And, let’s not forget the crap matches: Sable VS Tori, The Undertaker VS The Big Boss Man in a terrible Hell In A Cell Match; Butterbean VS Bart Gunn. Though, it wasn’t a total shitshow. The Stone Cold/Rock main event was pretty damn good, and Shane McMahon showed some of his show stealing future with a surprisingly good match with X-Pac. But, still, it was a typical Vince Russo show: overbooked with a lot of nonsense.
28. Statue Of Liberty: There’s a lot of good stuff in this PPV. Kofi Kingston defeated Daniel Bryan in a very good WWE Title match. AJ Styles and Randy Orton had a pretty good match. Seth Rollins beat Brock Lesnar for the Universal Title in 2:30, a refreshing change of pace from the typical Brock Lesnar dominance. Samoa Joe finally looked like the monster he is in squashing Rey Mysterio. And, Becky Lynch proved she was The Man by beating Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey for both of WWE’s Women’s Titles in a great match (though it did have a crappy ending). All in all, it had the makings of a great PPV. Unfortunately, the show lasted nearly 8 hours. 8 f***ING HOURS!!!! That is just too long. By the time, Roman Reigns defeated Drew McIntyre, the audience was spent; and there was still 2 hours left to go. There was just way too much crap that didn’t need to happen. We didn’t need 9 title matches. We didn’t need a heel Shane McMahon beating a babyface Miz. We didn’t need to see Triple H and Batista sluggishly duke it out. We didn’t need Baron Corbin to beat Kurt Angle in his last match ever. We just didn’t need this much wrestling. I mean, people have work in the morning. Those poor souls at Metlife Stadium were stuck there until midnight and didn’t get home until like 2:30 A.M. You don’t need to put on a long-ass show simply because it’s WrestleMania. I’d rather watch a great 3-hour PPV than a so-so 8-hour one.
29. Fleur-de-lis: On paper, this looks like a great WrestleMania: Charlotte Flair VS Asuka. AJ Styles VS Shinsuke Nakamura. Braun Strowman taking on The Bar for the RAW Tag Team Titles. Daniel Bryan returning to the ring after it appeared injuries would keep him from ever wrestling again. The Undertaker VS John Cena!!!! It should have been great! Instead, WWE blew it. Asuka’s undefeated streak came to an end for no real reason. Styles and Nakamura had a disappointing match, which I didn’t think was possible. Instead of winning the RAW Tag Team Titles by himself, Braun picked out a 10-year-old kid to just sit on apron. It was one of the most controversial WrestleMania moments. Some thought it was stupidly awesome, others just stupid. Daniel Bryan’s return match saw him sit out for a good bit while Shane McMahon picked up the slack. The Undertaker squashed Cena, the one person besides Sting people wanted to see him fight at WrestleMania, in 2:45. Even the parts people weren’t looking forward to were disappointing. No one wanted to see Roman Reigns conquer The Beast, but they sure as shit didn’t want to see him get bitched out to Brock Lesnar. If you want Roman to be the man, then make him the man, WWE. Quit teasing it. As bad as it was, there were some good parts. Seth Rollins, Finn Balor, and The Miz had an excellent Intercontinental Title match. Nia Jax’s win over Alexa Bliss was cool. And, surprisingly, the best match was Kurt Angle & Ronda Rousey VS Triple H & Stephanie McMahon. Angle and Triple H looked good despite their ages, Ronda took to wrestling like a duck to water, and Stephanie did a good job herself. But still, when Stephanie looks better than most of the roster, it doesn’t point to a good WrestleMania.
30. 22: This may very well be the most mediocre WrestleMania of all time. I mean, there were some good parts: Mickie James grabbing Trish Stratus in a private spot and then licking her fingers (why edit that out, WWE?), a pretty good MITB Ladder Match, the Hardcore Match between Edge and Mick Foley, and the World Heavyweight Title match. But, there were some crappy parts as well: The Boogeyman VS Booker T and Sharmell, the Playboy Pillowfight, and those weird long shots of Triple H and John Cena they used to stall for time to set up the Playboy Pillowfight. As for the rest: As good as the World Heavyweight Title Match was, it would have been better if it had gotten 10 more minutes. And, it was hard to get invested into the WWE Title match since WWE booked it with Cena as the babyface and Triple H as the heel despite the fans being firmly behind Triple H and against Cena. They really should have turned Cena heel when the fans first turned on him. And, the other matches: they were just okay. The Undertaker VS Mark Henry, just okay. Shawn Michaels VS Vince McMahon, just okay. JBL VS Chris Benoit, just okay. Those 2 words pretty much sum up this PPV: just okay. Though, for WrestleMania, just okay is not good enough.
31. IV: WrestleMania IV is a mixed bag. Again, WWE experimented with their biggest show, this time turning it into a gimmick PPV with a 14-man tournament to crown a new WWE Champion. The tournament itself was booked well, telling a good story. You had the 2 favorites, Hulk Hogan and Andre The Giant, taking each other out to leave the field wide open. You had “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase getting a bye to the finals because of Hogan and Andre’s draw. And, you had “Macho Man” Randy Savage forced to go through all 4 rounds, even facing off against the One Man Gang, who got a bye into the Semi-Finals. All this culminated into a finals that saw Savage winning the WWE Title, with an assist from Hogan, to become the new WWE Champion. It was great PPV-long angle. So, why did I rank this PPV so low? Well, the matches weren't all that great. And, because of the tournament, there were a whopping 16 matches on the 4-hour PPV broadcast, the most for WrestleMania. It was just too much, and watching this PPV in one sitting will burn you out. Despite that, there were some good moments outside of the tournament, like Andre choking Bob Uecker, Bret “The Hitman” Hart smashing the Battle Royal trophy Bad News Brown stole from him, and Demolition beginning their epic 478 day World Tag Team Titles reign. But, it was still an overbooked PPV that could have been paired down a little.
32. VII: What a difference a year makes. WrestleMania VI was a very enjoyable PPV with a lot of great moments. WrestleMania VII was a bit of slog featuring a main event storyline built around a war. Yes, WWE decided that best way to build this show was to have Sgt. Slaughter turn his back on America, pledge allegiance to Iraq (whom America would go to war with in early 1991), and have Hulk Hogan kick his ass for AMERICA!!!! It was pretty awful. The one good thing that could be said about this storyline was that it could have been worse as Vince’s original idea was to have Tugboat be the Iraqi sympathizer. Yeah. Tugboat. Still, the angle sucked and dragged down a kind of boring show. And, it certainly didn’t help that not only this PPV pale in comparison to the previous year’s Mania but also to the next year’s. Though, some matches made VII bearable, like the excellent Retirement Match between The Ultimate Warrior and “Macho Man” Randy Savage and pretty good Tag Team Title match between The Hart Foundation and The Nasty Boys. Other than that, the PPV featured a bunch of short matches that were as good the previous year’s bunch of short matches. Basically, it was a lackluster show with an awfully offensive main event angle that got sandwiched in between 2 great WrestleManias.
33. NY/NJ: I don’t blame WWE for doing The Rock VS John Cena a second time, even after billing it as “Once In A Lifetime.” XXVIII did the highest PPV buyrate of all time (1.217 buys), and NY/NJ would see the first ever wrestling box office gate over $10 million ($12.3 million). A lot of money was made off those two. Unfortunately, the sequel was not as good as the original. To be fair, The Rock got injured during it, but it was still an inferior match compared to the original. Speaking of inferior sequels, Triple H took on Brock Lesnar in a rematch from SummerSlam 2012. Again, it wasn’t as good as the original; and it was due to injuries suffered in the match (this time by both men). But, at least Hunter got his win back over Brock. And, for the 2nd year in a row, WWE shit the bed with the World Heavyweight Title, this time by having a babyface Alberto Del Rio take on Jack Swagger with this ultraconservative “Real American” gimmick. It was awful and marked the last time the World Heavyweight Title would appear at WrestleMania. Coincidence? Probably, but it is funny how that worked out. The rest of the card was boring filler. In fact, only 1 match manage to live up to the WrestleMania name: The Undertaker VS CM Punk. It was amazing that this match ended up being so good considering that these 2 had had some clunkers all the way back in 2009. But, as good as this match was, it was still tainted by the tasteless angle that led to it with CM Punk mocking The Undertaker with all sorts of jokes about the then-recently departed Paul Bearer. WWE has never met a death that they didn’t want to exploit. Hell, I’m sure they’ll parade Vince’s dead body around the country when he finally croaks.
34. Star: If you’re gonna force people to watch a 6-hour PPV, then at least put on a good show. Instead, we got this trainwreck. It got off to a bad start as some technical issues that haven’t really been explained caused the doors to the AT&T Stadium to open 20 minutes late, and fans had to enter through the gate that was on their tickets. Since many didn’t follow this policy, they had to go all the way back to the correct gate. This cause the stadium to look empty during the pre-show. Things didn’t get much better on the main broadcast. Chris Jericho defeated AJ Styles because… who the f*** knows!? The League Of Nations beat The New Day just so they could get beat up by Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mick Foley, and Shawn Michaels. Brock Lesnar didn’t do shit to make his match with Dean Ambrose any good. Baron Corbin won the Andre The Giant Battle Royal For All The Guys Creative Has Nothing For. The Rock beat Erick Rowan in 6 f***ing seconds. The Undertaker should have been wrestling Sting, but because WWE wasted him on Triple H the previous year and because Sting got injured at Night Of Champions 2015, that match that fans had wanted for years couldn’t happen. Instead, Sting retired at the Hall Of Fame, and The Undertaker took on Shane McMahon in a sluggish Hell In A Cell Match that had only one good spot where Shane nearly killed himself jumping off of the Cell. And, no one gave a shit when Roman Reigns beat Triple H for the WWE Title. The only positive that this PPV produced was the fact that a women’s match got a chance to steal the show at WrestleMania for once. Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, and Sasha Banks worked their asses off to put on a great match and give the fans something WrestleMania worthy. It’s a shame no one else did.
35. XXVII: So, WWE had this great idea for a WrestleMania match: John Cena VS The Rock; a match between a loyal company man against one of its biggest stars with the former having a problem with the latter just waltzing back in and hogging the spotlight now that he was a big movie star. Unfortunately, they had a terrible idea on how to set up this match: have The Rock show up as a guest for WrestleMania XXVII, f*** over Cena in his WWE Title match with The Miz, and set up that killer dream match for the next WrestleMania. So, WrestleMania XXVII ended up being just one big 4-hour ad for WrestleMania XXVIII And, The Miz, who was proving himself to be a big breath of fresh air in the WWE Title scene, became a huge afterthought. It derailed his career for a while, taking him years to comeback from it. (Though, WWE did their best to derail The Miz yet again; thanks a lot Shane McMahon, The Best In The World.) As bad as that was, the rest of the PPV wasn’t much better. Michael Cole suddenly became the biggest and most annoying heel in the company, which would have been fine if the payoff had been someone like Daniel Bryan beating the snot out of him for 10 minutes. Instead, the honor went to Jerry Lawler, their match was booked to have Cole actually fight off Lawler like an equal, and Lawler’s satisfying win was overturned by that stupid Anonymous RAW General Manager. And, the feud was dragged out for the rest of the year. XXVII saw Edge’s last match ever. It was a disappointment and opened the show, which was weird since it was a World Heavyweight Title match where Edge’s opponent, Alberto Del Rio, had won the Royal Rumble to get that match. Though, it wasn’t all bad. The Undertaker and Triple H had a great match. Cody Rhodes VS Rey Mysterio was pretty good, as was Randy Orton VS CM Punk. But, those high notes still doesn’t change the fact that WWE turned their biggest show of the year into one big ad.
36. 2: So, PPVs were new. WWE were trying some things out. They experimented. And, some experiments failed. This was a big failure. For some strange reason, they held the PPV in 3 locations: the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, NY; the Rosemont Horizon in Rosemont, IL; and the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles, CA. With 4 matches at each location. And, for some stranger reason, they went through each portion of the show one at a time instead of alternating. This must have been hard for the live audience as the Uniondale crowd got 4 live matches and then had to watch the rest on monitors while the L.A. crowd had to sit through 8 matches before getting some live action. As bad as it was for the live crowd, the PPV audience didn’t have it much better. Only one match from the show is worth seeking out: the Tag Team Titles match between The Dream Team and The British Bulldogs. The rest range from okay (the Boxing Match between Mr. T and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, the battle royal between WWF wrestlers and NFL players) to hilariously bad (Uncle Elmer VS “Adorable” Adrian Adonis) to meh (the Steel Cage match between Hulk Hogan and King Kong Bundy for the WWE Title). And, the commentary featured 3 celebrities who never ever called a wrestling show before, which must have made audiences scrambling to mute their TVs. Basically, WrestleMania 2 was an over bloated sequel that just throws more things into the mix, hoping audiences will like the spectacle. It just didn’t work. Thankfully, WWE has never tried it again.
37. XI: Some people call this the Worst WrestleMania. I disagree, but it comes damn close. The things that keep this from being the worst are the main event matches. Shawn Michaels did a good job of getting a good match out of Diesel, and the Bam Bam Bigelow/Lawrence Taylor match was better than it had any right to be. But, even those highlights have lowlights. As good as the WWE Title match was, it was still plagued by Shawn purposely botching Diesel’s Jackknife powerbomb and a spot where Diesel kicked out of Michaels’s Sweet Chin Music at 2 by throwing HBK off of him, which got him booed instead of cheered like McMahon though would happen. As for the Bam Bam/LT match, who in the hell thought it was a good idea to have LT wrestle Bam Bam by himself? Poor LT was exhausted after the match. He looked like he was about to pass out throughout it. They could have easily had a tag match to take the pressure off of LT. I mean, Lex Luger and The British Bulldog were available. They didn’t really need to face The Blu Brothers in opener. Though, despite LT blowing up, Bam Bam managed to get a decent match out of him; he earned that $250,000 he was paid for the event. As for the rest of the card, the worst match was between Bret Hart and Bob Backlund. How is that even possible? The Undertaker VS King Kong Bundy was boring. And, the others weren’t that memorable either. Plus, there was the fact that XI was held at the Hartford Civic Center, which was next to a shopping mall. And, the celebrities. Besides LT and Pamela Anderson, we had such big names as Nicholas Turturro and Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who beat Backlund at chess. They don’t really compare to Muhammad Ali and Liberace dancing with The Rockettes a decade earlier.
38. IX: Ladies and gentlemen, the Worst WrestleMania Ever! It may have gotten off to a good start with a good Intercontinental Title match between Shawn Michaels and Tatanka and a killer match between The Steiner Brothers and The Headshrinkers. But, after that, JESUS CHRIST!!!! Doink VS Crush was terrible until the crazy finish with the second Doink. Razor Ramon VS Bob Backlund was a bore. The Undertaker had his worst WrestleMania match with a huge stinker with Giant Gonzalez. Hulk Hogan wrestled twice. First, he and Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake had a wild, overbooked match with Money, Inc. Then, he showed up in the main event. After Bret “The Hitman” Hart had an okay match with Yokozuna, Hogan came out to check on Bret after he got salt thrown into his eyes by Mr. Fuji. Then, Yoko challenged him to a match for the title right then and there. And, Hogan beat him in 22 seconds. Thanks to his ego, two guys got screwed over in less than half a minute. Just how bad was this? Well, this only happened because Bret agreed thinking that Hogan would drop the belt to him at SummerSlam. But, by the King Of The Ring, Hogan had decided to not go through with that. So, instead, we got Yokozuna winning the title off of Hogan and took on Lex Luger in that awful main event where he won by countout and celebrated like he won the WWE Title. This WrestleMania was so bad it made the same year’s SummerSlam bad as well. When one PPV f***s over another, it’s an easy contender for the worst of its kind.
1. X-Seven: The Greatest WrestleMania Of All Time. Why? Because it had something for every wrestling fan. Do you like good technical wrestling that looks like a real, athletic competition? Well, the PPV began with Chris Jericho taking on William Regal AND had a great bout between Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit. Do you prefer wild brawls where the competitors beat each other up with all manners of weapons? There was a fun Hardcore Title match among Raven, Kane, and The Big Show. And, The Undertaker and Triple H beat the shit out of each other in a fun fight. Do you go wild spotfests where the wrestlers damn near kill themselves to entertain you? Then, there’s TLC II, where Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boyz, and The Dudley Boyz put on an even better sequel to their great Ladder Match from the year before. And, Rhyno, Lita, and Spike Dudley showed up for some added fun. Do you want your wrestling matches to be wild spectacles with a lot of storyline drama? Well, Vince and Shane McMahon gave us that in their fun Street Fight with some assistance from Stephanie, Linda, Trish Stratus, and special guest referee Mick Foley. Do you like to see all of that in a lovely paud dei due of wrestling madness? Then, there’s the main event. The Greatest WrestleMania main event saw The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin pull out all sorts of wrestling holds and weapons, ending with Austin selling his soul to the devil by joining forces with McMahon. The heel turn has proven to somewhat controversial, with some people seeing it as a mistake. But, Austin had become stale as a babyface. The heel turn reinvigorated his career and led to some interesting storylines until The Invasion came along. Speaking of which, X-Seven is seen as the end of The Attitude Era as WCW had been bought by WWE just a week before the PPV. With the Monday Night War over, things started to sour. But, WrestleMania X-Seven gave the most profitable time in wrestling history a wonderful send off.
2. III: It wasn’t the first WrestleMania, but it was the first to FEEL like WrestleMania. After the failed experiment of WrestleMania 2 with its 3 venues, Vince McMahon came up with a much better idea for WrestleMania III: hold it in a large stadium and make the main event a huge dream match that fans wanted to see. Sure enough, we got Hulk Hogan VS Andre The Giant for the WWE Title inside the Pontiac Silverdome. It was the hype job to end all hype jobs, and it delivered. While it may not have been the best match in the world (or on the card), Hogan VS Andre was a huge spectacle as Hogan faced his biggest challenge. There was a lot of drama involved, especially with fans wondering if Hogan could bodyslam The Giant. When he did, the crowd went nuts; and wrestling got one of its most iconic images. As good as the main event was, there was a better match on the undercard as Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat and “Macho Man” Randy Savage stole the show with a fast-paced, back-and-forth encounter for the Intercontinental Title. It was very different from the slow-paced matches that had dominated wrestling in the past, a huge step forward for the industry that would lead to more exciting matches in the future. The rest of the card was basically filler, but there were entertaining moments throughou, like King Kong Bundy dropping an elbow onto Little Beaver, “Adorable” Adrian Adonis getting his head shaved by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Brutus Beefcake (becoming The Barber in that moment), and Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Alice Cooper terrorizing Jimmy Hart with Damien the snake. It was the “Goldfinger” of WrestleMania, setting up the formula for the event for years to come with the right amount of action, drama, and spectacle.
3. XIX: 2003 was not a great year for WWE. Some of their worst PPVs came out of this year. Luckily, WrestleMania XIX did what all good WrestleManias are supposed to do: live up to the hype. XIX was just a great show for one simple reason: a lot of great wrestling matches. Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon had a fun little street fight. Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho stole the show with an excellent match. Even better was the ending when Jericho hugged Michaels and then kneed him in the crotch. The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin completed their WrestleMania trilogy with another great match, one that worked perfectly around the hindrances that Austin’s injuries. Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle damn near killed themselves in a terrific main event, Angle working with a broken freakin neck and Lesnar pulling off the greatest botch in wrestling history. It was just a good show from top to bottom. Not even that stupid segment with the Miller Lite catfight girls could ruin this show. But, the real mark of just how great this PPV was was, funny enough, the World Heavyweight Title match between Triple H and Booker T. I know that sounds weird, especially considering the racist storyline they had for the match and the fact that Triple H winning made it 10 times worse. But, the match itself wasn’t that bad. They had one of the best matches with a shitty ending in wrestling history. And, that’s the mark of a great PPV: when you can say something positive about a PPV’s mistakes.
4. XIV: Things looked bad for WWE following The Montreal Screwjob. With Vince McMahon having screwed over Bret “The Hitman” Hart, robbing him of the WWE Title, it looked like WWE was falling apart. Soon after, WWE and WCW would hold their most important PPVs: WrestleMania XIV and Starrcade 1997. At Starrcade, WCW blew it: the nWo beat WCW in most of the matches on what was supposed to be WCW’s revenge PPV; Bret Hart, having come in red hot, had a bucket of ice water dumped on him as his 1st WCW appearance saw him refereeing a match between Eric Bischoff and Larry Zbyszko; and the Sting/Hollywood Hogan match ended in such bullshit that the stink wouldn’t wash off of WCW until its death. At WrestleMania XIV, Stone Cold Steve Austin took his place as the new top dog by defeated Shawn Michaels in a classic match; The Undertaker just barely won a war with his brother Kane, who came off looking like a million bucks despite losing; The Rock took another step into becoming The Most Electrifying Man In Sports Entertainment by creating one of his signature catchphrases; and the rest of the roster put on an entertaining show. After the Screwjob, it looked like WWE was finished. But, that one moment ended up turning WWE’s fortunes. Not only did it allow Stone Cold to take over but also gave him his greatest rival and led to Mike Tyson coming in thanks to all that money Vince saved from Bret’s contract. WWE stepped up its game and took its first steps to being the most dominant company in North American wrestling by putting on an excellent PPV that gave the fans what they wanted instead of ticking them off.
5. X: Sandwiched in between 2 terrible WrestleManias is this gem. WrestleMania X took place during one of WWE’s lowest points and delivered a great show with 2 killer matches. First up, Bret Hart taking on his brother Owen in a technical classic. Easily the best WrestleMania opener, Bret and Owen pulled out all manners of scientific submission wrestling moves to put on one of the greatest matches in both their careers. And, the kicker: Owen won, beating Bret on the same night he’d take back the WWE Title he lost a year earlier. This just added gasoline to the fire that was their great sibling rivalry feud. That match alone would have been enough to get this WrestleMania ranked high, but then Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon had to go and steal the show later on. They would put on another 5-star match with their classic Ladder Match for the Intercontinental Title. This awesome match wasn’t the first Ladder Match held in WWE, but it would set the template for Ladder Matches to come after. Besides these classics, Yokozuna defended his WWE Title twice in 2 entertaining matches. In fact, there wasn’t really a dud on this show. I mean, when a Mixed Tag Match where Bam Bam Bigelow and Luna Vachon have to take on babyface Doink and his little buddy Dink is pretty good, you know you’ve gotten a great WrestleMania.
6. XX: It’s hard to look back at WrestleMania XX. The PPV ended with Chris Benoit, having just won the World Heavyweight Title, celebrating with WWE Champion Eddie Guerrero. Two lifelong friends who had to deal with so much backstage political bullshit were finally getting the respect and titles they deserved. A little over a year later, the ending would become melancholic after Guerrero suddenly died of a heart attack. Three years after that, it would become tainted by the tragedy that Chris Benoit unleashed onto the wrestling industry. As tarnished as this PPV is, I still couldn’t rank it any lower because it was a really good PPV. That Triple Threat match where Benoit won the title was fantastic. Benoit, Triple H, and Shawn Michaels worked their asses off to put on a great match, and seeing Triple H actually tapping out was a thing of beauty. Guerrero had a great match himself as he and Kurt Angle pulled out all their technical moves to put on a highly underrated match. Speaking of underrated, this PPV also features the most underrated match in WrestleMania history as Chris Jericho and Christian put on a classic that has been overshadowed by other better remembered matches. The Rock and Mick Foley showed no signs of ring rust in their match with Evolution’s Randy Orton, Ric Flair, and Batista. John Cena won the United States Title off of The Big Show in a good opener. Sure, there were some lowlights: the Playboy Evening Gown Match, Kane and The Undertaker’s 2nd WrestleMania couldn’t live up to the classic they’d had at XIV, and Goldberg and Brock Lesnar stunk up the joint. But, other than that, WrestleMania’s 2nd trip to Madison Square Garden was a damn good show.
7. VI: It’s a huge disservice to this PPV to call it a one-match-show. Though, it pretty much is one. The show was built around the epic encounter of The Ultimate Warrior putting his Intercontinental Title on the line in order to challenge for Hulk Hogan’s WWE Title. And, this match certainly lived up to the hype. These 2 men put on an incredibly well-booked match, made even better considering they were the best workers. But, they beat the crap out of each other, and the Toronto crowd ate it up. But still, WrestleMania VI shouldn’t be remember just for that one match. The rest of the card was stacked with a lot of talented wrestlers who could put on entertaining matches that weren’t meant to last very long. “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Bad News Brown had a brief brawl. The Mixed Tag Team Match between Dusty Rhodes & Sapphire VS “Macho King” Randy Savage and Queen Sherri was pretty entertaining. The Tag Team Titles match was really good; Haku worked his ass off to pull off a good match as his partner Andre The Giant couldn’t really work much because of his health. And, Jake “The Snake” Roberts and “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase tore it up in the 1st Million Dollar Championship match. Of those early one-match-show WrestleManias, VI was easily the best.
8. VIII: This WrestleMania shouldn’t have been as good as it was. The business was taking a huge downturn. The steroids and sex scandals had rocked WWE. Wrestling wasn’t as cool as it was in the 1980s. And, to make matters worse, backstage politics prevented Vince McMahon from putting on the main event he wanted: Hulk Hogan VS Ric Flair for the WWE Title. They had the opportunity to put on the ultimate wrestling match of the time: WWE’s biggest babyface VS the NWA’s biggest heel. And, they let it slip through their fingers, allowing WCW to do it 2 years later. But, somehow, everything came together to put on a spectacular show. While we didn’t get Hogan VS Flair, there was a great consolation prize with Flair instead taking on “Macho Man” Randy Savage. They put on a great match that damn near stole the show. I say “damn near” because there was an excellent Intercontinental Title between Bret “The Hitman” Hart and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper that did steal the show. It was a great match with an amazing little story as Piper came very close to turning heel by hitting Bret with the ring bell only to be talked out of it by the crowd. The other matches were basically filler, but they were terrible. Funny enough, the one that match that really left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth was the main event. Instead of fighting Flair, Hogan took on Sid Justice. The match itself wasn’t awful, but the finish was. Sid had to kick out of Hogan’s leg drop, the most protected move in WWE history, because Papa Shango missed his cue. This led to Harvey Wippleman interfering for a clumsy DQ finish that saw Shango finally come out followed by The Ultimate Warrior, looking a little smaller and creating an enduring urban legend that he was an imposter and the real Warrior had died. It was the one letdown of a great PPV.
9. 23: It’s not often that WWE will put on a WrestleMania where all the big hyped-up matches end up living up to the hype. Here, WWE booked this show around 3 big matches: a WWE Title match between John Cena and Shawn Michaels, a World Heavyweight Title match between Batista and The Undertaker, and a Hair VS Hair Match where Bobby Lashley, with Donald Trump in his corner, took on Umaga, with Vince McMahon in his corner. The Cena/Michaels match was a great main event with both guys putting on a hell of a show. Sadly, it’s been overlooked because Cena and Michaels would have an even better match on RAW about a month later and because of an even better match at 23. That match would be The Undertaker VS Batista. Rumor has it, both of them were upset that they would be main eventing, especially since Taker won the Rumble that year. So, they purposely tried to steal the show. And, good Lord almighty, they stole the f*** out it. It helped that both men had such great chemistry with one another that the ring must have been covered in salt after they were done. Then, there was the Battle Of The Billionaires. It’s weird to look back and see a future U.S. President shaving Vince McMahon bald at WrestleMania, but it happened. And, it was pretty entertaining. And, the match that came before that entertaining spectacle wasn’t that bad either. There was also a pretty good MITB Ladder Match to begin the show. The only thing that brought this PPV down were the other matches, which were treated like filler matches and came off as such. But, other than that, this was a damn good WrestleMania.
10. 21: WrestleMania should go Hollywood more often. This was a damn fine PPV. Even before it began, 21 was doing good stuff thanks to the best WrestleMania ad campaign with those hilarious movie parodies. It got off to a great start with Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio just fighting for bragging rights, which began a good feud where Eddie became obsessed with beating Rey. Of course, WWE would ruin it with all that shit about Eddie being Dominic Mysterio’s real dad. After that, we had the first Money In The Bank Ladder Match, which was a great spot fest that let Shelton Benjamin do his thing and show off his skills while also giving Edge one of the biggest wins of his glorious career. Someone finally realized that The Undertaker had never lost at WrestleMania and decided to book his WrestleMania matches around The Streak. He had the perfect opponent for this with “The Legend Killer” Randy Orton in a pretty good match. Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle were booked to steal the show, and they did just that with a fantastic match that they made up on the fly because they are wrestling freaks. And, Batista brought an end to the Reign Of Terror by defeating Triple H and bringing his stranglehold on the World Heavyweight Title to an end. And, there were some cool moments like Hulk Hogan beating up Muhammad Hassan and the Piper’s Pit with Stone Cold. Though, there were some turds in the punchbowl: Trish Stratus struggled to get a decent match out of Christy Hemme, the Sumo Match with Akebono and The Big Show’s ass, and that disappointing WWE Title match. But, they couldn’t drag down a great WrestleMania.
11. Play Button: Not many people had high hopes for this one. I mean, Brock Lesnar VS Roman Reigns for the WWE Title!? Rusev VS John Cena for the United States Title!? Seth Rollins VS Randy Orton!? The Undertaker VS Bray Wyatt with no Streak on the line!? Sting VS Triple H instead of The Undertaker!? A ladder match with a bunch of guys thrown together because they have nothing for them on the same show as a battle royal with a bunch of guys thrown together because they have nothing for them!? They even got rid of the number, forcing us to call it “WrestleMania Play Button.” On paper, this PPV was gonna suck. In practice, this exceeded expectations. Rusev and Cena had a good match, and Rusev came to the ring in a f***ing tank! Rollins VS Orton was pretty good, too, and had one of the great RKO counters out of nowhere. It was a thing of beauty how they executed it off of Rollins’s Curb Stomp. Wyatt VS Undertaker was good, but it would have been better if The Streak was still around. That ladder match, which had an awful build with every guy just stealing the Intercontinental Title, was an entertaining spotfest, which was, honestly, to be expected since WWE is good at putting on those kind of ladder matches. As for Sting VS Triple H, it looked like it was going to suck, and… it did suck. It sucked eggs. Triple H won for no damn reason. It was just another excuse to put WWE over WCW yet again. As good as the PPV was, it still had its downsides. But, despite that, Play Button was still a really good PPV, and the thing that put it over the top was the main event. It wasn’t the match itself; Lesnar and Reigns just don’t have good chemistry together. But, the ending made it great. Having Seth Rollins run in, cash in his MITB briefcase as the match was going on, and win the WWE Title was a very pleasant surprise. No one was looking forward to seeing Roman win nor wanted Lesnar to keep the title. Luckily, they still had the MITB briefcase as their Get Out Of Jail card and ended the PPV with pleasant surprise. Rollins pulled off the heist of the century, and everyone was happy to see him take the title and run.
12. XXX: WrestleMania has a good track record with numbers ending in 0. Though not as good as X or XX, WrestleMania XXX was still a good PPV. Sure, it had it’s bad spots. As good as John Cena VS Bray Wyatt was, having Cena win was a big mistake. And, having Brock Lesnar end The Undertaker’s Streak was probably a mistake in the long run. It killed Taker’s aura at WrestleMania, and it would have been better served for him to lose to someone who could use the rub in what should be Taker’s last match at WrestleMania. And, the other matches were basically filler. So, why rank this WrestleMania so high? Because of the incredible story it told with the first and last match. After shitting the bed at the 2014 Royal Rumble, WWE realized that it might not be a good idea to have Batista win the WWE Title off of Randy Orton, especially when every single one of their fans was telling them that they wanted Daniel Bryan. So, WWE gave them what they wanted. The story was simple: Bryan had to beat Triple H in the opening match to even get into the main event. And, he did only to get attacked by Triple H afterwards, teasing that he might not make it to the main event. But, he did only to get double teamed by Orton and Batista and seemingly taking him out of the match with a Batista Bomb/RKO combo through a table. Only, he came back, pulled off the Upset Of The Century, and had the entire Superdome chanting “YES! YES! YES!” It was electric. Sure, WWE blew it with his reign and feud with Kane; and it took years for them to undo the damage thanks to his awesome heel vegan run as WWE Champ. But, that one night was probably the most cathartic moment of joy in WWE history.
13. XXIV: “I’m sorry. I love you.” It’s the most famous quote in WrestleMania history and for good reason. Shawn Michaels constructed a perfect match for Ric Flair to go out on. It was well worked and told a great story. Too bad Flair had to go and ruin it by working in TNA. At least he hasn’t wrestled in WWE again, so it’s not entirely tainted. And, it’s good enough to make you forget about Flair’s TNA time. Of course, that Flair/Michaels match wasn’t the only thing WrestleMania XXIV had going for it. The Big Show/Floyd Mayweather match exceeded expectations. WWE did a good job of booking a match that was entertaining and worked around Mayweather’s limitations. Once again, the MITB Ladder Match was an entertaining spotfest. And, the two World Title matches were pretty good; not as good as the previous year but they were entertaining nonetheless. Though, XXIV does have its down spots: the 11 ECW Title match, the Playboy BunnyMania Lumberjill Match (that title only will give you cancer), Batista and Umaga’s filler match. But, they couldn’t drag down this PPV too much.
14. X-8: Sandwiched in between two pieces of artisan bread (X-Seven and XIX) is this slice of cheap fried Spam. It ain’t gourmet, but it’s not exactly terrible either. Sure, WrestleMania X-8 has its lowlights: the main event between Chris Jericho and Triple H may have been a serviceable match, but the build to it where Jericho, the WWE Champion, was an afterthought playing dogsitter was awful. Booker T and Edge fought over a shampoo commercial. And, the rest of the card was basically filler. But, there were some good highlights. The Rock and Hulk Hogan made this show with their great match. It more than lived up to the hype and was incredible when you considered that they threw out their original plans and made up a new match on the fly because the crowd surprisingly cheered for Hogan, the heel, and booed The Rock, the face. The Undertaker and Ric Flair had a damn fine underrated match, with a boost from Arn Anderson and his famous spinebuster. Kurt Angle and Kane had a pretty good match. The multiple Hardcore Title changes on the show were fun. And, Scott Hall’s selling of the Stone Cold Stunner made that match worth watching. While it was a pretty good show, it just had the misfortune of coming in between 2 of the best WrestleManias ever held.
15. XII: WrestleMania XII is a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of that has to do with the main event, the Iron Man Match between Bret “The Hitman” Hart VS Shawn Michaels for the WWE Title. Some, like me, see it as a great hour of two of the best wrestlers trading wrestling moves back and forth until an exciting final 10 minutes with both men desperately trying to get a pinfall as neither one had scored in the previous 50 minutes. Others see it as a slog of a match until that final 10 minutes. Either way, it was a better main event than a lot of other WrestleMania main events. Besides that, there are some good things about this PPV. The Undertaker finally had a good match at WrestleMania and with Diesel of all people. The Hollywood Backlot Brawl was a lot of fun. And, Triple H got bitched out in less than 2 minutes by The Ultimate Warrior. On the bad side, Vince decided to poke some fun at the competition by having a joke match between The Huckster and The Nacho Man. It was weird of him to call Hogan and Savage old when Hogan would go on to rejuvenate his career with the greatest heel turn of all time and Savage was still putting on quality matches. Also, XII had Jake “The Snake” Roberts, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, and The Ultimate Warrior, 3 of their peers, booked on the card, which made the whole thing look incredibly hypocritical of McMahon. Still, I get the idea behind it, making WWE look like a place for young talent to rise to the top of card. Though, he didn’t need to do all that; just having Shawn and Bret in the main event was good enough.
16. V: A lot of the early WrestleManias were basically one-match-shows built around the main event. Of course, WrestleMania V had one hell of a main event: “Macho Man” Randy Savage VS Hulk Hogan for the WWE Title. The Mega-Powers exploding was easily one of WWE’s best long build stories. For the better part of 2 years, Savage and Hogan had been good friends. The story picked up steam at IV when Savage won the WWE Title in the finals of a 14-man tournament, with Hogan helping Savage win. But, the partnership didn’t last. Slowly, Savage’s jealousy with Hogan’s friendliness towards Miss Elizabeth would heat up. It eventually boiled over during a tag team match against The Twin Towers when Elizabeth accidentally got hurt and Hogan took her backstage for help. Unfortunately, Savage was left alone. Though Hogan came back, Savage was still pissed and left Hogan alone to face their opponents. After Hogan managed to win, he confronted Savage, which led to the infamous quote "You've got lust in your eyes, and your black heart, for Elizabeth!" and Savage attacking Hogan. This would all lead to a fantastic match lived up to the hype. It was easily the best match of Hogan’s career, thanks to Savage’s well-known penitent for meticulously planned matches. The main event really elevated the show, but the rest of the card wasn’t all that bad. There were some cool moments, like “Ravishing” Rick Rude stealing the Intercontinental Title from The Ultimate Warrior, Strike Force breaking up in dramatic fashion as Rick Martel left Tito Santana to get beat up by The Brain Busters, and that infamous Piper’s Pit where “Rowdy” Roddy Piper sprayed Morton Downey Jr. with a fire extinguisher. Though, the undercard was just an appetizer for the excellent main event.
17. Jolly Roger: I just love that after one full year of PPVs with no audience, the 1st time WWE puts on a show with a live audience; it gets rained out for like half an hour. It’s almost as if God was trying to tell Vince McMahon something. Also, it was weird to see the show have a pirate theme 2 years in a row. Of course, it took place in a stadium with a pirate ship built in it; and if I bought a bunch of pirate crap for my biggest PPV, I’d keep them in storage until I could use them. Anyway, besides some technical difficulties and a reused theme, this was a pretty good show. Again, WrestleMania was a 2-night affair, which I like. If they’re gonna overload the show, then I’d rather have a 2-night event rather than an 8-hour show. And, the matches were good. The highlights included Bobby Lashley VS Drew McIntyre for the WWE Title, Cesaro VS Seth Rollins, Bianca Belair VS Sasha Banks for the SmackDown! Women’s Title, Kevin Owens VS Sami Zayn, Rhea Ripley VS Asuka for the RAW Women’s Title, and the Triple Threat Match for the Universal Title. Plus, 2 matches that looked like duds (Braun Strowman VS Shane McMahon and the match with Bad Bunny) were pleasant surprises. And, I enjoyed The Fiend’s hijinks, even though it made no sense that he’d lose to Randy Orton (maybe Bray Wyatt should just stick to wrestling Orton at WrestleMania). Really, the only bad thing about this PPV was the build. I mean, one of the match’s feus (Strowman VS Shane) was built around Strowman being an idiot who didn’t know the difference between the WWE and Universal Titles. The build to the show made it seem like it was gonna be lame. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.
18. XXVIII: It’s pretty amazing that this PPV has not 1, not 2, but THREE!!!! matches with nicknames. First, there was 18 Seconds: The awful World Heavyweight Title match where Sheamus Brogue kicked Daniel Bryan and won the title in just 18 seconds. This pissed off all the fans there and did a lot of damage to Sheamus, who was basically a one-dimensional bully WWE wanted fans to cheer. Though, Bryan would benefit a lot from this as the fans rallied around him, feeling he was getting railroaded by WWE. 2 years later, he was winning the WWE Title while everyone in the Superdome screamed “YES! YES! YES!” Second, there was The End Of An Era: The Hell In A Cell Match between The Undertaker and Triple H with Shawn Michaels as the special guest referee. This was a pretty entertaining bout as Triple H was doing everything he could do end The Streak only to fail miserably. It was a great send off for both guys. Too bad they had to go and ruin it at Super Show-Down AND Crown Jewel 6 years later. Finally, there was Once In A Lifetime: The Rock VS John Cena. I gotta hand it to WWE. When they made this main event all the way back at the RAW after WrestleMania XXVII, I thought for sure they wouldn’t have the patience to wait a whole year before giving us this match. But, they did it. While they did give us a taste at Survivor Series, they didn’t blow their load prematurely and end up with a big mess on their hands. Instead, they waited, and we got a very good main event. The only downside was the freaking nickname, “Once In A Lifetime,” which implied that this would be the ONLY TIME Cena and Rock would face each other. Of course, we got it again the next year. Outside of those 3 matches, XXVIII had some other highlights (CM Punk VS Chris Jericho for the WWE Title) and a lot of filler (Kane VS Randy Orton, Team Johnny VS Team Teddy, a match with Maria Menounos). All in all, it wasn’t a bad WrestleMania, but there were a lot of parts that either enraged people and just didn’t leave a big impression.
19. Lone Star: On paper, this WrestleMania looks terrible. Ronda Rousey VS Charlotte Flair. THREE celebrity matches. Seth Rollins VS a mystery opponent so that he can get a WrestleMania moment, because apparently The Heist Of The Century doesn’t count. Another Brock Lesnar/Roman Reigns main event, a match people weren’t all that interested in the first time WWE booked it back at Play Button (hence The Heist Of The Century; ARE THESE PEOPLE f***ING WITH US!!!!?). However, it turned out to be a solid show. There were a lot of good matches: Bianca Belair winning the RAW Women’s Title from Becky Lynch was great. Edge VS AJ Styles was a dream match that lived up to the height. While Rollins’s match had a shitty build, his match with a returning Cody Rhodes was very good. Stone Cold Steve Austin’s return match against Kevin Owens was fun (major props to Austin for taking bumps on concrete). And, the celebrity matches exceeded expectations. Plus, it led to Vince McMahon giving the worst Stone Cold Stunner sell ever, one so bad it circled around into being great again. Though, it wasn’t all great. The Charlotte/Rousey wasn’t as great as their last encounter at Survivor Series 2018. Bobby Lashley couldn’t do shit with Omos, who may just be the worst giant WWE has ever had. At least, The Great Khali and Giant Gonzalez had a presence to them; Omos is just a big doofus who can barely move right. And, that Reigns/Lesnar match was as big of a letdown that people thought it was going to be. Reigns easily won to take both titles and keep his never-ending, untroublesome reign going. It was a huge wet fart of an ending. But, the rest of the PPV was pretty good. And, it could have been so much worse.
20. XXVI: Another mixed bag WrestleMania, this one had a lot of good things going for it. The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels had another great WrestleMania match. Though, this one was as great as the one they had at 25. Then again, it would have to be the Greatest Wrestling Match In The History Of The Universe to top that. But, this was still a good match, and it was smart to finish on this since the previous year saw these 2 put on a classic that burnt out the crowd for the rest of the show. As for the World Title matches, XXVI’s pair topped 25’s as John Cena and Batista showed off the great chemistry they have together in their WWE Title match, and Edge and Chris Jericho had a very good World Heavyweight Title match. In fact, I think it might be impossible for those 2 to have a bad match with one another. And, of course, the MITB Ladder Match was an entertaining spotfest. But, the rest of the show wasn’t so great. Much of it was just filler. Bret “The Hitman” Hart wrestled his 1st match in WWE since Survivor Series 1997, against Vince McMahon, the man who screwed him over at that PPV. And, the match sucked. It was God Awful. Though, when a man who hadn’t wrestled since 1999 and had been recovering from a stroke took on a 64-year-old man, it was inevitable that the match would suck. And, there was this awful moment in the PPV when Vickie Guerrero performed a frog splash as a tribute to her late husband Eddie, and Michael Cole called it a bullfrog splash. It was supposed to be funny because Vickie isn’t conventionally attractive and a little overweight and who gives a shit if she’s doing a tribute to her husband who suddenly died and left her to support the female by taking a job where she’d get humiliated week after week. Ha ha ha!!!! (f*** this f***ing company up the ass with a barbed wired covered dildo!!!!)
21. Pirate Ship: If WrestleMania is held in front of no live audience, it is really a WrestleMania? That’s what happened here. To be fair, the coronavirus f***ed up everything, causing all the sporting events in the country to be cancelled. WWE could have easily just postponed the event until they could have had a proper WrestleMania, but I can see why they didn’t: they don’t know how long that could be, and people do need a distraction now. But, it’s just weird to see WWE’s biggest show being held in a training facility with no fans. I mean, Drew McIntyre finally won the WWE Title and erased his 3MB joke legacy; but he had to celebrate with no one cheering for him. It really deflated the moment. Not to mention that Braun Strowman finally winning a World Title (the Universal Title) was also disappointing since he only got it because Roman Reigns backed out and because it came way too late (WWE loves to strike when the iron is freezing cold and no one knows there’s an iron to be struck). But, it wasn’t a total loss. There were some good matches, like Rhea Ripley VS Charlotte Flair for the NXT Women’s Title, Kevin Owens VS Seth Rollins, and the Ladder Match for the SmackDown! Tag Team Titles. Also, I loved that it was 2 nights. Since WWE had decided to overload the event with matches, having them take place over 2 nights is much more enjoyable to watch than 1 8-hour block. But, the best parts were the 2 insane cinematic matches. First, the Boneyard Match, which played like a more serious take on the Broken Matt Hardy matches, with The Undertaker and AJ Styles beating the hell out of each other in a fun match. If the Broken Matt matches are David Lynch surreal arthouse flicks, then this was a really good James Cameron blockbuster. But then, there was the Firefly Fun House Match. Good God Almighty was this thing glorious. It managed to outweird the Broken Matt matches, with John Cena cycling back through his various looks through the years, homages to the nWo and Saturday Night’s Main Event, and so many puppets. Honestly, the whole event could have stood to be as weird and fun as those matches. I mean, if you’re not gonna have any fans in attendance, then you may as well shake things up.
22. I: It’s interesting to look back at the first WrestleMania. Its very existence was a big step forward for the wrestling industry as it would help solidify the PPV market as the driving force in making money until The WWE Network came along. It featured celebrities like Mr. T, Muhammad Ali, and Liberace. And, it featured a crop of young talented wrestlers like Ricky Steamboat, Barry Windham, Mike Rotunda, and Wendi Richter who would bring a much more faster-paced style of wrestling to the sport. Though, a lot of it is still a product of its time as most of the matches have the slow 1980s style. And, it doesn’t feature much of the ballyhoo that today’s WrestleManias have. Still, it was a fun show. And, the main event, Hulk Hogan & Mr. T VS “Rowdy” Roddy Piper & “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff, delivered on the hype. It was an exciting match, Mr. T held his own, and the ending where “Cowboy” Bob Orton accidentally hit Orndorff to cost the heels the match was well done and would lead to one of the company’s angles when Orndorff became friends with Hogan only to turn on him out of jealousy While it might not live up to modern day standards, it was okay for what it was at the time. Though, it has been surpassed by other WrestleManias, which is why I ranked it so low.
23. Roller Coaster: Some people call this “WrestleMania Sun,” but I prefer “WrestleMania Roller Coaster” since roller coasters were much more prominently featured and because it was an accurate description of the PPV itself. The pre-show built things up slowly and then we got an exciting rush down through some cool dips thanks to AJ Styles managing to get a good match out of Shane McMahon without any No DQ stipulation to give Shane an excuse to jump off of something. Then, a couple of loops with Kevin Owens VS Chris Jericho (which should have been for the Universal Title instead of the United States Title) and Fatal 4-Way RAW Women’s Title Match. Then, another exciting drop with a Ladder Match for the RAW Tag Team Titles with the Hardy Boyz returning. Then, another slow build with a stupid Mix Tag Team Match as The Miz & Maryse, after doing some of the best heel work in ages by impersonating their opponents, getting jobbed out to John Cena & Nikki Bella just so Cena could propose to Nikki. And, it was all pointless as they ended up breaking up. Then, another cool drop with Seth Rollins beating Triple H in a surprisingly good match. Then, another slow part with Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton fighting in awful match with a bunch of stupid special effects from Wyatt to try and distract Orton only for it all to fail and be pointless. Then, the final slope down with an exciting Universal Title Match as Brock Lesnar and Goldberg beat the shit out of each other in just 5 minutes. Then, the PPV came to a slow end with another Women’s Title match and an awful main event as Roman Reigns struggled to get a good match out of a way past his prime Undertaker. Basically, it was a thrilling as a roller coaster but unfortunately just as nauseating and not as fleeting (it was nearly 7 hours)/
24. 25: Much like 13, WrestleMania 25 had one great match that was let down by the rest of the PPV. Shawn Michaels VS The Undertaker had arguably the Greatest Match In WrestleMania History. These two men put on a match for the ages, one that exceeded all expectations everyone had for it and made me look like a f***ing idiot because I thought both men at their ages couldn’t have as good a match as they did back in 1997. Boy was I incredibly wrong. It was a stone cold classic, and it deserved a much better PPV than the shitshow it got. Even before the PPV had aired, it annoyed people as WWE insisted on calling it “The 25th Anniversary Of WrestleMania” even though it was actually the 24th Anniversary and would have been more accurate as “The 25th Annual WrestleMania.” The two World Title matches weren’t that great. The World Heavyweight Title Triple Threat with Edge, John Cena, and The Big Show was a big disappointment considering all involved. And, the WWE Title match between Triple H and Randy Orton was easily the Most Boring WrestleMania main event of all time. The build to the match saw Orton beating up every McMahon in sight and Triple H breaking into Orton’s house. So, one would think that WWE would let these 2 beat the shit out of each other with all sorts of weapons. Instead, they stipulated that Triple H would lose if he got DQ’ed. That sapped all the momentum from the match and turned it into a big snoozefest. Then, there was that awful Kid Rock mini-concert that went on for so long that it got a Tag Team Title Unification match bumped to the dark match and cause the Miss WrestleMania Battle Royal to compress its time to just 7 minutes, causing a bunch of returning women and current Divas to barely get any screen time. And, that women’s Battle Royal was won by Santina Marella, Santino Marella in drag. Yes, a man won the 1st women’s Battle Royal in WrestleMania history. As bad as 25 was outside of The Undertaker/Michaels match, it did have a couple of matches that tried to elevate the PPV: the MITB Ladder Match and an Extreme Rules Match between Matt and Jeff Hardy, both of which were entertaining spot fests. So, those matches plus The Greatest Match In WrestleMania History are the only reasons this PPV got ranked so high.
25. 13: Bret “The Hitman” Hart VS Stone Cold Steve Austin in a Submission Match. Say it loud, and there’s music playing. Say it soft, and it’s almost like praying. Hart and Austin put on one of the greatest and bloodiest battles in WWE history. It was an excellent mix of technical wrestling, brawling, hardcore action, and great storytelling. What really put this match over the top was how well they pulled off the greatest double turn in wrestling history. Austin would become a huge babyface for his determination and defiance in submitting while Hart would turn his back on the fans for choosing such a ne’er-do-well like Austin. It was a perfectly crafted wrestling match. And, it is a huge f***ing shame that I have to talk about this match so freaking low on this list. As great as this match was, the rest of the PPV was just as equally awful. Before they had crowds cheering like crazy as The Rock and Rikishi, they stunk up the joint as Rocky Maivia and The Sultan. And, in an Intercontinental Title match no less. The other matches were unmemorable bores. I mean, how in the hell could a tag team match where Vader & Mankind took on Owen Hart & The British Bulldog be so boring!? And then, there was the main event. The Undertaker and Sycho Sid had to close out a show with one of the greatest matches of all time, and the only thing in that match that has been worth talking about all these years later is an urban legend where Sid may have crapped his wrestling trunks during the match. The only reason this WrestleMania got ranked so high was because of The Hitman and Stone Cold. Everyone else should be ashamed of themselves for putting on a show that couldn’t equal its quality.
26. 2000: The year 2000 was a great year for WWE PPVs. So, you’d think that that year’s WrestleMania would be one of the best. You’d be wrong. Oh sure, it did have that great Triangle Ladder Match with The Dudley Boyz, Hardy Boyz, and Edge & Christian tearing it up and nearly killing themselves in the process. And, WWE had the great idea to have Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, and Chris Benoit fight each other in a Triple Threat. And, the Hardcore Battle Royal was fun. But, other than that… eh. There was only 1 singles match, and it was a Catfight between Terri Runnels and The Kat. The other matches weren’t that memorable, except for Pete Rose’s 3rd beatdown by Kane. And then, there was the main event. At first, WWE got it right: Triple H VS The Rock. Then, they had to add The Big Show into the match. Then, they threw in Mick Foley as well. Then, they put a McMahon in the corner of each wrestler. The match itself wasn’t bad, but it was way too overbooked. And, on top of it all, Triple H walk out with the WWE Title still around his waist. It wasn’t great. What really made his a bad WrestleMania is this fact: it just didn’t really feel like WrestleMania. It was basically just another PPV. Hell, Backlash delivered what WrestleMania didn’t and felt much bigger by having The Rock overcome the odds and take the title off of Triple H. When Backlash is better WrestleMania than the actual WrestleMania, then you’ve put on a bad WrestleMania.
27. XV: Or, as I like to call it, RussoMania. Vince Russo’s fingerprints are all over it. You had Billy Gunn winning the Hardcore Title and Road Dogg winning the Intercontinental Title a few weeks before the PPV when they had been fighting for the other title. So, you’d think that Gunn’s match with Goldust, Val Venis, and Ken Shamrock would become a Hardcore Title match while Dogg’s match with Al Snow and Hardcore Holly would become an Intercontinental Title match since those were the guys they were feuding with. But, no, they just switched matches for no real reason. Chyna started the night as a heel with Kane and The Corporation but turned face when she reunited with Triple H and D-X only to to back to a heel when she and Triple H cost X-Pac the European Title to Shane McMahon. And, Big Show got fired from The Corporation for getting DQ’ed in his match with Mankind to see who’d referee the main event even though he took out Mankind and made it almost impossible to referee the match (Mankind only showed up at the end). And, let’s not forget the crap matches: Sable VS Tori, The Undertaker VS The Big Boss Man in a terrible Hell In A Cell Match; Butterbean VS Bart Gunn. Though, it wasn’t a total shitshow. The Stone Cold/Rock main event was pretty damn good, and Shane McMahon showed some of his show stealing future with a surprisingly good match with X-Pac. But, still, it was a typical Vince Russo show: overbooked with a lot of nonsense.
28. Statue Of Liberty: There’s a lot of good stuff in this PPV. Kofi Kingston defeated Daniel Bryan in a very good WWE Title match. AJ Styles and Randy Orton had a pretty good match. Seth Rollins beat Brock Lesnar for the Universal Title in 2:30, a refreshing change of pace from the typical Brock Lesnar dominance. Samoa Joe finally looked like the monster he is in squashing Rey Mysterio. And, Becky Lynch proved she was The Man by beating Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey for both of WWE’s Women’s Titles in a great match (though it did have a crappy ending). All in all, it had the makings of a great PPV. Unfortunately, the show lasted nearly 8 hours. 8 f***ING HOURS!!!! That is just too long. By the time, Roman Reigns defeated Drew McIntyre, the audience was spent; and there was still 2 hours left to go. There was just way too much crap that didn’t need to happen. We didn’t need 9 title matches. We didn’t need a heel Shane McMahon beating a babyface Miz. We didn’t need to see Triple H and Batista sluggishly duke it out. We didn’t need Baron Corbin to beat Kurt Angle in his last match ever. We just didn’t need this much wrestling. I mean, people have work in the morning. Those poor souls at Metlife Stadium were stuck there until midnight and didn’t get home until like 2:30 A.M. You don’t need to put on a long-ass show simply because it’s WrestleMania. I’d rather watch a great 3-hour PPV than a so-so 8-hour one.
29. Fleur-de-lis: On paper, this looks like a great WrestleMania: Charlotte Flair VS Asuka. AJ Styles VS Shinsuke Nakamura. Braun Strowman taking on The Bar for the RAW Tag Team Titles. Daniel Bryan returning to the ring after it appeared injuries would keep him from ever wrestling again. The Undertaker VS John Cena!!!! It should have been great! Instead, WWE blew it. Asuka’s undefeated streak came to an end for no real reason. Styles and Nakamura had a disappointing match, which I didn’t think was possible. Instead of winning the RAW Tag Team Titles by himself, Braun picked out a 10-year-old kid to just sit on apron. It was one of the most controversial WrestleMania moments. Some thought it was stupidly awesome, others just stupid. Daniel Bryan’s return match saw him sit out for a good bit while Shane McMahon picked up the slack. The Undertaker squashed Cena, the one person besides Sting people wanted to see him fight at WrestleMania, in 2:45. Even the parts people weren’t looking forward to were disappointing. No one wanted to see Roman Reigns conquer The Beast, but they sure as shit didn’t want to see him get bitched out to Brock Lesnar. If you want Roman to be the man, then make him the man, WWE. Quit teasing it. As bad as it was, there were some good parts. Seth Rollins, Finn Balor, and The Miz had an excellent Intercontinental Title match. Nia Jax’s win over Alexa Bliss was cool. And, surprisingly, the best match was Kurt Angle & Ronda Rousey VS Triple H & Stephanie McMahon. Angle and Triple H looked good despite their ages, Ronda took to wrestling like a duck to water, and Stephanie did a good job herself. But still, when Stephanie looks better than most of the roster, it doesn’t point to a good WrestleMania.
30. 22: This may very well be the most mediocre WrestleMania of all time. I mean, there were some good parts: Mickie James grabbing Trish Stratus in a private spot and then licking her fingers (why edit that out, WWE?), a pretty good MITB Ladder Match, the Hardcore Match between Edge and Mick Foley, and the World Heavyweight Title match. But, there were some crappy parts as well: The Boogeyman VS Booker T and Sharmell, the Playboy Pillowfight, and those weird long shots of Triple H and John Cena they used to stall for time to set up the Playboy Pillowfight. As for the rest: As good as the World Heavyweight Title Match was, it would have been better if it had gotten 10 more minutes. And, it was hard to get invested into the WWE Title match since WWE booked it with Cena as the babyface and Triple H as the heel despite the fans being firmly behind Triple H and against Cena. They really should have turned Cena heel when the fans first turned on him. And, the other matches: they were just okay. The Undertaker VS Mark Henry, just okay. Shawn Michaels VS Vince McMahon, just okay. JBL VS Chris Benoit, just okay. Those 2 words pretty much sum up this PPV: just okay. Though, for WrestleMania, just okay is not good enough.
31. IV: WrestleMania IV is a mixed bag. Again, WWE experimented with their biggest show, this time turning it into a gimmick PPV with a 14-man tournament to crown a new WWE Champion. The tournament itself was booked well, telling a good story. You had the 2 favorites, Hulk Hogan and Andre The Giant, taking each other out to leave the field wide open. You had “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase getting a bye to the finals because of Hogan and Andre’s draw. And, you had “Macho Man” Randy Savage forced to go through all 4 rounds, even facing off against the One Man Gang, who got a bye into the Semi-Finals. All this culminated into a finals that saw Savage winning the WWE Title, with an assist from Hogan, to become the new WWE Champion. It was great PPV-long angle. So, why did I rank this PPV so low? Well, the matches weren't all that great. And, because of the tournament, there were a whopping 16 matches on the 4-hour PPV broadcast, the most for WrestleMania. It was just too much, and watching this PPV in one sitting will burn you out. Despite that, there were some good moments outside of the tournament, like Andre choking Bob Uecker, Bret “The Hitman” Hart smashing the Battle Royal trophy Bad News Brown stole from him, and Demolition beginning their epic 478 day World Tag Team Titles reign. But, it was still an overbooked PPV that could have been paired down a little.
32. VII: What a difference a year makes. WrestleMania VI was a very enjoyable PPV with a lot of great moments. WrestleMania VII was a bit of slog featuring a main event storyline built around a war. Yes, WWE decided that best way to build this show was to have Sgt. Slaughter turn his back on America, pledge allegiance to Iraq (whom America would go to war with in early 1991), and have Hulk Hogan kick his ass for AMERICA!!!! It was pretty awful. The one good thing that could be said about this storyline was that it could have been worse as Vince’s original idea was to have Tugboat be the Iraqi sympathizer. Yeah. Tugboat. Still, the angle sucked and dragged down a kind of boring show. And, it certainly didn’t help that not only this PPV pale in comparison to the previous year’s Mania but also to the next year’s. Though, some matches made VII bearable, like the excellent Retirement Match between The Ultimate Warrior and “Macho Man” Randy Savage and pretty good Tag Team Title match between The Hart Foundation and The Nasty Boys. Other than that, the PPV featured a bunch of short matches that were as good the previous year’s bunch of short matches. Basically, it was a lackluster show with an awfully offensive main event angle that got sandwiched in between 2 great WrestleManias.
33. NY/NJ: I don’t blame WWE for doing The Rock VS John Cena a second time, even after billing it as “Once In A Lifetime.” XXVIII did the highest PPV buyrate of all time (1.217 buys), and NY/NJ would see the first ever wrestling box office gate over $10 million ($12.3 million). A lot of money was made off those two. Unfortunately, the sequel was not as good as the original. To be fair, The Rock got injured during it, but it was still an inferior match compared to the original. Speaking of inferior sequels, Triple H took on Brock Lesnar in a rematch from SummerSlam 2012. Again, it wasn’t as good as the original; and it was due to injuries suffered in the match (this time by both men). But, at least Hunter got his win back over Brock. And, for the 2nd year in a row, WWE shit the bed with the World Heavyweight Title, this time by having a babyface Alberto Del Rio take on Jack Swagger with this ultraconservative “Real American” gimmick. It was awful and marked the last time the World Heavyweight Title would appear at WrestleMania. Coincidence? Probably, but it is funny how that worked out. The rest of the card was boring filler. In fact, only 1 match manage to live up to the WrestleMania name: The Undertaker VS CM Punk. It was amazing that this match ended up being so good considering that these 2 had had some clunkers all the way back in 2009. But, as good as this match was, it was still tainted by the tasteless angle that led to it with CM Punk mocking The Undertaker with all sorts of jokes about the then-recently departed Paul Bearer. WWE has never met a death that they didn’t want to exploit. Hell, I’m sure they’ll parade Vince’s dead body around the country when he finally croaks.
34. Star: If you’re gonna force people to watch a 6-hour PPV, then at least put on a good show. Instead, we got this trainwreck. It got off to a bad start as some technical issues that haven’t really been explained caused the doors to the AT&T Stadium to open 20 minutes late, and fans had to enter through the gate that was on their tickets. Since many didn’t follow this policy, they had to go all the way back to the correct gate. This cause the stadium to look empty during the pre-show. Things didn’t get much better on the main broadcast. Chris Jericho defeated AJ Styles because… who the f*** knows!? The League Of Nations beat The New Day just so they could get beat up by Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mick Foley, and Shawn Michaels. Brock Lesnar didn’t do shit to make his match with Dean Ambrose any good. Baron Corbin won the Andre The Giant Battle Royal For All The Guys Creative Has Nothing For. The Rock beat Erick Rowan in 6 f***ing seconds. The Undertaker should have been wrestling Sting, but because WWE wasted him on Triple H the previous year and because Sting got injured at Night Of Champions 2015, that match that fans had wanted for years couldn’t happen. Instead, Sting retired at the Hall Of Fame, and The Undertaker took on Shane McMahon in a sluggish Hell In A Cell Match that had only one good spot where Shane nearly killed himself jumping off of the Cell. And, no one gave a shit when Roman Reigns beat Triple H for the WWE Title. The only positive that this PPV produced was the fact that a women’s match got a chance to steal the show at WrestleMania for once. Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, and Sasha Banks worked their asses off to put on a great match and give the fans something WrestleMania worthy. It’s a shame no one else did.
35. XXVII: So, WWE had this great idea for a WrestleMania match: John Cena VS The Rock; a match between a loyal company man against one of its biggest stars with the former having a problem with the latter just waltzing back in and hogging the spotlight now that he was a big movie star. Unfortunately, they had a terrible idea on how to set up this match: have The Rock show up as a guest for WrestleMania XXVII, f*** over Cena in his WWE Title match with The Miz, and set up that killer dream match for the next WrestleMania. So, WrestleMania XXVII ended up being just one big 4-hour ad for WrestleMania XXVIII And, The Miz, who was proving himself to be a big breath of fresh air in the WWE Title scene, became a huge afterthought. It derailed his career for a while, taking him years to comeback from it. (Though, WWE did their best to derail The Miz yet again; thanks a lot Shane McMahon, The Best In The World.) As bad as that was, the rest of the PPV wasn’t much better. Michael Cole suddenly became the biggest and most annoying heel in the company, which would have been fine if the payoff had been someone like Daniel Bryan beating the snot out of him for 10 minutes. Instead, the honor went to Jerry Lawler, their match was booked to have Cole actually fight off Lawler like an equal, and Lawler’s satisfying win was overturned by that stupid Anonymous RAW General Manager. And, the feud was dragged out for the rest of the year. XXVII saw Edge’s last match ever. It was a disappointment and opened the show, which was weird since it was a World Heavyweight Title match where Edge’s opponent, Alberto Del Rio, had won the Royal Rumble to get that match. Though, it wasn’t all bad. The Undertaker and Triple H had a great match. Cody Rhodes VS Rey Mysterio was pretty good, as was Randy Orton VS CM Punk. But, those high notes still doesn’t change the fact that WWE turned their biggest show of the year into one big ad.
36. 2: So, PPVs were new. WWE were trying some things out. They experimented. And, some experiments failed. This was a big failure. For some strange reason, they held the PPV in 3 locations: the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, NY; the Rosemont Horizon in Rosemont, IL; and the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles, CA. With 4 matches at each location. And, for some stranger reason, they went through each portion of the show one at a time instead of alternating. This must have been hard for the live audience as the Uniondale crowd got 4 live matches and then had to watch the rest on monitors while the L.A. crowd had to sit through 8 matches before getting some live action. As bad as it was for the live crowd, the PPV audience didn’t have it much better. Only one match from the show is worth seeking out: the Tag Team Titles match between The Dream Team and The British Bulldogs. The rest range from okay (the Boxing Match between Mr. T and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, the battle royal between WWF wrestlers and NFL players) to hilariously bad (Uncle Elmer VS “Adorable” Adrian Adonis) to meh (the Steel Cage match between Hulk Hogan and King Kong Bundy for the WWE Title). And, the commentary featured 3 celebrities who never ever called a wrestling show before, which must have made audiences scrambling to mute their TVs. Basically, WrestleMania 2 was an over bloated sequel that just throws more things into the mix, hoping audiences will like the spectacle. It just didn’t work. Thankfully, WWE has never tried it again.
37. XI: Some people call this the Worst WrestleMania. I disagree, but it comes damn close. The things that keep this from being the worst are the main event matches. Shawn Michaels did a good job of getting a good match out of Diesel, and the Bam Bam Bigelow/Lawrence Taylor match was better than it had any right to be. But, even those highlights have lowlights. As good as the WWE Title match was, it was still plagued by Shawn purposely botching Diesel’s Jackknife powerbomb and a spot where Diesel kicked out of Michaels’s Sweet Chin Music at 2 by throwing HBK off of him, which got him booed instead of cheered like McMahon though would happen. As for the Bam Bam/LT match, who in the hell thought it was a good idea to have LT wrestle Bam Bam by himself? Poor LT was exhausted after the match. He looked like he was about to pass out throughout it. They could have easily had a tag match to take the pressure off of LT. I mean, Lex Luger and The British Bulldog were available. They didn’t really need to face The Blu Brothers in opener. Though, despite LT blowing up, Bam Bam managed to get a decent match out of him; he earned that $250,000 he was paid for the event. As for the rest of the card, the worst match was between Bret Hart and Bob Backlund. How is that even possible? The Undertaker VS King Kong Bundy was boring. And, the others weren’t that memorable either. Plus, there was the fact that XI was held at the Hartford Civic Center, which was next to a shopping mall. And, the celebrities. Besides LT and Pamela Anderson, we had such big names as Nicholas Turturro and Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who beat Backlund at chess. They don’t really compare to Muhammad Ali and Liberace dancing with The Rockettes a decade earlier.
38. IX: Ladies and gentlemen, the Worst WrestleMania Ever! It may have gotten off to a good start with a good Intercontinental Title match between Shawn Michaels and Tatanka and a killer match between The Steiner Brothers and The Headshrinkers. But, after that, JESUS CHRIST!!!! Doink VS Crush was terrible until the crazy finish with the second Doink. Razor Ramon VS Bob Backlund was a bore. The Undertaker had his worst WrestleMania match with a huge stinker with Giant Gonzalez. Hulk Hogan wrestled twice. First, he and Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake had a wild, overbooked match with Money, Inc. Then, he showed up in the main event. After Bret “The Hitman” Hart had an okay match with Yokozuna, Hogan came out to check on Bret after he got salt thrown into his eyes by Mr. Fuji. Then, Yoko challenged him to a match for the title right then and there. And, Hogan beat him in 22 seconds. Thanks to his ego, two guys got screwed over in less than half a minute. Just how bad was this? Well, this only happened because Bret agreed thinking that Hogan would drop the belt to him at SummerSlam. But, by the King Of The Ring, Hogan had decided to not go through with that. So, instead, we got Yokozuna winning the title off of Hogan and took on Lex Luger in that awful main event where he won by countout and celebrated like he won the WWE Title. This WrestleMania was so bad it made the same year’s SummerSlam bad as well. When one PPV f***s over another, it’s an easy contender for the worst of its kind.