WrestleMania, the Showcase of the Immortals, has been the stage of legends for WWE since 1985, and the story continues this coming Sunday. This week, we look back on one guy's picks for the 100 best matches in WrestleMania history.
Here I go, again, on my own. Just me. Just me, and you, too, so both of us. Me and you. Just the two of us. So far, we've counted down 50 WrestleMania matches as we move toward No. 1, and today, we've got 25 more. So that's 75 of 100. 75% of this is now completed as of today. Tomorrow, the feature will be Nos. 25-11, and then on Friday, Nos. 10-2, and then on Saturday, a piece on No. 1 alone. Because that's a big deal.
If you missed the first two parts of this incredible journey, click here for Nos. 100-76, and click here for Nos. 75-51. Thank you! I hope you enjoy those, and definitely read them first, before this one!
Now, as we move ever closer to WrestleMania XXX, we move ever closer to the top of my silly ol' list of the top 100 matches in the event's history.
IT HAS BEGUN AGAIN...AGAIN
50. Kurt Angle vs Chris Benoit vs Chris Jericho (WrestleMania 2000)
Angle, who had debuted with the WWF in late 1999, held the Intercontinental and European titles heading into this match, with both of them on the line in consecutive falls. Angle was also coming in undefeated. Jericho, of course, had debuted in the WWF in the summer of 1999, coming over from WCW to much acclaim, followed by a rocky start, but the ship was righted in early 2000, and he was starting to live up to the hype. And Benoit had defected from WCW alongside Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, and Perry Saturn in January 2000. By WrestleMania, he was booked to be the clear standout of the group, no surprise given he had finally broken into the main event scene in WCW just before leaving the company. What's amazing about watching this match, or anything Angle did in the year 2000 (in the year 2000!) is realizing that he had only began wrestling in 1998, had made it to the WWF the next year, and by March 2000, he was not only holding two titles, which anyone can do if they want to give them two titles, but he was legitimately hanging with Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho, two of the best in the business. By the end of 2000, Angle was at that level himself. Very few guys take to rasslin that naturally, and pretty much all of them wind up as all-time greats. This had the trappings of the usual three-way/triple threat match, where you wind up with segments where someone is laying around on the floor to spotlight the other two for a bit, but the action is crisp and fast, and the story is fun, too, with Benoit beating Jericho in the first fall to win the Intercontinental title, and Jericho returning the favor on Benoit to win the European title, meaning Angle lost both of his belts, but still made claim that he had never been pinned or submitted (except for being choked out by Tazz at the Royal Rumble, but that was its own controversy), and thus was still undefeated. This was the WrestleMania debut for all three guys, and they'd go on to have some of the great matches in event history, which obviously we'll talk about later.
49. The Undertaker vs Diesel (WrestleMania XII)
This was Undertaker's first good WrestleMania match, as The Streak began with wins over Jimmy Snuka (VII), Jake Roberts (VIII), Giant Gonzalez (IX), and King Kong Bundy (XI). The match over Snuka was a squash, giving Taker an impressive win over a legend; Jake was on his way to WCW in a move that backfired on him when Bill Watts took over before he could get there; Gonzalez wasn't a professional wrestler, bless his heart; and Bundy was a big, fat guy that Undertaker had to beat with a clothesline because he couldn't do a tombstone. Diesel is hardly the guy you'd expect to have broken The Streak of The Streak's lame matches at the start, especially considering Kevbo himself was on the way out and headed to WCW, but Nash wasn't going to dog this thing, since he was still trying to look good and all. The two big guys pretty much went all-out in this one. Nash is still Nash and thus the pace ain't much, not to mention that Undertaker in 1996 wasn't exactly going balls to the wall, either, but the match has an clash of the titans sort of feel, made all the better by Diesel's return to being a nasty heel. It's really too bad that the WWF spent a year on Big Daddy Cuddly as their champion, because Nash is a crap babyface, or at least a crap pure good guy. He's far better when using his wit and his natural charm (what is this, a mash note?) to either be a prick, or to be a fun prick. With an hour-long Hart-Michaels technical exhibition set for the main event of WMXII, Undertaker-Diesel was a nice contract, and the two delivered beyond likely expectations. Nash held his own in there, including delivering two of his prettiest jackknife power bombs, and he wasn't buried in any sense. If anything, Diesel came out looking like a bad SOB, simply unable to put away an even badder SOB, the UN-BE-LIEVABLE Undertaker. It's good superhero stuff, which is the best Undertaker treatment.
48. Eddie Guerrero vs Kurt Angle (WrestleMania XX)
This is one of the handful of matches on the list that I liked more when I saw it live. The Guerrero-Angle feud of 2004 was an odd one, as they were both great performers, had a pretty good storyline coming in, and on paper should have meshed tremendously. As good as this match is -- because basically, they can't help themselves from having a good match with each other -- there's something a little "off" about this one. Guerrero doesn't seem quite locked in, with a couple of uncharacteristically sloppy moments from him. The ending is great fun, though, as Guerrero slips out of his boot while in the ankle lock to steal the win. Their match at SummerSlam 2004 was much better, in my opinion, even though it didn't get as much time as was expected.
47. Diesel vs Shawn Michaels (WrestleMania XI)
Here's Diesel's other match on the list. I didn't even notice that I had the two slotted so closely together until putting the finishing touches on everything, but I think part of that is Nash's best matches are pretty much all about as good as the other better Nash matches, save for the "Good Friends, Better Enemies" match with Shawn and maybe one of his better matches with Bret. And really, I should probably be saying "Diesel's better matches," since I'm not sure Kevin Nash ever had a great or even good match, though I remember not hating his Hell in a Cell with Triple H, at least. These two had the responsibility of trying to put on a good match before the main event, which featured midcarder Bam Bam Bigelow taking on retired NFL great Lawrence Taylor. This was a time when WrestleMania -- THE WrestleMania -- was such a non-factor that not only did they need to do some gimmick like bring in LT, but even that LT-led novelty card was held in Hartford, Connecticut, which I'm sure is a lovely town if you're from there or whatever, but pretty podunk for a WrestleMania. Definitely the most podunk WrestleMania host location ever. We've got Santa Clara next year, which isn't a metropolis or anything, but it's got a major stadium. This was just some arena in Hartford. HARTFORD! The worst city on earth! Michaels and Nash had good chemistry, because they were very good friends and made each other look awesome by taking advantage of their strengths and hiding their (relative, in Shawn's case) weaknesses. This was a show-stealer on a show where nothing else besides Jarrett-Razor was even good, with a notable whiff on the Bret Hart-Bob Backlund submission match, which was ruined by special referee Roddy Piper chewing the scenery. This was a WrestleMania with one of the "worst" "Best Matches," but XI is still better than I, IV, V, and IX on that race. Just over halfway into the list, those are the WrestleManias that have no further presence on the countdown.
46. The New Age Outlaws vs Cactus Jack & Chainsaw Charlie (WrestleMania XIV)
This is a match I really, really loved in 1998, and still love now. It's one of the best matches the New Age Outlaws ever had (maybe the best?), and it brought just a little "hardcore" flavor to the WWF, as the first and thus far only Dumpster Match featured on TV. There's a great moment on commentary when Foley and Billy Gunn are up on a ladder just a-fistfightin', and then they get knocked over, sending the two of them crashing through the closed lid of the dumpster at ringside. JR goes, "oohh! MYGOD!", and for some reason that has really stuck in my brain for the last 16 years. There's also a moment after some cookie sheet shots where JR exclaims, "Whack! WHACK!" and that one, too, has been a thing I've repeated for later great cookie sheet shots in history. The ending is a little dopey, as they wind up backstage and Terry Funk drives a forklift, but what I just said is awesome, and that's why this match is cool.
45. The Undertaker vs Ric Flair (WrestleMania X8)
A really good streetfight sort of match, as Undertaker and Flair couldn't really do a whole lot more with one another than have a fight by 2002, what with Flair not exactly being in peak condition, having just barely returned to active duty, and Undertaker being too big for old man Flair to do much more than fight him. Knowing that, the two set up a really personal rivalry that included Undertaker beating the hell out of Flair's best buddy Arn Anderson, as well as his son David, who was training at OVW as a favor or something. So that gave the match all the reason in the world to be nothing more than a brawl, which is what it needed to be. This match featured a great run-in by Arn, who delivered one final main event spinebuster on the big stage in Toronto, then got busted open in return. Flair doesn't have a big WrestleMania legacy, but he delivered every time he was there, all of the matches coming beyond his best days (even his ‘92 match), and most of them well past. This was also the night that Undertaker ran The Streak to 10-0 at WrestleMania, too, and is one of his few appearances at Mania as a heel. Going into WrestleMania XXX, he's 18-0 as a babyface, 2-0 as a heel (Snuka and Flair), and 1-0 as a heel wrestling another heel (Boss Man), in a terrible match we'd all rather forget in which he was probably de facto babyface anyway.
44. The Rockers vs Haku & The Barbarian (WrestleMania VII)
The future Faces of Fear could have been an awesome WWF tag team, but they were just briefly mashed together, and taking on the Tag Team Specialists, The Rockers, in the opening match of WrestleMania VII. They set a great tone that the next two awful matches (Kerry Von Erich vs Dino Bravo, Davey Boy Smith vs Warlord) sucked out of the building, followed by a very good Hart Foundation-Nasty Boys tag, then the infamous Roberts-Martel blindfold match and Undertaker's squashing of Snuka. WrestleMania VII is a fun card where they have a good match, a couple bad ones, a great match, a bad one, a good match, three more that suck, and then the main event. And at the time, I think that made it probably the best in-ring WrestleMania overall. But anyway, this is a great little tag match with super hot and buttery action. Michaels and Jannetty are great here, and Haku and Barbarian were just awesome working with smaller tag teams, because both of them were big power guys, but they could move, too, and when they had pinball opponents, their offense looked really devastating. Years later, they'd have a great match on a Nitro episode against Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero that was similar to this one.
43. Triple H vs Booker T (WrestleMania XIX)
Around this time in his career, HHH had a serious hard-on for old Ric Flair, Harley Race, and territorial stuff. He was managed by Flair, doing his best to be the new generation's version of the Nature Boy, talking about how there was "only one diamond in this business," and that obsessive period of Hunter's working life may have led him to miscalculate a tad and go for the "people like you" angle that this match was built on. They worded everything just carefully enough that it could be explained away as not a racist storyline. "People like you" meant "ex-cons," which Booker T is, but the intent was obvious. They had a rich, white world champion talking down to an inferior black challenger with a less advantaged background.
In all honesty, I wasn't that offended by it then, and I'm not offended by it. I don't like saying "fake," not because it's not, but because that's a stupid way to put it that reveals a sort of ignorance, usually from someone who thinks they know what they're saying but don't, but it's not real. It's a story. HHH was the bad guy. We were supposed to hate HHH and cheer Booker T's Cinderella story. Here was a guy in Booker T who had made some mistakes as a young man, but overcame them, got his life together, and gone on to a great career in professional wrestling, now with an opportunity on the grandest stage, WrestleMania, to become world heavyweight champion. WWE even further squashed whatever reputation WCW might have ever had by having Hunter basically discredit Booker's five WCW title reigns, since that company was "a joke. But that was not designed simply to make the two-years dead WCW look bad. Rather, it was to add extra fuel to Booker's quest. Yeah, he'd gotten it done in WCW, but WCW was a joke by then -- Booker even said as much. The idea, however, was that Booker T was not a joke. And by the go-home RAW, HHH was clearly worried that he'd poked the bear, telling Flair, who was trying to rally Hunter, that someone apparently forgot to tell Booker T that he was outclassed. Going into WrestleMania XIX, Booker T had the momentum.
I think a lot of people got so wrapped up in the racism aspect of the storyline -- and it was a real aspect, nobody was wrong that it existed here -- that they ignored what became a pretty solid story. Now, if you're the type who just doesn't want to see these things addressed in your Monday night escapes from real life's constant barrage of bad news, awful human beings, and your own constantly fading hopes and dreams, that's fair enough. But this was an "old school" rasslin storyline. The last time I think there was something quite like this in a major company was in 1991, when Ron Simmons chased Lex Luger for the WCW title. Simmons was easy to rally around, and I thought Booker was, too. It's a matter of taste, maybe. Or perhaps, you just thought it sucked. But I'm just trying to lay out why I think this was an underrated feud, and a very underrated match.
Unlike some of the flashier matches at XIX (Michaels-Jericho, Rock-Austin III, Angle-Lesnar, even McMahon-Hogan), HHH-Booker was an old school match for an old school angle. I'm really tired of saying old school because I hate the term, so that will be the last time. Hunter even broke out an Indian deathlock, which isn't even a PC term for a wrestling hold anymore, and JR put that over so big I thought he might have a heart attack. Booker busted out the Harlem Hangover, not old timey, but the sort of thing that, like the Indian deathlock, gave this match greater weight, showing that both of them had to dig into the reserves to get it done.
Here's the one qualm I have with this match: Booker T really, really should have won. I thought WCW made the same mistake with Simmons and Luger in ‘91 (I didn't think so at the time, I was nine and don't know what the hell I thought, but I mean, when going back over stuff). Simmons should have beaten Luger for the belt at Halloween Havoc. Instead, Ron didn't grab the belt. In the end, he wound up with a big, satisfying, sudden world title win over Vader later on that turned into a really weak title reign. Booker could have had that sort of beating Vader win here, but they were much better set up for him to have a good title run than what Simmons had on his plate with the likes of The Barbarian as a challenger. Helmsley won clean, though, and it's one of those times where even though I generally like HHH more than most people do, I agree fully that in this instance, whatever the issue was -- be it his ego, the company's reluctance to crown Booker as an elite guy, or whatever -- there was a major mistake made with the result of this match, and ultimately the feud itself.
42. Hulk Hogan vs Mr. McMahon (WrestleMania XIX)
This is my all-time favorite Vince match, and probably my favorite Hogan match post-2002, which also might also make it one of my five favorite post-1991 Hogan matches, since Hogan sucked pretty bad after 1991. Outside of the Austin feud, this is also my favorite Vince feud, since it actually makes some kind of historical sense that these two don't like each other, have decades-old bad blood, and want to settle things with their fists in the middle of that very ring. It's certainly not a technically good match or anything, but they bleed all over, the crowd is super hot, and the Roddy Piper involvement we saw here is probably the last time we'll ever see the "real" Roddy Piper on wrestling TV, since he mostly just plays a kindly old pot-stirrer who repeats his jokes 150 times a segment now. The feud was done about as well as something can be when it's an argument over who deserved the most credit for the marketing gimmick of "Hulkamania," and the fight was as violent and intense as something can be when you have Michael Cole describing the combatants as "the promoter" and "the entertainer" during the entrances. Given that this is a 49-year-old Hogan and a 58-year-old non-wrestler in McMahon, it's an amazingly good match.
41. Terry & Hoss Funk vs Junkyard Dog & Tito Santana (WrestleMania 2)
Here's my pick for the most overlooked great match in WrestleMania history. The Funks didn't fit in the WWF of 1986, because Terry Funk was far too much of a professional rassler, and was out of his mind. Even before the match here, he's getting into a shoving battle with referee Dave Hebner, screaming, "Get ‘em out here!" Funk was old school during what we now consider to be "old school." He was always using the territorial heat-gathering tactics, because that's what he knew, and Funk was a wrestler, not a cartoon character with real blood. He's throwing chairs before the match even starts. Terry Funk was awesome. There's no two ways about it. Dory was good as the sane half of the brother duo, just about as mean, but much more in control of his emotions. The highlight of the match is either Santana and Terry in a really unique, effective chase spot before a hot tag, or JYD slamming Terry on a table at ringside. This is truly chaotic for the time period and the setting, and just great fun all-around. You can easily argue this as the best pure tag match in WrestleMania history, and I believe that it is.
40. Chris Jericho vs Christian (WrestleMania XX)
Christian's "CLB" period may have been his best, as he elevated his game with this feud against former pal Jericho, who had gone all puppy dog soft (and grown man hard, ho HO!) over Trish Stratus during a heel program that saw he and Christian bet $1 Canadian over who would get laid first, Jericho by Trish, or Christian by Lita. Trish found out about the bet and was all mad, you know, like women get when they find out that the guy they thought was interested in them turns out to be a real piece of trash. Jericho tried to repent and confess his true, undying love, but got stuck in "The Friend Zone," as weird dudes call it when women aren't interested in them romantically. Christian then went super wormy, trying to buddy up to Trish and get into her pants himself, which led to the big showdown at WrestleMania. It was a damn good match that featured Christian busting out a Texas cloverleaf, which I remember going nuts for because I'm a big fan of that submission maneuver, and Trish accidentally costing Jericho the match. As Jericho tried to go after Christian, she tried to hold him back, seemingly saying, "Chris, it's OK, forget about it," but then she smacked the living daylights out of the dude not once but twice, uniting with Christian in a torrid love affair and leaving Jericho looking like a real big dummy.
39. Mick Foley & The Rock vs Randy Orton, Batista & Ric Flair (WrestleMania XX)
A 3-on-2 handicap match featuring Mick Foley's return to the ring after four years off, based around his excellent feud with Randy Orton, which established Orton as a real player in 2004. The Rock aided his old pal in his own return after an extended absence, battling The Last Great Faction. Flair is crazy good in this match, as he was having a ball and tearing it up in tag matches in ‘04, helping Batista learn and improve his craft along the way. Here, Flair gets his first chance to go up against Rock, and he clearly relishes the opportunity. Orton is also pretty terrific, but a lot of the credit goes to Rock and Foley for bringing their A-games and charging up the crowd. The match was sort of lost in the shuffle at the time, but I think for a 3-on-2 handicap match, this is about as good as it gets, with plenty of emotion, some outstandingly fun Flair-Rock segments, and a nice finish that saw Orton pin Foley to keep his psychological advantage over the veteran. This wasn't the WrestleMania Moment that Foley was looking for ultimately -- he'd get that later -- but it definitely was his best WrestleMania match to this point.
38. The Undertaker vs Randy Orton (WrestleMania 21)
The Streak was at "just" 12-0 when a young Randy Orton took his stab at ending it during the tail end of his "Legend Killer" phase. Orton's main event run starting late in the summer of 2004 went awry, as they tried to make him a next generation babyface, and it became clear quickly that Orton did not have the tools to be a good guy, even if you did put him up against dang ol' Triple H, the cur that he is. With his cast-armed papa in tow, Orton put up a major fight against Taker, catching a beautiful RKO counter that would have put the match away quite wonderfully had this been a No Way Out or a Vengeance. But this was WrestleMania, and The Undertaker doesn't die at WrestleMania. Orton foolishly went for the tombstone, which was of course reversed. The match was very nicely laid out, and a big mark on Undertaker's résumé, if you ask me, because Orton was far from a totally polished main event product in 2005, and Taker stepped up in what was his best WrestleMania performance to date. In the end, Orton was just unlucky 13, but it was a hell of a good match, and I think can be credited with being the match where The Streak became the real thing surrounding Taker's Mania appearances, and each year was expected to be more epic than the last.
This also featured Tazz acting like it was 1991 when Undertaker "floated" to the ring:
37. Kurt Angle vs Chris Benoit (WrestleMania X-Seven)
This was another match I happened to like better when it happened than I did now, but Angle and Benoit had such incredible chemistry that it more than holds up 13 years later. The craft of this match is more impressive than most of the matches ahead of it on this list. There was, however, a lack of emotion and stakes, and the story they told focused mainly on a game of amateur wrestling one-upsmanship, not exactly ideal for 65,000-plus in the Astrodome. The two also had no real story to speak of heading into it, this was just a match where both guys needed something to do for the show, so they decided to wrestle each other for pride and because it would be a good match. The amateur stuff they did early on in the match was extremely impressive, though, with Angle working it so tight and so well that he was making Benoit look like he was some Olympic-level mat wrestler. Trying to imitate that stuff can look stupid a lot of the time, but these guys just went at it, and Angle was able to transition seamlessly from looking like he should obviously be dominating to making himself look vulnerable, and surprised that he was vulnerable, which he should have been, of course. They did perhaps carry that section of the match on too long, for whatever that's worth, but it's still a pretty great display of technical rasslin.
36. Shawn Michaels vs Ric Flair (WrestleMania XXIV)
What this match lacks in technical beauty, it makes up for in pure heart and the emotion of the moment. Now, I want to say this: "I love you. I'm sorry." Not a great moment for me. It's sort of the worst of the Michaels/HHH school of rasslin emotion, where they spell things out and allow no room for artistic interpretation, or for fans to connect to something on their own. You should be able to simply tell that Michaels is sorry that he has to kick Flair in the face one more time and end his career. His body language, the way he hits the kick, the facial expression, the way he pins, the way he leaves the ring, all that should tell you that he loves Flair, and he's sorry. And the thing is, Michaels DOES all of that. But in case anyone is too dumb to put it together, he actually verbally says it out loud while the camera zooms in. Bret Hart once asked, when talking about guys hurting each other on purpose, "Where's the art in that?" Well, I see no art in, "I love you. I'm sorry."
But apart from that, this match does its job, and Shawn Michaels carried this one like the all-time great that he is. It doesn't matte that Flair came back to wrestle Hulk Hogan in Australia, then had some matches in TNA. This can and should be taken as the "last ride" for the legendary "Nature Boy." Outside of a significant injury, wrestlers rarely retire for real. One thing that's interesting about this match is that when you aren't in timeframe it happened, where Flair has been working regularly on TV and all that for a while, and you're not used to his presence, the way he looks, his appearance both cosmetic and just in the way he moves, Flair looks REALLY old. Because, you know, he's really old in this match. At 59, Flair had lived a lot longer than his lifestyle might have allowed a mortal like you or me. His body was just about shot, and there are moments where he simply cannot do the things he wants to do. But that's part of the story if you want it to be, and I want it to be. There is little more left in Flair's tank than veteran trickery, a fact that is able to be hidden nicely and used to his advantage in a tag team match, or a shorter singles match, but a 20-minute match with Shawn Michaels isn't exactly Flair's domain at this point in his career. Michaels, a veteran himself, was just too much for Flair on this night. For all its flaws and bits of frankly lousy wrestling due to Flair's age and deteriorated physical condition, and even though this glitzy sendoff for the one and only Ric by God Flair should have happened years earlier, this match is glorious.
35. Chris Jericho vs Edge (WrestleMania XXVI)
Jericho was defending the world heavyweight title for this match, working as the heel to Edge's lesser babyface. The match was more midcard than main event, all things considered, which was kind of the general fate of Edge. He was very good, though I hesitate to call him truly great. What he lacked in huge, standout matches he made up for, though, by constantly being very good, and occasionally more than that. This is one of those nights where he was in with someone on or above his level, and that's when Edge could really shine. As good as he was, and as much as he could carry lesser guys, he couldn't carry them to great. He needed a dance partner. He wasn't Shawn or Flair or Angle or Jericho or Eddie or Benoit or Funk or Foley. With a heel Jericho who had gone from flashy, cocky young man to a veteran full of the tricks of the trade, maybe less athletic than before but certainly smarter, Edge had the sort of dance partner to do something really good, and they made it count. It was a mild surprise that Jericho retained the belt clean, but they did the ruptured Achilles story of the match very well, and the match was extremely logical in that sense.
34. The Dudley Boyz vs Edge & Christian vs The Hardy Boyz (WrestleMania 2000)
This would rank a good bit higher if not for the dreadful crowd in Anaheim, which could barely even manage to react to six guys killing each other with ladders. They had better displays when TLC was invented for SummerSlam and repeated for the next year's WrestleMania. WrestleMania 2000 was a seriously awful show all things considered. It's one of the worst ever, especially when you grade on the curve and consider how completely great the WWF was at that moment. They were in the middle of a stretch of brilliant pay-per-view shows, and then the biggest of the year was just a flat-out dud, filled with bad ideas, a worse crowd, a weak main event, and no proper singles matches, making everything feel overstuffed. It was like everyone, from the office to the ring, had hangovers from Royal Rumble and No Way Out and it caught up to them at Mania. But this is a fantastic ladder match. I have a feeling some of y'all will think this is too low, but I need to reiterate that a lot of what makes pro wrestling what it is, to me, comes in the form of the emotion and drama involved. This match, like the show around it, just feels kind of sterile, in spite of the fact that these guys all went out and killed it.
33. The Undertaker vs Triple H (WrestleMania X-Seven)
The worst of their three WrestleMania matches, which is pretty astounding. This feud was sort of high-end filler for the time. They both needed something to do, and Hunter claimed that he'd run out of guys to beat, which Undertaker disputed, of course. They were main event level players, but this was a midcard match. Looking back, it's a little weird that I'm supposed to be, like, "Yay, Undertaker!" while he had his demented brother threaten to throw Stephanie McMahon to her possible death from a balcony over a cement floor backstage, but that's ATTITUDE!!!11 for you, I guess. These two did have great chemistry, and as much as HHH wanted to be Ric Flair, he wasn't really like Flair much at all, other than they both like nice suits. HHH was at his best in brawls against the likes of Mick Foley, The Rock, Undertaker, and Austin. He was good enough all-around to have good matches with anyone when he was on his game, and at this time he was still riding pretty high from a spectacular 2000, when he was flat-out the best on American soil. Biker Undertaker's previously discussed loosened ring style allowed him to be more emotive and vocal, which led to better selling and all that, since it was easier to feel for him now that he wasn't a zombie. Taker was sort of evolving at this time, after 10-plus years in the WWF, and this match is a great example of the early stages where he was hitting a different gear than we'd seen before. These two wrestled like they wanted to steal the show. They didn't, but it's a hell of a match.
32. Edge vs The Undertaker (WrestleMania XXIV)
In Undertaker's first true main event (last match on the card) since WrestleMania 13's WWF title win over Sycho Sid, he and Edge delivered the big-match feel that was sorely missing from the Orton-Cena-HHH WWE title triple threat match. Edge wound up being one of Undertaker's best rivals, maybe behind only Michaels and Foley. The two of them had better matches than this one, but this is stellar, with all the modern WrestleMania over the top epic qualities, plus the continuation of Undertaker's Streak, and the first time in 11 years that WrestleMania ended with Undertaker holding a championship high.
31. Kurt Angle vs Brock Lesnar (WrestleMania XIX)
This is a match that has never quite struck the absolute sweet spot for me, and may have suffered as a result of being the last match on an excellent and exhausting WrestleMania, with little real drama. Everyone knew that Lesnar was going to win, and when he did after a third F5 that followed the infamously and frighteningly botched shooting star press, a split second miss on the rotation that could have easily paralyzed the 300-pound genetic freak, the moment just barely had missed. But despite any of my "complaints" or the fact that I've never liked it as much as most folk seem to, it's a fantastic match that showcases Angle at peak powers, helping a still fairly green Lesnar through a high-profile match. Brock was a quick learner, like we talked about with Angle earlier, but he was never as good as Kurt Angle, and by this point Angle was truly elite, while Lesnar was talented and had massive presence, but still needed major help in the big matches like this one.
30. Shawn Michaels vs Steve Austin (WrestleMania XIV)
This is where The Austin Era began, as it were, at least officially. In reality, Steve Austin was clearly on the road to being the WWF's biggest star by late 1996, or at least by WrestleMania 13 in 1997, but they slow burned it very well. Do you realize that following the birth of Austin 3:16 in June 1996, Austin didn't even win a singles title until August 1997? True story. So calm down, "Daniel Bryan is being buried!" lunatics. (This total slam of your sensibilities would have worked better in February, I admit, and may be proven foolish if they in fact do not put the belt on Bryan this Sunday. This is a dangerous statement to leave on the internet forever, or at least until we all die in nuclear war.) Michaels performance here is drowned in pain, as he had suffered a career-ending injury in January and did basically nothing in the ring between Royal Rumble and WrestleMania, working one last match to transition the belt and the company's crown to Austin. He starts the match showing off his speed, but is forced to slow down a lot more than he usually would have done during his "first career." Austin, too, had come back extremely fast from the broken neck suffered at SummerSlam ‘97, and still wasn't quite himself. When you think about the condition both of these guys were in, this is an incredible display, and both are obviously pushed by the great crowd in Boston that knows for a fact that they're witnessing something special in WWF history. Austin's destiny had been leading him to a crowning at WrestleMania XIV one way or another, but this wound up a true passing of the torch. Bret Hart was gone after the Survivor Series screwjob in November ‘97, and now Michaels was out of the game due to his injury. The guys who had largely kept the WWF running from 1993-97, ruling over some dark days as best they could, were both out. It was Stone Cold's time. Ideally, we would have had some truly classic, epic battle between Austin and Michaels at some point, but it wasn't to be. It's still a great match, though, and an enormous moment.
29. John Cena vs Triple H (WrestleMania 22)
One year after the big coronation with his first WWE championship win over JBL, John Cena returned to the Mania stage and retained his title against Triple H. This one went over a lot better, because HHH is 10 to 20 times better than Bradshaw, and Cena had improved, too. The Chicago crowd really didn't buy into Cena's exceedingly cornball "Al Capone/Great Depression" entrance, and was solidly in Helmsley's corner the entire match. It's a little odd that Cena even became the flagship star of the company, when you consider that the crowd so heavily turned on him basically from the get-go upon being told he was The Guy. It's easy to see why as big a star as he's been, he's never approached the likes of Hogan, Austin, Rock, or Sammartino. Can you imagine those guys getting routinely booed as the top babyface? And not just little smatterings here and there, or in certain towns, but basically everywhere? This is a hell of a match, though, with Hunter amping it up and carrying the action like his good old days of 2000-01. Cena establishes in this one, too, that when it comes time to get down with the funk at WrestleMania and put in that annual amazing performance, he can do the job. The guy knows how to juice the drama out of a main event, whichever way the crowd wants it to go.
28. Batista vs The Undertaker (WrestleMania 23)
Batista missed WrestleMania 22, that year after he, like Cena, had a bit of a disappointing star-making win at WrestleMania 21, dethroning Triple H to win his first world title. But he came back at 23 and had his best match ever to that point, arguably still his best. The Animal delivered big-time in this one against Taker, a match that surpassed all expectations, and showed that the two of them had a natural groove together that just can't be predicted all the time. While Undertaker probably deserves the lion's share of the credit for this match being as good as it is, because Undertaker is better than Batista, Big Dave more than held up his end in this one, as the two worked through a hard-hitting, convincing slugfest without taking time to rest. This was a real heavyweight title fight, if you will. Undertaker kicked out of three Batista Bombs en route to winning the world heavyweight title, and Batista became #15 in 15-0.
27. The Undertaker vs Triple H (WrestleMania XXVII)
Hey, look! Another Undertaker match! (There are more to come, too! What a career he's had at WrestleMania, right?! Have you heard?!) These two fellers came together as part-time combatants at WrestleMania XXVII and wound up easily stealing the show in one of those war of attrition type matches. As close as Shawn Michaels came to ending The Streak at XXV and XXVI, Helmsley came even closer in terms of the story presented, as he flat-out had Undertaker beaten before he simply got caught in Hell's Gate, eventually tapping out. You could look at this match as "a bit much," I suppose, particularly if you're not a fan of one or the other, or if you're comparing it to the two Michaels matches that preceded it on The Streak, or even the rematch the next year (I may be in the minority, but obviously I prefer the Cell rematch, and I'll explain why later on in the countdown, hopefully to your satisfaction, your highness, God, back off already!). But I found myself re-intrigued watching this one again, and that came after I was thinking during the match, "This isn't quite as good as I remember. Maybe it's a more an in-the-moment match." By the end of this one, I was digging it hard once again, and Undertaker having to be carried out of the ring for the first time at Mania was a thoughtful touch that set up the rematch the next year. Of all the close calls Taker's had at Mania, this was the closest.
26. The Rock vs Hollywood Hulk Hogan (WrestleMania X8)
This match is 100% emotion and atmosphere. There's really nothing good about the match itself. At best, it is passable. But this is what I mean about drama and the tale being told mattering a lot more than the in-ring action a lot of the time. Even more than the momentous Hogan-Andre match, even more than Michaels-Flair, this match delivers an incredibly unique experience, as the Toronto crowd is having none of The Rock. They're pumped up because when they bought their tickets, Hulk Hogan wasn't on the card. And then he was. Back in the WWF, where he belonged. Sure, he was in nWo black-and-white lightning instead of the red-and-yellow, but the crowd treated him like the leader of Hulkamania, not the leader of the counter-culture old men rebels from 1996. This is Hogan's one and only match at WrestleMania as the heel, and Toronto refused to believe that he was, indeed, the heel. It's really special. You have to credit The Rock and his high-energy bumpfest for making the match as exciting as it was, too, as Hogan was 48 years old and not exactly used to going all-out anymore, as he hadn't had -- or been asked to have, or needed to have -- a good match in WCW in many years. He had a little something to prove in his return to the WWF, and he rose to the occasion. Hogan was spent and put in as much effort as he could have for this match. It's a credit to both as characters that this match was what it was, and it's one of Rock's best performances, period. That the match holds up well while know what to expect says a ton.
TOMORROW: 25-11!