FLOU: Wrestlemania

    It’s Wrestlemania season, and while Wrestlemania 39 will be in the rearview by the time this gets posted it’s still April so it counts! For normal people, the years end on December 31st and the new one starts on January 1st. For many pro wrestling fans, the year ends with mania, and the new starts with Raw the night after. It’s the biggest event of the year for WWE and arguably in all of pro wrestling. So let’s be festive this mania season and play a little favorite, least favorite, underrated, overrated. 

One quick note. Wrestlemania 36, which emanated from an empty performance center during the pandemic has been disqualified from this topic and pretty much all Wrestlemania conversations with me going forward. 

With that out of the way, let’s see how many of my fellow pro wrestling fans I can make mad with my choices:

Favorite: WrestleMania 21

So many to choose from, but I tried to go with a Wrestlemania that I enjoyed the most from top to bottom. For example, Wrestlemania 25 had one of the greatest Mania Matches of all time; Shawn Michaels vs The Undertaker. However the rest of that card was mostly a dud, so if I’m going to sit down and rewatch an entire Wrestlemania start to finish, it probably wouldn’t be that one. Hence, how I settled on WrestleMania 21.

It’s fitting to talk about WrestleMania 21, as this year Mania will once again be in LA with a Hollywood theme, but back in 2005 WrestleMania also went Hollywood. The show opened with Rey Mysterio vs Eddie Guerrero which was guaranteed to be a good opener considering the men involved. It was followed by the first-ever Money In The Bank match where Edge would be victorious. A career moment that would forever attach Edge to the match stipulation. After that, the Undertaker defended his Mania streak against “The Legend Killer” Randy Orton in one of the more underrated Taker streak matches. We also got the match of the night and one of my top 5 WrestleMania matches: Kurt Angle vs Shawn Michaels. Seriously if you haven’t seen it, go watch it now. There was also a forgettable women’s title match between Trish Stratus and Christy Hemme, which was unfortunately common during this time period. The last match outside of the double main event that I have to mention was a Sumo Match. That’s right, years before The Big Show would face Floyd Mayweather at WrestleMania, he challenged another accomplished athlete in Akebono Taro. So if you think Mania should have at least one spectacle match every year, then go ahead and check that box. 

The show was main evented by two title matches. First was John Cena defeating JBL for the WWE title. The match was just fine but it’s notable as the beginning of Cena’s run on top and it’s interesting to see the crowd celebrate Cena’s victory when only a year later the crowd would turn on him in his main event match at WM22. In the main event, another future star was crowned when Batista defeated Triple H for the World Heavyweight Championship. The match wasn’t epic, but it was good, and more importantly, it served its purpose of capping off the multi-year story of Evolution and creating a new Main Event babyface for the company in Batista. In the end, WrestleMania 21 sticks out as one of my favorites because it avoided the modern-day problem of too many matches at WrestleMania and the matches that did take place had a high hit rate in quality or significance. 

Least Favorite: WrestleMania 9

Most people would just say Wrestlemania 4 here and move on to the next topic, but I’m not gonna do that. There have been bad WrestleMania’s and Mania 4 was definitely bad, but sometimes the bad ones just fall into the category of unforgettable. For a WrestleMania to truly be my least favorite it has to take up space in my brain so I actively dislike it. Once that logic is applied my choice becomes very clear.

Wrestlemania 9  just plain stunk. The show took place from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and was covered with over-the-top cringy and gaudy, ancient Roman, Vegas-themed garbage. All the way down to JR and Bobby the Brain dressing in Toga’s, along with ring announcer Howard Finkel who was referred to as Finkus Maximus. These are all things that people with a bad sense of humor would look at, chuckle and say, “That’s fun” while grinning like a jackass.  Macho Man was also on commentary, which is ironic, cause this show really could’ve used him in the ring. When it comes to the card I don’t have many nice things to say. I will give a shout-out to the GOAT Shawn Michales, who opened the show by defending his Intercontinental title against Tatanka. The pair had their working boots on and despite the count-out finish, they did put on the only good match of the night. Outside of the opener, most of the matches are forgettable, but a couple sticks out in infamy for me. 

Before The Undertaker and his streak became a highlight of WrestleMania, Vince McMahon was just throwing any person he could find with massive size in the ring and forcing Taker to try and make chicken salad. At Wrestlemania 9 the Undertaker had to face The Giant Gonzalez and the match itself was rough. I’ve never laced up a pair of boots and stepped into the ring, so when writing about wrestling I will always try to avoid being overly critical of a wrestler’s ability as a worker. But sometimes I have to call a giant, stiff spade a Gonzalez. For readers who are unfamiliar with the Giant Gonzalez, I’ll put it this way. He made The Great Khali look like Ricky Morton. The match ended in a DQ after Gonzalez knocked out the Undertaker with a chloroform-soaked rag. I’m serious. The only highlight of the match was listening to the announcers. As the Giant Gonzalez was smothering Taker with the rag Bobby Heenan asks, “What’s that smell?” To which Macho Man responds, “Is that, what do you call the stuff, uh Chloroform or whatever?!” I always find Savage’s response unintentionally suspicious and hilarious.

The biggest part of the show that sticks out in my memory is the main event. Bret “The Hitman” Hart would lose his WWF championship to Yokozuna. The match went just shy of eight and a half minutes and it featured Bret Hart, so of course it was good for what it was. Yoko won after Mr. Fuji threw salt in the eyes of Hart while he had Yoko in the sharpshooter. After the match, good guy Hulk Hogan came to the ring to check on Hart. This apparently ticked off Mr. Fuji, who then challenged Hogan to face Yokozuna right there on the spot and said they would put the title on the line. After an errant throw of salt by Fuji, a clothesline, and a leg drop, Hulk Hogan was once again WWF Champion. I’m not going to even get into all the rumors and stories of why the show ended the way it did. If you want the full story, Conrad Thompson and Bruce Pritchard did an episode of “Something to Wrestle With” about it back in 2017 that I implore you to go listen to.  If for whatever reason Vince McMahon wanted to go back to Hogan as champ, why not just have him face Bret? They had done babyface vs babyface in the past and it would’ve worked again just fine here. Plus, if Hogan had just wrestled Bret Hart in the main event of WrestleMania 9 then maybe Hulk would actually have at least one good match on his resume. 

Overrated: WrestleMania 35

I decided to go more recently with this category as the memory of me disagreeing with others’ opinion on it is still fresh in my mind. There were 12 matches on the bloated card that took place from Metlife Stadium in 2019 all of which were just fine. Going back over this show four years later, 8 of the 12 matches made me stop and ask “Wait, that match happened?”  There are some notable things to mention, however, Daniel Bryan and Kofi Kingston had the best match of the night when Kofi became the WWE champion. Also, Triple H defeated Batista in a no holds Barred match that was Batista’s final match. The match featured the most hardcore thing we’d seen on WWE tv in years when Triple H ripped out Batista’s nose ring with pliers. I’m not trying to be funny, that looked like it hurt. 

 The Real reason why this one received my overrated grade was the two big-featured matches. The show opened with Seth Rollins winning the WWE Universal Championship from Brock Lesnar and closed with the hottest act in the company, Beck Lynch, winning the Raw Women’s title in a triple threat over Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair. The top two baby faces captured gold, but that’s not enough for me to rule this as an above-average WrestleMania. The ends don’t justify the means. The WWE Universal Title was a big fat nothing burger. It went two and a half minutes and just consisted of a handful of F-5s and Curb Stomps. A type of match style that plagued the majority of that Lesnar title run. It caused what should’ve been a big Rollins babyface title run to start with a whimper. 

The main event could have been a one-on-one grudge match between Becky Lynch and Ronda Rousey with Lynch tapping out Rousey. It was clear that should’ve been the ending scene of the show months before it even took place, but they had to overcomplicate it. First by adding Charlotte Flair. I’m one of the biggest Charlotte Flair stans you’ll find, but her being added to that match was unnecessary. Then the match ended with an awkward roll-up instead of having Lynch emphatically winning and being crowned champ. You can argue they were setting up a one-on-one rematch with the stipulation or the finish, but sometimes in wrestling, you have to strike while the iron is hot. Banking on the idea that they were going to get another Mania main event out of Lynch and Rousey was wishful thinking, and as we’ve seen in the years since that match, it was the wrong thinking.  I’m glad they put the right people over, but I can’t ignore bad booking. 

Underrated: WrestleMania 31

People don’t talk about WrestleMania 31 very often, but it’s honestly the last Mania that I can say I enjoyed from start to finish. There’s a lot on this swift-moving 9-match card that makes it worth a rewatch. For example, WWE tried its best to recapture some of the Daniel Bryan magic from Wrestlemania 30 with him winning a seven-way ladder match for the Intercontinental title. Randy Orton and Seth Rollins had the match of the night, which should be no surprise considering the two men involved. The match ended with the greatest RKO ever. We also got John Cena vs Rusev for the US Title, which is most notable for Rusev driving a massive Tank to the ring. We even saw Rousey get physical in a WWE ring for the first time during an electric segment with the Rock. There are two matches on this card, however, that I can’t just quickly mention and that I think are the reasons this card gets underrated. 

I’ve heard a lot of people complain about Triple H beating Sting in a no-DQ match. A lot of these people were upset that Sting was finally in WWE and wasn’t facing the Undertaker. If you still wanted Sting vs Taker in 2015 you were delusional. That match would’ve been really cool until the bell rang, and then we would all be hating ourselves for wanting it. At that point in both men’s careers, they needed to be in the ring with someone to help carry a lot of the load. Only a year prior we saw The Undertaker in really rough shape physically and knocked out on his own feet in his match with Lesnar. I personally let out a massive sigh of relief after his match against Bray Wyatt at 31. The match was solid, and Taker was able to go out there and do his greatest hits. It was great all things considered, but there was no way WWE was going to have an unsure Undertaker go out and have a match with the then 56-year-old Sting. Instead, we got Sting vs Triple H, with the latter being one of the safest possible people to put the former in that ring with. Both competitors had kick-ass entrances, we got DX run-ins, NWO run-ins, and the spectacle of the golden boy of WCW finally stepping into a WWE ring. Now if you’re one of those people who were upset that Triple H went over, I don’t know what to tell you. Sorry that you feel Triple H put himself over at the expense of the legacy of a failed, dysfunctional promotion. 

The main event of WrestleMania 31 itself is underrated.  The match was Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns for the WWE Championship. This was the first Mania main event of the Reigns era and I feel like a lot of people hold that against this card. However, I feel the need to remind everybody, out of the countless Reigns vs Lesnar matches we’ve gotten, this one might actually be the best. Reigns and Lesnar actually attempt to work an actual match and manage to put on a pretty good one prior to the surprise finish. Speaking of the finish, the show had one of the greatest mania endings ever with Seth Rollins cashing in his money in the bank contract. Having the MITB get cashed in during the main event of Mania is a card you can only play once and get the most out of, and it was perfectly used here. 

Do you agree with my choices and think I’m a genius? Do you disagree and think I’m a fool? Do you think you have the best choices for your Favorite, Least Favorite, Overrated, and Underrated WrestleMania? Well, feel free to hit me up on social media and let me know! You can follow/hate tweet me @talentalonemike