After WrestleMania X-Seven, the WWF’s creative juices had well and truly peaked. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the WrestleManias after that sucked – Â just that they naturally struggled to hold a candle to the blow-away event from Houston.
WrestleMania X8 headed to Toronto’s SkyDome in 2002, with the main event match seeing Triple H beat Chris Jericho to win the WWF’s Undisputed title (although the build up to that meant you wouldn’t have known it was Hunter vs Jericho, as Stephanie McMahon became Jericho’s mouthpiece… and for a while, the former storyline couple’s dog Lucy was deemed more important than the title!). Despite that though, the real main event was a little higher up the card, as two icons collided in the ring – the man who helped propel the WWF to the mainsteam in the 1980s, against the man who had pushed the WWF into the stratosphere – Hulk Hogan faced off against The Rock.
At the time, Hogan was being portrayed as a heel, barely months after he returned to the company as a part of the new world order. Despite coming down to the ring in his black and white nWo garb, Hogan was by far and away the babyface, even after losing to the Rock in a match where the crowd reactions influenced the WWF’s future plans, to the point where the Hulkster went back to the red and yellow and enjoy a brief run as WWF champion.
Other highlights included a show-long Hardcore match that saw Molly Holly become Hardcore champion for a while, while the Undertaker stretched his WrestleMania record with a win over Ric Flair.
One year later, in Seattle, Hogan found himself in the real main event, this time in a street fight with Vince McMahon. It would be your usual affair between two guys who couldn’t work – but that doesn’t mean it stunk. It just seemed weird that for a match that was being pushed as the main event, it was third from the top of what was – on paper – a packed show, featuring a cracking match between Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels, a baffling World title match which saw the challenger (Booker T) buried for weeks prior to the show… and two top matches that made headlines for the wrong reasons.
Austin vs The Rock would be the third of their WrestleMania trilogy of matches, following 15 and 17, but the bout nearly didn’t happen. The night before, Austin suffered a panic attack as a result of too many energy drinks and spent the night before Mania in hospital. Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle, meanwhile, would spend the night after Mania in hospital – Angle, who lost the WWE title, was coming into this match in a precarious position, as his  well-documented neck injury was allegedly “one bump away” from paralysing him. Ironically, Lesnar nearly suffered the same fate, landing lead first  during a botched Shooting Star Press. Sadly for both men, although this was the main event of the show, a proportion of the Seattle crowd had already headed for the exits before either man set foot in the ring.
WrestleMania 20, I’ll cover in my next entry (as I was there live!), so we head to Los Angeles for WrestleMania 21, as WrestleMania Went Hollywood.
Basically all this was was a Hollywood-themed stage and a bunch of film spoof to promote the film (including an excellent spoof of Taxi Driver by the entire roster). The show opened with what would turn out to be Eddie Guerrero’s final WrestleMania match, losing to Rey Mysterio in a stellar match  which would be the first of many steps in what would be a long-term storyline between the two then-tag team champions. We were also treated to the first of what would become a WrestleMania tradition, with the debuting Money In The Bank ladder match seeing Edge win a title shot at some undetermined point in the next 12 months.
Kurt Angle vs Shawn Michaels – well, I say those two names, and if you expect something other than a good match then you’ll have been sadly mistaken. Problem was, after that, things went downhill with a sumo match between Akebono and the Big Show, before the show ended with two World title changes, as John Cena and Batista lifted the belts against JBL and Triple H respectively.
WrestleMania 22 was all over the place. After winning the Royal Rumble, Rey Mysterio’s impression of Eddie Guerrero won a far-too-short three-way match over Kurt Angle and Randy Orton to win the World Heavyweight title in what was, in hindsight, a very mixed card. RVD won the second Money in the Bank ladder match (and we all know what that did to set up WWE/ECW), while Edge beat Mick Foley in an entertaining ladder match. Elsewhere, JBL beat Chris Benoit for the US title, Shawn Michaels beat Vince McMahon in a No Holds Barred match while John Cena retained the WWE strap over Triple H in a match that was more memorable for its entrances: Hunter the Barbarian versus John Cena’s mobster entrance that featured the WWE debut (of sorts) of CM Punk.
Detroit, Michigan saw WrestleMania 23 become the highest-sold Mania in history, and it was all down to one man: Donald Trump. Again, this match wasn’t the true main event, but Bobby Lashley vs Umaga in a “loser has their cornerman’s head shaved” managed to garner a lot of interest, as ultimately Vince McMahon, with the help of Lashley, Trump and special ref Stone Cold Steve Austin would turn cue-ball. Elsewhere, Mr Kennedy won Money In The Bank (and became the first person so far not to win the title with it, after losing it to Edge months later), Great Khali and Kane had an atrocious match to plug See No Evil (Kane’s WWE flick), and the ECW Originals finally got a pay-day, beating the “New Breed” of Elijah Burke (now “The Pope” in TNA), Marcus Cor Von, Matt Striker and Kevin Thorn – a veritable “who’s that?” of WWE these days!
Aside from the head-shaving, Chris Benoit retained the US title over MVP, Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak stretched with a great match in the midcard over Batista (to win the World heavyweight title, while John Cena beat Shawn Michaels in the main event. For historical purposes, Ric Flair ended up in the dark match, tagging with Carlito. What had he done wrong?!
WrestleMania 24 I’ll touch on later as I was there, so we’ll skip to the last WrestleMania – the “25th Anniversary” which really wasn’t (WM26 is the 25th anniversary, but we won’t worry about the maths!). This one, again, wasn’t a bad show, but as far as booking and suchlike, it really did come across as a mixed bag. Undertaker vs Shawn Michaels was as close to a perfect match as you’ll get (what a bar to set for their match this year, eh?), but again, what should have been the main event was third from the top, as two nonsensical title matches took the top billing. Triple H and Randy Orton’s hot, then really cooling feud culminated in a boring WrestleMania match which was hamstrung with a stipulation that “if Triple H lost by DQ, he lost the title”. Hunter, of course, retained, while the World Heavyweight title was won by John Cena, as he hit Big Show, then Edge with the-move-formerly-called-the-FU to get the pin on Edge.
Elsewhere, there was some strange booking: Kid Rock ate up about ten minutes of the show early on with a live medley of his songs (that would get cut out of the DVD release, leading to a strange intro to the next match) to introduce the Diva’s Battle Royal. As none of the women got a namecheck, the
returns of the liks of Sunny, Molly Holly and the-recently-retired-back-then Victoria went unheard of. In the end, Santino Marella in drag won the match to kickstart a slightly entertaining run as “Santina”. Rey Mysterio won the Intercontinental title in 21 seconds from JBL, who would then retire and disappear into the ether immediately after the match. Chris Jericho got a clean sweep over Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat  (the latter of which would enjoy a comeback match against Jericho a month later), while CM Punk won Money In the Bank for the second year in a row.
So there we are, 25 WrestleMania’s later (two more of which I’ll cover separately)… we’re one week from WrestleMania 26. Anyone else pumped yet?
