You know me, I’m normally a positive guy, always looking for the best in people and wrestling promotions. However, even the “Grandest Stage of them All” and the “Showcase of the Immortals” can really produce some spectacular stinkers.
Really, there shouldn’t be any excuse for WrestleMania being a terrible show. It’s traditionally been the show that everything in the year leads towards, typically planned for months in advance in exacting detail, like a Roman Reigns push. And sometimes it fails horribly, like a Roman Reigns push.
As a note on criteria here, I’m looking for three major factors here in deciding what the worst of the worst are:
- First, a terrible main event is pretty much a must, because it’s the main focus of the show and thing that viewers are left with at the end of the night.
- Second, a bad and/or indifferent crowd is a surefire way to kill a show.
- Finally, the more stupid or insulting things that happen over the course of the PPV, the better its chances to place here.
So while normally the biggest show of the year is a highlight of our lives as wrestling fans, here are five times when it was…decidedly not.
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Honorable mentions: The TrumpManias
First up, although I don’t think they belong in the Hall of Fame of Bad WrestleManias, I do have to give a shout-out to WrestleMania 4 and 5, two shows that managed to take intriguing concepts and produce two of the worst shows in WWF history. And just think, they weren’t even bad enough to make this list!
WrestleMania 4, more popularly known as “WrestleMania Bore," was virtually a sold show at Trump Plaza in New Jersey, filled with bored gamblers whose extent of wrestling knowledge was Hulk Hogan.
So we got a four-hour tournament for the WWF title, filled with luminaries the caliber of Dino Bravo ( who is the worst ), Don Muraco and Jim Duggan. Not to mention a Jake Roberts/Rick Rude snoozefest that felt like it took up 2 1/2 hours of the runtime on its own. The next year they returned with Wrestlemania 5, which at least had one of the greatest main events of all time on top with THE MEGAPOWERS EXPLODE, but somehow the show was almost as long and had a crowd that was somehow even less invested than the zombies that filled the arena the year before. One word: Jim Duggan wrestling Bad News Brown with a giant booger hanging out of his nose for 10 minutes. Hard pass.
5. WrestleMania 15
Vince Russo can just go jump off a allegorical cliff.
This was the nadir of his booking powers, as he was a few months away from burning out completely and leaving for WCW, booking ridiculous swerves and double-turns and nonsensical title changes on napkins hours before the shows. Everything wrong with the beloved Attitude Era is summed up by his three-hour pile of dog excrement.
Overindulgent run-ins up and down the card! Screwjob finishes in the top matches! Billy Gunn and Road Dogg competing for singles titles, and then switching places the week before the show for no reason! Chyna turns heel and babyface roughly 17 times between the pre-show and the main event! Shane McMahon successfully defends a title and then literally throws it in the garbage! Did I mention Bart Gunn getting his head knocked off by Butterbean in 30 seconds as a pathetic coda to the Brawl for All debacle? Bro, this show sucks, bro.
However, the main event between Rock and Austin is pretty boss, so it’s not the worst.
4. WrestleMania 27
I’m just getting warmed up.
First up, the positive: Triple H and The Undertaker had a hell of a match in the semi-main event spot, with a decidedly understated buildup where they came out and pointed to the WrestleMania sign. Granted, both guys were supposed to be doing other things that year and this was kind of just put together as a thing to do, but come on. The match ruled, so whatever.
No, this show can die in a fire because the Miz successfully defended the WWE title in the main event of WrestleMania. Really? REALLY? Also, he managed to concuss himself on the floor against John Cena and literally wrestled the rest of the match with his brain in another part of Georgia, resulting in perhaps the worst main event in WrestleMania history.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, this was the apex of heel Michael Cole, wrestling Jerry Lawler in a “match” filled with nonsense and gaga that was about as entertaining as my cat trying to cough up a hairball. Steve Austin looked embarrassed to be involved in it as special referee, and the anonymous GM figured into the finish. It was everything wrong with 2011 encapsulated in one match.
MORE: The best WrestleMania matches of all time
Also, CM Punk lost in a nothing match and got so mad about it that he cut the pipe bomb promo some months later. Given how even-tempered and soft-spoken that Punk is, you really need to screw up to get him all riled up.
Also, while I’m thinking about it, we were forced to sit through a 17 hour 40 man Royal Rumble in January and listen to weeks of Alberto Del Rio celebrating his win and blathering on about his “destiny," only to see the Rumble winner jerking the curtain against Edge and losing his World title shot! And then Edge retired, a week later and vacated the title anyway.
It was not only insulting, it wasted our time, and that’s just rude. I can’t stand for rudeness.
Except Rick Rude. He’s great.
3. WrestleMania 2
Oh man, did you see that Starrcade show that Jim Crockett did in 1985? It was from two locations! Hey, you know what would be even better? Three locations! We’ll charge full price in major arenas to give people three live matches that run about 4 minutes each and then make them watch a screen for the other two hours.
Then we’ll have a boxing match between "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Mr. T where neither guy wants to lose. Then we’ll put Susan St. James on commentary and give her lots of booze beforehand. And there’ll be hillbillies! And football players in a battle royal! And Ozzy Osbourne apparently winning the tag team titles with Captain Lou Albano for some reason! WE’LL MAKE MILLIONS!
2. WrestleMania 9
I feel like this one is shooting rotten fish in a barrel full of vomit, but always remember: Jim Ross in a toga.
The only WrestleMania — to date — to be held in a parking lot, you at least can say it was a unique atmosphere. Built up around Hulk Hogan making his big return, magically 100 pounds lighter once the government started investigating Vince for steroid distribution. But he only used them once, in the early '80s, when they were legal, brother, and only to rehab a bicep injury with a doctor’s note.
Anyway, once Hogan and his favorite bootlick Brutus Beefcake failed to win the tag titles from Money, Inc., alarm bells should have started going off for everyone. But no, we didn’t take heed of the warning signs, and so maybe we deserved to have the show end with Bret Hart losing the World title to Yokozuna and then valiantly stepping aside so that Hulk Hogan could beat him with a legdrop in under a minute. Plus he had a black eye, supposedly from a jet ski accident. Hey, I was reading the internet at the time, I know what “jet ski” hit him in the eye.
Regardless, maybe it was our fault for not just turning off the TV when Giant Gonzalez used chloroform on the Undertaker and it was supposed to be a serious moment. Maybe we should have just put in an old tape of Mid-Atlantic once this show got to Crush getting beaten by a literal clown via identical twin clown who also had a fake arm. Wrestling is supposed to be like a circus. Not actually be a circus.
Still, it was memorable, like 2016 Presidential election memorable. You have to give it that.
1. WrestleMania 11
Live from the hotbed of wrestling, Hartford, Conn.!
Bam Bam Bigelow wrestles a football player in the main event and loses, while the WWF desperately tries to drum up mainstream interest outside of the New York market — and the show WASN’T EVEN IN NEW YORK!
Can’t get the media to bite on the main event? Throw some celebrities at it! No actual celebrities available? How about one of the kids from "Home Improvement?" The guy from "NYPD Blue" who isn’t Sipowitz or David Caruso? Pam Anderson and Jenny McCarthy both looking like they literally had to be paid in cash before they’d go out there and would rather be anywhere else in the entire world if their career path at that point could justify it? Those are kinds of celebrities, I guess.
Meanwhile, they want Diesel to be the biggest thing since Hulk Hogan, so we’ll shove his WWF title defense down the card and then have him wrestle Shawn Michaels, who proceeds to somehow turn himself into the biggest star in the world by sandbagging his best friend and completely upstaging him like a selfish jerk, basically killing Diesel’s title reign in the process. Plus, 1-2-3 Kid wore silk pajamas.
Oh, and Undertaker pinned King Kong Bundy — with a clothesline. Next time you millennials complain about Roman Reigns getting pushed too hard, you should have to watch this show on the WWE Network, specifically Bret Hart vs. Bob Backlund in a submission match where 90 percent of it is both guys laying on the mat napping. Then you’ll understand. This one is so bad, and boring, and stupid, it will make you love Roman Reigns main event matches. You’ll be begging for The Big Dog after this one.
And any show that can pull that off deserves the No. 1 spot on the list of all-time worst WrestleManias.
