Scott,Had this idea after last year’s Mania. Don’t expect you to answer all 29, but thought it might be fun for the readers to discuss. The topic is, what really should have been the main event for each year’s Wrestlemania. I get really fuzzy on the 19 through 26 period, so maybe someone has better ideas. Here’s my list:What SHOULD have been the Wrestlemania Main Events?
(Scott sez: Sure, I’ll play along after the break.) Wrestlemania I – Hogan/Mr. T Vs. Orndorf/Piper – Stick with the original. The main stream attention that Mr. T brought to the card was important to kicking things off. It also allows you to build to…Wrestlemania II: Hogan Vs Piper – Piper was still the hottest heel in the company and this would be the proper blowoff to the feud.Wrestlemania III: Hogan Vs Andre – Duh. (Scott sez: Agreed on all three of these.) Wrestlemania IV: Hogan Vs. Dibiase – Instead of the tournament, I would’ve had MDM win the title with Andre’s help and Hogan win it back here. The Million Dollar Man was such a huge heel and Dibiase deserved a run on top. (Scott sez: Should have just kept the belt on Dibiase after buying it, and you get a double main event of Hogan/Andre 2 and Savage challenging and beating Dibiase.) Wrestlemania V: Hogan Vs. Savage – Can’t argue with history. You’d have to move some stuff around to get the belt on Savage though.Wrestlemania VI: Hogan Vs Warrior(Scott sez: Duh.) Wrestlemania VII: Hogan Vs Warrior 2 or Warrior Vs Savage; Either would be better than Slaughter. The rematch would probably still draw even if Warrior didn’t draw well as champ. Another option would be to just move the Savage/Warrior feud to the main event. (Scott sez: Warrior should have just dropped the belt back to Hogan to spare us WWF champ Sgt. Slaughter, plus Hogan-Warrior at Halloween Havoc. Kills two awful birds with one stone.) Wrestlemania VIII: Hogan Vs Flair – At this point, the only way to keep Hogan main eventing Mania fresh would be a dream match. Huge no brainer. (Scott sez: The all-time wasted opportunity.) Wrestlemania IX: Hart Vs Hogan – Hart wins to usher in the New Generation Era. (Scott sez: Keep Hogan away from it entirely. Hart v. Savage FTW. Same result, no chance of Hogan shenanigans.) Wrestlemania X: Bret Vs Owen – The mini tourney was a waste. Bret Vs Luger would have more name value, but Owen gives us the brother angle and the better match. (Scott sez: It was OK the way it was, I think.) Wrestlemania XI: LT Vs Bam Bam got a ton of press at the time, so that is hard to argue with. The only other option would have been Shawn Vs Bret a year earlier.Wrestlemania XII: Shawn Vs Bret(Scott sez: Yeah, but not an Iron Man match.) Wrestlemania XIII: Hart Vs Austin – This was the only good match on the card and they just had to get the belt on Hart to make it the main event. (Scott sez: I don’t know that Austin was really ready for the main event of that show at that point, honestly. How about Bret v. Undertaker?) Wrestlemania XIV: Austin Vs MichaelsWrestlemania XV: Austin Vs RockWrestlemania XVI: HHH Vs Rock – I don’t like multi-man matches as main events. HHH was at the top of his game (har) here, as was Rock. (Scott sez: Yeah, the four-way was really disappointing from a booking standpoint. Everything was building to HHH v. Rock. But at least they got a monster buyrate for Backlash.) Wrestlemania XVII: Austin Vs Rock – The fact I wouldn’t change the participants in the last four years shows how well the company was booked at the time.Wrestlemania XVIII: This is where the Invasion should have culminated. I won’t fantasy book other than to say double main event of Goldberg Vs Austin and Hogan Vs Rock.Wrestlemania XIX: This is where the company lost focus after the monopoly, along with Austin and Rock leaving. Tons of talent, but nothing that just screams “Main Event”. I feel like Brock was still a bit green at this point, another year of experience would have helped. Of course, if he hadn’t botched the SSP we would probably STILL be talking about it.Wrestlemania XX: On one hand, it was good that they tried to move the focus onto the next generation. On the other, history has tragically proven that Benoit and Eddie couldn’t handle the pressure.Wrestlemania XXI: Triple H Vs Batista was perfectly fine.Wrestlemania XXII: Was Batista injured? I don’t remember, but Cena Vs. Batista would have been better than pulling Trips back to main event. (Scott sez: It pretty much made Cena, though.) Wrestlemania XXIII: Cena Vs HBK was fine. At this point, parity booking made everyone so equal that few guys had that special Wrestlemania feel. Shawn’s comeback was a success, so why not? (Scott sez: It was a great match, although the booking seemed to be leading towards Cena-HHH or Cena-HHH-Michaels. Plus this was the most successful WM of all-time, so you can’t argue with the results.) Wrestemania XXIV: Michaels Vs Flair was THE reason to watch this show. They could have put one of the belts on Shawn to make it the Main Event. (Scott sez: Respectfully disagree. I wasn’t into the Flair forced retirement at all.) Wrestlemania XXV: This is where they dropped the ball on Orton. He was getting huge heat for punting the McMahons and it would’ve been easy to turn Orton VS HHH into a double turn where Orton turned face and HHH turned heel. Fans were already cheering him for punting Vince anyway. (Scott sez: This is the point where I get really fuzzy on what happened when, so I won’t have much to add past this.) Wrestlemania XXVI: You had Cena Vs Batista about 3 years after it should have been done. All anyone cared about was HBK Vs Taker, so just throw a belt on one of them to make it official.Wrestlemania XXVII: Obvious that Miz was not the choice to main event, but Cena and Orton were heavily played out by this point. I think they should have thrown more money at Rock and done Rock Vs Cena here to bring the special feel back to Mania.Wrestlemania XXVIII: Rock Vs Cena is the easy choice, but in my world we did it a year ago. I think you have Rock Vs Cena II as one main event and Punk Vs HHH as the other. Punk was coming off Summer of Punk six months earlier and there was no excuse for not utilizing him in a big way. Again, I’ll skip the fantasy booking and just say that Punk would’ve feuded with Trips with HHH trying to get Punk and the title back to the WWE and slowly revealing himself to be a political monster who used Punk’s exodus with the belt to steal the company from Vince. And finally…Wrestlemania XXIX: A year ago I would have said that Rock Vs Cena II was a no brainer, but what a difference 12 months can make. Cena is even more played out and fans are even getting tired of Rock. Had you put over Punk in a big way last year, I think you could’ve milked his title reign and heel turn longer and made it a bigger deal when Rock beat him, so I’ll say Punk Vs Rock should have been this year’s main event.