am looking for specific matches that took place at WrestleMania that looked
terrible on paper but they ended up being good or even great. By the
way, unlike last time, it doesn’t matter if you saw it live or not. You can
pick any match that you want, as long as it initially looked terrible on paper but ended up being good.
Here
are some of my selections off the top of my head:
Ultimate
Warrior vs. Hulk Hogan 6: Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior had a couple of
good matches in the past, but they came with superior opponents that had
the abilities to cloud Warrior and Hogan’s deficiencies and limitations. They also had roughly 10 moves between them, which made
me think to myself before watching this, “What the hell are they going
to do?” In addition to that, their characters seemed too similar: Both played invincible baby faces that made miraculous comebacks.
After
all, most intriguing matchups
are predominantly between characters that are complete opposites.They are rarely between ones that are essentially identical.
Long story short, this just looked like it was going to be an in-ring train wreck.
Magically, it was not a train wreck. It was actually an awesome match. It has
been said that a road agent (I think it was Patterson) constructed
this literally almost move-for-move. I hope whomever put it together
was given a raise for doing such a masterful job. They created
an exquisite narrative about a battle of immortals. It
was parallel to watching Superman fight Batman to establish who’s the better superhero.
Even
though the match was highly choreographed ahead of time, the performers should get credit for executing everything at a high-level. They demonstrated their unparalleled charisma and it brought out all sorts of emotions from
the fans. They truly had the type of charisma that could not be taught. It was the kind that just comes naturally and instinctively.
Hulk
Hogan vs. The Rock 18: So, I guess this makes Hogan an
overachiever at WrestleMania. In 2002, it seemed almost impossible for anyone to get a
good match out of Hogan. He had been stinking up joints left and right. Rock, albeit being very good, wasn’t really notorious for being a miracle worker.
WWE also
didn’t think building this up as a dream match was good enough. They had to add
a heavy dose of
They overcame everything and ended up having a historical match. Some
have said this is a bad match without any volume, although that would be
like calling a horror scene unsuspenseful without any volume because the
music is what makes most horrors scary.
I mean, crowd psychology is one
of the most crucial factors of how
good a match is, and these two succeeded at just that by keeping the
crowd utterly captivated and bringing them on an extraordinary journey.
The two most surprising things about this, however, were its flow and
transitions. It had nearly zero downtime and kept building towards the crescendo.
I cannot name another Hogan match from this era that accomplished those two
things.
This was just an unexpected gem.
Batista vs. Undertaker
23: Fans were outraged
that this was going to co-main event Wrestlemania. Even though
Undertaker ameliorated his
in-ring style to a more pseudo MMA style, Batista’s resume of good matches was
smaller than the amount of fans he has in 2014. Batista was distraught over so
many people questioning why he was given such a big spot at Mania. With a
chip on his shoulder, he exhibited something that most people did not think he
had – vehemence.
They surprised us all by pulling of a great
heavyweight power/slugfest match, with back and forth action, suspense and
drama. This isn’t even their best match together, either. They developed
chemistry together and topped this one. I think facing Undertaker was the best
thing that happened to Batista, because he learned a lot about
wrestling psychology after their series of matches.
Well, there are the first three that popped in my head. Balls in your court now.