Gimmick Battle Royal

I don’t know why I was thinking about it, but what was the deal with the Gimmick Battle Royal at Mania 17? It seemed so out of place for the time, with it being featured on the card that was the unofficial end to the Monday Night Wars, and was neither treated as a match to make a modern wrestler look like a jerk (see: Rob Conway in 2005 or Orton’s "Legend Killer" character) nor was it treated as a comedy. I guess my questions are: was this something planned out for more than a week notice, who came up with the idea, and was there any rhyme or reason to who they invited in?

​It was just a thing they wanted to do to give some guys a payday, I think. This was well before they were 18 inches up their own ass all the time and everything had to be a commercial for the Network or an upcoming DVD release. ​