WrestleMania is almost upon us. It’s the biggest show of the year for the biggest sports-entertainment company around. Every year the WWE pulls out all the stops to make their oldest PPV event feel like the culmination of a year’s worth of stories. To be on the marquee for WrestleMania is a high honor for any superstar; it’s a sign that you are among the most valuable performers available. To be in the main-event is an even rarer honor. You become part of a small group of people who were tasked with closing out the show of shows and making sure the paying customers walk away feeling like they got their money’s worth.
So let’s talk about the times they sucked.
There have been a lot of main-event stinkers in WrestleMania history, but just to keep things even, here’s one from every major “era” in WWF/E history:
Titan Era
The Titan Era is the period of time that stretches from the kick-off of the first Wrestling Boom (the 80s Boom) until the steroid scandal a few years later. We peg it, in terms of WrestleMania events, as the period between WrestleMania I and WrestleMania VIII.
During this time the company had many big personalities and colorful characters but there was only one unquestioned star: Hulk Hogan was wrestling in the 80’s but his popularity started to wane in the early 90’s. Nevertheless, due both to Vince McMahon’s unwillingness to commit to a new top star, as well as Hogan’s backstage politicking, the dying days of the Titan Era saw cracks in the company’s armor start to show. It was Hogan or Bust in the Titan Era and for a while things were booming.
Then came the bust…
WrestleMania 8 came at a time when the fans were growing tired of Hogan and were looking for fresh blood in the main-event scene. In response, Vince put the title on Ric Flair and Randy Savage, both of whom competed for the WWF Championship at this WrestleMania…in a match that was placed in the middle of the show. Topping the card was Hulk Hogan. Again. Sid Justice did the honors of facing him and to make the main-event placement justified everyone from Kamala to Ultimate Warrior were thrown out there to give the show a bang ending.
The match was a fiasco with clunky spots, slow pacing, and a botched finish. By the time the show faded, the Titan Era was all but dead and Vince was left essentially to start over…
New Generation Era
The NEW GENERATION ERA, as the name implies, was the period of time where the WWF transitioned away from the likes of Hogan, Savage, Ultimate Warrior and other roided-up mammoth men to slimmer, quicker, more athletic competitors like Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart. It lasted from WrestleMania IX to WrestleMania 13 and occurred alongside the most financially-dire period of time in WWF/E history. Ticket sales were down, TV ratings struggled, PPV buys faded, and pop culture interest in pro wrestling shrank to almost non-existence.
During this time Vince searched high and low for his next Hulk Hogan. The one name he kept coming back to was Bret Hart, who main-evented WrestleManias IX and X, seemingly being coronated at the latter show as the next top guy, though Vince never seemed content to build the brand around him; he kept looking for a better guy to come along. The problem was there were so few true “stars” in the company to choose from.
So he chose no one…
Coming at the end of the WWF’s nadir, WrestleMania 13 highlights just how flailing and bad Vince is when he doesn’t have a superstar to build his show around. There were, essentially, five potential guys to choose from to main-event the biggest show of 1997: Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, The Undertaker, and Sid Viscious…in that order. Hart vs Michaels II was the natural pick but Michaels decided to sit the show out rather than lose to Bret Hart. No matter, Hart vs Austin was a blood feud with lots of crowd heat that would be perfect for a Mania main-event.
So naturally Vince put it in the undercard and gave the main-event to Undertaker vs Sid Justice.
Everyone agrees Mania13 was a one-match show and that there’s no point continuing your rewatch after Hart vs Austin ends. Everyone understood how big that match was and how much of a star-making performance Austin was going to put on (and did). Everyone except for Vince, I guess. The fight he did end up closing Mania with was a meandering, boring, dud, and it ended the worst era in the history of Vince’s Empire the same way, not with excitement, but with apathy from the fans.
Attitude Era
The ATTITUDE ERA coincided with the second wrestling boom (also known as the late-90’s boom), during which time the WWF and WCW battled for Monday Night ratings supremacy, putting on increasingly more chaotic and shocking shows week after week in an effort to one-up the other. Ratings climbed and climbed and superstars graced the covers of magazines, t-shirts, billboards, and commercials at a rate not seen in the history of the pseudo-sport.
Ultimately, the era was short-lived. In WrestleMania terms, it lasted only through five events, all of which saw hot crowds and big PPV buyrates, but not all of which were great. One thing that marked this period was the starpower. Even though Steve Austin was the undisputed top draw of the era, the Rock was 1A and supporting players like Triple H, Mick Foley, Chris Jericho, Kurt Angle, and Undertaker all contributed to making each show feel like a greatest hits event. With so much superstar talent on hand, it was an embarresment of riches for Vince McMahon. He could choose any two performers and have a great WrestleMania main-event.
So why did WrestleMania 18’s show-closer suck so bad?
WrestleMania 18 failed for the same reason WrestleMania 13 failed. There was a match that almost everyone on planet earth knew needed to close the show, but it didn’t because the one man on planet earth who didn’t think it should was also the only man on the planet with the power to ignore everyone else on the planet.
Hogan vs Rock was hardly a technical masterpiece. It was, however, the hottest match in the history of WrestleMania and the greatest Icon vs Icon match there will ever be. It slayed the Toronto Skydome and when it was over everyone on planet earth knew the same thing: There was no topping it.
Triple H vs Chris Jericho was sent out to try…and failed.
It’s weird because when you watch the Rock vs Hogan match with the sound off, you realize the match is nothing special at all. It’s a lot of brawling, some stalling, some near-falls, a few reverses, and finally the finish. When you watch the main-event with the sound off, the match is really good. It’s technical, relatively snappy-paced, with some clever spots, and a strong finish. It’s a good match.
Then you turn the sound on.
Hogan vs Rock is electric. Triple H vs Jericho was lifeless. If you want a simple explanation for the power of a pro wrestling crowd; that’s it. As it is, the show feels like it was on the verge of greatness, if only they hadn’t botched the card order.
Ruthless Aggression Era
The RUTHELESS AGGRESSION era marked the reset-period after the superstars and hot ratings of the Attitude Era faded away. Guys like Austin and Foley were retired. Rock was off making movies. Potential top stars like Chris Jericho were too nerfed to be viewed as the next main-eventers up. This was the WrestleMania period between Mania 19-29, a massive eleven year stretch that oversaw the rise of a whole new batch of superstars that carried the company. Through this time, one name rose to the top and cemented himself as the star.
Welcome to the John Cena era.
John Cena dominated the company in a way no one else had since Hulk Hogan twenty years earlier. He was everywhere, on every advertisement, PPV, title match, etc. John Cena was the face of the company and the company in this era was built almost entirely around him. As such, he main-evented his fair-share of PPV events. Over this eleven year stretch John Cena was in a title match or in the show-closing match nine times (five of which saw him close out the show, title match or no). There were some epic bouts during this period.
And there was also WrestleMania 27…
WrestleMania 27 featured The Miz defending his WWE Championship against John Cena in a match that ended in a DQ, was restarted by the show’s “host,” who then attacked the challenger so that the heel Miz could retain.
I don’t need to tell you anything else. That was the main-event. That’s what happened.
Network Era
The NETWORK ERA is so named because it coincided with a shift in the company’s focus from pushing $60 monthly pay-per-views to $9.99 monthly subscriptions to their Netflix-like 24/7 Wrestling Network. It was the era stretching from WrestleMania XXX (30) to WrestleMania 34, and even though the Network is still ongoing, the company’s direction has changed so dramatically that it’s safe to say we’re in a new era now. The years in between Mania 30-34 will be those we look back on that were centered around one superstar.
Welcome to the “let’s try and get Roman Reigns over as the next John Cena” era.
These years need no introduction since we just lived through them. Things have shifted a bit now that Becky Lynch has cemented herself as the current top superstar in the company, but for a while there it was “all Roman, all the time” in WWE. In that time, Reigns main-evented four straight WrestleMania events, a record not seen since Hulk Hogan topped the bill for Manias 5-8.
And like Hogan, the last one was the worst.
WrestleMania 34 saw Roman Reigns again challenge Brock Lesnar again for his championship. This comes after years of Reigns being put in the main-event only to have fans balk, boo, and boycott. Amazingly, here, after all these years of attempts and failures, at WrestleMania 34 and after so much “Brock Lesnar as the champ who never comes to work” fatigue, the fans were finally ready to accept a Roman Reigns WrestleMania main-event victory.
Vince wore us down. We surrendered.
Reigns entered the WrestleMania 31 main-event poised to win and everyone booed until he lost, then everyone cheered. Alright, Vince said, screw you; we’ll do it my way: Reigns entered Mania 32 poised to win and everyone booed, so Vince gave him the win anyway. He entered WrestleMania 33 poised to win and everyone booed and Vince gave us the middle finger two years in a row and had him beat the Undertaker.
And now here, at WrestleMania 34, after all that abuse, the fans were finally ready to embrace a Roman Reigns victory. We were desperate for anyone to beat Brock Lesnar, so much so that fans were excitedly talking about what a Roman Reigns title run might look like. He entered the main-event poised to win and everyone cheered!
So OF COURSE Brock Lesnar won.
Me:
And that kids is the story of how every era of WWF/E history ended, not with a bang, but with a frustrating WrestleMania main-event whimper.
Thanks for nothing.
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