Which Wrestlemania was the greatest from 1-16?

[HeenanGorilla]

And there was a very short match between Mr. Perfect & Owen Hart that, if it had been given more time, would have been a classic.

This match was at Wrestlemania V, but I agree.

My favorite is Wrestlemania III. It seems to be the popular pick, but it just happened to be the first Wrestlemania I saw and I have always loved it. I taped it and know the dialogue word-for-word. As a kid, I loved it and now I still like to pop it in and enjoy. It has truly held up over time and I love how each match had a history...even the small ones, a la Battle of the Full Nelson. A nice little something extra for that match. A lot of Hall of Famers too.

The worst was XII for me. 6 matches if I'm not mistaken. That could have been better. I know the Iron Man match needed more time, but so did the tournament in IV--so that was a 4-hour (two-VHS) event. It could have been better if there was a full card INCLUDING an Iron Man Match. Not one depending on it.

 

[HBKperfect23]

XII could have been so much better. I just reveiwed the card and the roster.
Yokozuna and Vader should have had a one on one match. I guess this could have been considered a dream match in 93/94. The tag match should have been on the ppv and Owen and Davey should have been in there. HHH could have a had a meaningful match.

Savio/Austin didnt suck. Goldust/Piper would have been better if it was an actual match. Undertaker/Desil was ok. I dont put XII to low simply because of the main event.

 

[Moneyinc]

I gotta say Wrestlemania 7 here. Just so many great matches. Basically one of the few pay per views that has almost all of my favorites on the card. Wish Nasty Boys wouldn't have won the title from the Hart Foundation though. Was a pretty darn good match and loved seeing the crowd cheering hard for the Foundation. Undertaker vs Snukka was cool. A great time for Undertaker and Paul berrer. Then of course the double main event was quite possibly the biggest double main event ever. Oh, and the first match of the night...Rockers vs Barbarian and Haku was one of the better Rocker matches ever.

 

[The Fabulous Rougeau's]

I begin my rankings by seperating the Mania's into three groups.

Good Shows:
WrestleMania III
WrestleMania VIII
WrestleMania X
WrestleMania XIV

Average Shows:
WrestleMania I
WrestleMania IV
WrestleMania VI
WrestleMania XII
WrestleMania XIII
WrestleMania 2000

Poor Shows:
WrestleMania II
WrestleMania V
WrestleMania VII
WrestleMania IX
WrestleMania XI
WrestleMania XV

On to the rankings:

16) WrestleMania II

This is the only Mania I never find a reason to pop in. Nothing stands out.

15) WrestleMania XI

By this time WrestleMania was established and this is an event that just didn't feel like a WrestleMania. Above average World Title match and everything else was below average to awful.

14) WrestleMania IX

Pretty much the same as XI, but with better atmosphere.

13) WrestleMania VII

Horrible World Title match (should have been Macho/Warrior). Outside of Warrior and Macho, there was too much going on here and just about all of it was poor.

12) WrestleMania XV

Great main event, but outside of that no other match really stands out other than Pac/Shane. Alot of people don't like the swerves on that night but I really enjoyed how everything played out with DX that night as the beginning of HHH's big heel push.

11) WrestleMania V

Suffers from feeling like IV (same venue) but not being as good of a card. Macho and Hogan was good, but should have been more.

10) WrestleMania I

Ranks a little higher because it is the first one. Outside the main event the Andre match is the only thing that really stands out.

9) WrestleMania VI

Alot like VII with the amount of matches, but this has a great main event going for it and other highlightes like Demolition v Haku/Andre, Hart's squashing that foreign team, and the Macho/Dusty match.

8) WrestleMania XIII

Hart/Austin shines. I liked the Sid/Taker match more than most and the Goldust/Trips story played out well. Also Bret running into the main event match like he did and blasting Shawn on the mic as he did made the event greater than the sum of its parts.

7) WrestleMania IV

Card gets higher ranking from me because of the tournament. I'm a sucker for World Title tournaments and would love to get one for a Title unification at some point.

6) WrestleMania 2000

The most underrated main event in Mania history. I loved the concept with a McMahon at each corner. Also liked that Rock and Trips worked about a 20 minute match with each other after the match had already gone on for about the same amonut of time with Show and Mankind. Benoit/Jericho/Angle put on a hell of a match and before TLC we had the trianle ladder match that Edge and Christian, Hardy's and Dudley's put on.

5) WrestleMania XII

Best Main Event in Mania history. Bret, Shawn and over one hour says it all. Taker/Diesel much like Taker/Sid the following year are better matches than most make them out to be.

4) WrestleMania VIII

This card produced a number of quality bouts with Flair/Macho and Piper/Bret turning into great matches. Taker/Roberts is clearly the best of Takers early pre WM XII matches.

3) WrestleMania XIV

Perfect balance of the great pre attitude era matches from 97 and the attitude era feel and tone. Austin/Michaels and Taker/Kane deliver a truly great double main event, while Rock/Shamrock and Trips/Owen create a solid midcard.

2) WrestleMania III

This was the first "grand spectical" and it delivered. The biggest match in WWE history between Hulk and Andre and it delivered. Macho/Steamboat was the first great midcard match which lead the way for superstars like Bret, Shawn, Austin and a host of others to build through the mid card and work there way into the main event.

1) WrestleMania X

Hart v Hart was a classic. Razor v Shawn created a new match type and helped to usher in a hardcore type of match to the WWE. And the man of that era had his Mania moment.

 

[D-Man]

I'm not the type to rank aspects of professional wrestling. I'm not going to waste the next 15-20 minutes of my life finding my personal order for the first 16 Wrestlemanias. However, I have no problem letting everyone know the ones I feel were the best and worst of their eras.

Worst: Wrestlemania II
Is there really any argument here? This Wrestlemania (even during its time period) was a complete abomination. It was a failed experiment, trying to utilize closed captioning in three major cities across the US to gain dollars prior to the PPV era. All we wound up getting was major delays and lots of fluff in commentating that was designed to kill time in between raising and lowering projector screens for the live audience so they could catch all three parts of the show.

Meanwhile, the card had a bunch of lackluster matches and some (dare I say) main events that had hardly any buildup unless you count the Piper/Mr. T boxing match that was still milking heat from the previous year's feud. Back then, the WWF was just learning how to make good TV by building long-term feuds with more than just their main event. As a result, the majority of the card was a real clusterfuck and was thrown together, leaning on the Hogan/Bundy cage match to be the main draw. No other matches during the card had real meaning besides the battle royal but even that match offered next to nothing to Andre the Giant.

Best: Wrestlemania III
Most people of our modern generation judge a good wrestling show by its quality of star-power, buy-rates, live attendance, match quality, overall entertainment and its main event draw. This Wrestlemania had ALL of these factors.

Match Quality - Up until HBK/Taker I, many considered Savage/Steamboat to be the single greatest Wrestlemania match of all time. This was because two midcard wrestlers wanted to show the world that the main event of a wrestling program shouldn't be the single greatest draw of the show. They knew they could put on the best "wrestling" match on the show and succeeded in doing so.

Star Power - Mary Hart, Bob Uecker, Alice Cooper, Aretha Franklin... not to mention the fact that (at the time) WWF stars like Hogan and Andre, were considered to be mainstream stars.

Buy Rates and attendance - Wrestlemania III broke every record that the WWE and Pontiac Silverdome ever held. The money made from this PPV was completely staggering, at that time.

Overall Entertainment - There were 12 total matches on this card. 9 of those matches had actual feuds with months of buildup. Haynes and Hercules had an entertaining feud over who was the true master of the full nelson... Junkyard Dog and Harley Race had a match whose loser had to bow to the other... The Dream Team won their match but also imploded as they left Brutus Beefcake in the dust... Roddy Piper wrestled in an emotional match with Adrian Adonis and was supposed to be his swan song, only to extend his career and create the birth of Brutus "The Barber" Beecake... Steamboat rose above adversity, defeated Randy Savage, marking the first time in WrestleMania history that the Intercontinental Championship changed hands, had one of the greatest Wrestlemania matches of all time, and all of this after a debilitating (kayfabe) injury... and who could forget the Hogan versus Andre feud?

If that's not entertainment, NOTHING is.

Main event draw - I don't think I even need to explain what Hogan vs. Andre did for professional wrestling as a whole, let alone that PPV.

There is no argument here. Wrestlemania III was the greatest Wrestlemania of the first 6 years and arguably the greatest of all time.

 

[Sexcellence of Sexecution]

When I look at this period, from WrestleMania 1-16, three shows really stand out to me: Wrestlemania III, WrestleMania X and WrestleMania XIV. WrestleMania III was the pinnacle of the Golden Era of wrestling, WrestleMania X was the best WrestleMania of the "New Generation" era, and WrestleMania XIV helped mark the beginning of the attitude era, the success of which is quite well documented. So we have three great events from three different eras in WWE history, but which one is the best?

Personally, I think I'd go with WrestleMania III. Hulk/Andre was a main event of epic proportions, quite literally. The atmosphere surrounding that match was unreal and it produced probably the most memorable WrestleMania moment of all time. Then of course you have what is possibly the best pure wrestling match in WrestleMania history, Steamboat vs. Savage. To me, those are the two key elements you need in a WrestleMania card, an epic "dream match" between two huge stars and a classic pure wrestling match. WrestleMania III might have delivered those elements better than any WrestleMania ever.

 

[Moneyinc]

Wrestlemania III doesn't excite me too much other than those 2 matches though..

I mean basically it just has a way more old school roster. Something about the roster from Wrestlemania 7 and 8 just had so many great under card matches. Matches like Undertaker vs Jake the Snake or Hart Foundation losing their title to the Nasty Boys...
Or Rockers upsetting Haku and Barbarian in one of the more exciting matches ever kicking off the show....

But yea it really doesn't get better than the top 2 matches from Wrestlemania III.

I watched Wrestlemania 4 last night and pretty much loved it. There was a hand full of matches I wasn't too interested in, but I'm starting to think IV might be a personal favorite just because I love Macho Man so much. It was cool to see the crowd get more and more behind Macho with each match. Love the sneaky approach Macho took to trying to get off his flying elbow which is possibly my favorite special move from this time period. Then of course Macho and Debiase meeting in the Championship. The match was so entertaining with Virgil and Andre standing at ringside. Andre was being hilarious just standing there acting like he wasn't doing anything, and then anytime Macho got close he would grab his leg haha. Then Macho says something to Elizabeth and she heads back to the locker room and the whole crowd knew she was going to get the Hulkster. Not only does she get the Hulkster, but the Hulkster blasts Debiase with a chair. It was just cool to see Hogan and Macho cheat to win. It was almost like they had enough of Debiase cheating, so they decided to give em a dose of their own medicine. Then the celebration with Hulk giving Macho the belt, and Macho putting Elizabeth on his shoulder seriously is just about my favorite Wrestlemania moment. Besides maybe Macho vs Warrior at Wrestlemania 7.

 

[Moneyinc]

I said Wrestlemania 7 was my favorite but I'm taking that back. Wrestlemania 4 and 8 are currently my two favorite. Taker's tombstone on Jake the Snake outside the ring at 8 was just too great. And as someone said above, Hart vs Piper is seriously something special. That was sort of where it all started for Bret. Piper was such a great actor too, staring in a damn good John Carpenter film They Live just a couple years before that. Then the Macho Man vs Flair is one of my favorite rivalries just because it is so easy to cheer against Flair.

 

[Wolf Pac]

Easily Wrestlemania 3, there's no other answer. You have what is considered to be the greatest match in WM history and what is considered to be the greatest moment in WM history both on the same card. The rest of the card doesn't even matter, just Steamboat/Savage and Hogan/Andre and what they have done for the company is enough for them to be the best WM between 1-16 and maybe the greatest WM in history.

 

[CrucifiedRaven]

For me the best are:

1. WrestleMania 4 - I'm a huge mark for Savage and DiBiase, and title tournaments, plus it had Hogan/Andre III
2. WrestleMania 10 - Bret and Owen / Shawn and Razer / Bret finally beats Yoko and regains the title
3. WrestleMania 8 - Savage and Flair / Bret and Piper
4. WrestleMania 14 - Shawn and Austin w Tyson / the Taker and Kane payoff / Rock and Shamrock
5. WrestleMania 3 - Just because of how immense Hogan/Andre was.. and Savage/Steamboat

I assume WrestleMania 17 isn't on here because it's the consensus greatest WrestleMania of all time?

Worst:

1. WrestleMania 11: Bigelow and LT / Diesel and Shawn / Backlund and Bret... Just awful
2. WrestleMania 15: Again, Rock and Austin was a big draw, but sloppy... rest of the card was pretty bad. Worst HIAC also.
3. WresleMania 13: Bret and Austin was amazing... That's the only reason this is #3 and not #1 as the worst. The other six matches were terrible
4.. WrestleMania 9: Just a weak show. All the old stars were gone, except Hogan's recent comeback... And the new stars were both booked to look very weak with the weird Hogan swerve at the end. Shawn and Tatanka / Doink and Crush / Luger and Perfect weren't bad
5. WrestleMania 2: It makes the worst cut but I won't rate this one as bad as others. For two reasons... Savage and George the Animal Steele. And the battle royal with NFL stars, with Andre winning. Both were solid.

 

[P. Nut Butters]

My favourite is WrestleMania 12. Likely because it was the first WrestleMania I ever saw despite my starting watching wrestling in 1997.

I have fond memories of watching WrestleMania 12 on VHS. And while it is probably my favourite pre-17 Mania, I did think it had some big letdowns.
I was a big fan of the Hunter Hearst-Helmsley character and so the thought of seeing him square off with the Ultimate Warrior was cool! However, it goes without saying that the one-minute match was less than expected.

Also, I absolutely hated the Backlot Brawl. I'm sure it's not as bad as I remember it, but particularly being new to wrestling at the time, I was there for the in-ring action and not some cheesey and rather uninteresting brawl.

Of course, the Bret vs. Shawn main-event truly cemented my interest in professional wrestling. A classic tale was told in the ring that night which perfectly complimented the build-up and the outcome.

I just recently re-watched WrestleMania 11. I remember not being too fond of it and my disappointment for the event was only further reafifirmed.
A lot of people bag on WrestleMania 9, but I actually loved Tatanka vs. Michaels and Steiners vs. Headshrinkers so while not entirely impressed it did have some shining moments to me.

After watching WrestleMania 11, however, I just felt the upmost sense of having just been ripped off. I was falling asleep during the event and ultimately felt like I lost 3 hours of my life that I would never get back.

 

[Moneyinc]

^I was in 5th grade during Wrestlemania 12 and watched/listened to it on the scribbly channel that we had before Boxes got popular. It was actually almost a decent watch. Couldn't barely see anything, but the Iron Man Match was a great listen...

 

[HBsam31]

What is the best Wrestlemania to come before 17?

WrestleMania 3 is my favorite because it was my first one and it wowed me. Seeing Hogan and Andre was a great introduction to Mania for me as a kid. Savage and Steamboat is one of the best matches ever. I agree with the Brain that the card was huge for its time. I put 5 up there to with the Mega Powers exploding and Rude Vs Warrior.


What is the worst of the same time period?

The worst for me was Mania 15. I loved the attitude era but this was a mess. Just seemed sloppy from start to finish. Almost seemed more like a Raw than Wrestlemania.

How would you Rank these specific WM from worst to best?

Off the top of my head from best to worst.
WM 3
WM 5
WM 14
WM 10
WM 4
WM 7
WM 12
WM 13
WM 6
WM 1
WM 8
WM 16
WM 9
WM 2
WM 11
WM 15

 

[spaldoni]

I have to go with 3. Hogan vs Andre is the definition of iconic main event. It had incredible build and hype. It was just awesome and Hogan slamming Andre is the greatest Mania moment of all time. Along with that the undercard was strong. Savage vs Steamboat, Piper vs Adonis and Hart Foundation/Davis vs Bulldogs/Santana. Most of the matches had back stories and build. I even enjoyed the matches that were thrown together like Can Am Connection vs Orton/Muraco and yes my guily pleasure match on the card, Butch Reed vs Koko B Ware. Mania 3 is exactly how a WrestleMania card should be.

 

[duxdelrio]

To me it has to be Wrestlemania III. I got in to wrestling just before WM II, so this was the first mania that I got to see the build ups and the feuds in full length.

I remember watching WM III at a friends house (it was taped on an old VHS cassette) but it was just a few days after the event, so it almost felt like it was live. (No streaming in the eighties kids...)

Gorilla and Jesse on the commentary at a chock-full Pontiac Silverdom was just incredible. And the carts witch the superstars were brought to the ring. It all made the event epic.

Watching Rowdy Roddy Piper beat the crap out of Adrian Adonis and with the help of Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake cutting Adonis hair was priceless. I really hated that slob Adonis and see him (and Jimmy Hart) humiliated by Piper and Beefcake made my day.

And the Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat match - need I say more?

And of course - the maint event, what most people paid to see, Andre The Giant vs Hulk Hogan. Epic in every sense of the word. 5 star match? No? Match of the century? Yes!

So - WM III on my part.

I agree with you, WM3 was the greatest by far. Jake vs Honky and Butch vs Koko were underrated matches that I enjoy watching. Also, the Hillbilly Jim match vs Bundy (feat. the midgets) told a great story with gripping drama as well. One of the few manias that was awesome from bell to bell.