10 Shockingly Good WrestleMania Matches, Ranked
WWE's WrestleMania is supposed to be the home to the best matches of the year every year. It is also the place where the storylines that started at the Royal Rumble, and in rare cases, even earlier, wrap up and finish off the WWE wrestling year, before relaunching one night later. However, not every match at WrestleMania looks good on paper from a wrestling standpoint.
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Sometimes, two legends end up fighting at the biggest show of the year, and the match is a stinker like most people expected. An excellent example of this is Vince McMahon vs. Bret Hart. However, there are other times where the matches that no one expects to be good exceed all expectations. Here is a look at 10 shockingly good WrestleMania matches no one expected.
10 SHANE MCMAHON VS AJ STYLES
There is a joke that some wrestlers could get into the ring with a broom and carry the inanimate object to a good match. AJ Styles is one of those wrestlers. However, in 2017, Styles wrestled 47-year-old Shane McMahon, and no one expected much.
What resulted was a 21-minute bout where both guys went all out, and McMahon did his crazy death-defying moves for a very good match that Styles ended up winning.
9 EVOLUTION VS ROCK N SOCK CONNECTION
WrestleMania XX had two huge moments and ended with one of the most iconic scenes in WWE history as confetti rained down on Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero as they stood in the ring as champions. However, in the middle of the card was a match that no one expected much from.
The Rock, who hadn't wrestled in about a year, teamed with part-timer Mick Foley to battle Evolution. This was a nostalgia team up by Rock and Foley, but they are smart and turned in a great match, which they lost to Evolution, which was absolutely the right decision. Rock wouldn't wrestle again for eight years.
8 LAWRENCE TAYLOR VS BAM BAM BIGELOW
There were plenty of people who disagree with making Lawrence Taylor vs. Bam Bam Bigelow the main event match at WrestleMania. However, as Bruce Pritchard said in a recent episode of Something to Talk About, it was smart because it forced people who turned in to see Taylor watch all the other wrestling first to try to sell them on WWE.
It didn't matter because Bam Bam was excellent and was a perfect person to pull a good match out of Taylor, maybe the best for a football player dipping his toes into wrestling.
7 JUNKYARD DOG & TITO SANTANA VS THE FUNKS
WrestleMania II made a huge mistake. It took the first WrestleMania's success and decided to go really big. That meant having it at three different locations in California, Chicago, and New York. Then, the fans had to watch the telecast of the other matches on a big screen when the matches in their town were not in action.
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On top of that, nothing was great. If you ask anyone what the best match would have been, few would have picked Junkyard Dog and Tito Santana vs. The Funks. However, this was the best match of them all at WrestleMania II, as they fought in and out of the ring and turned in a very atypical match that was more NWA than WWE in the '80s.
6 THE UNDERTAKER VS RIC FLAIR
In 2002, Nature Boy Ric Flair was slowing down big time and was struggling to turn in great matches. However, there were a couple of exceptions, once of which came at WrestleMania X8. Leading into the match, Flair was an authority figure in WWE, and he had angered Undertaker.
Finally, Undertaker bullied Flair into a match, and the two put on a great contest. It went 18 minutes, and they fought an old-school Flair match, but one that Undertaker won with the Tombstone.
5 RODDY PIPER VS GOLDUST
All the rage today is cinematic matches in WWE. However, this is nothing new, and WWE had a similar gimmick match at WrestleMania 12. This was the Hollywood Backlot Brawl between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Goldust. WWE tried to replicate this in NXT recently with Adam Cole and Velveteen Dream.
However, this original match was better than anyone expected. They went about four minutes outside and then continued about an hour later, fighting into the arena. It ended up about 15 minutes and was more entertaining than it had any right to be.
4 KANE VS BIG SHOW VS RAVEN
WWE usually used the Hardcore Title for short gimmick matches or for things similar to what they do with the 24/7 title, but with weapons and a lot more violence. On the big PPV shows, there was almost nothing for the holders of this title to do, except for when WWE wanted to have multiple title changes.
That was not the case for WrestleMania X-Seven, where Raven, Big Show, and Kane fought in what might be the best Hardcore Championship match in WWE history. It only lasted nine minutes, but this was fun, violent, and very innovative, with Kane winning the title in the end.
3 MICK FOLEY VS EDGE
WrestleMania 22 took place in 2006, years after Mick Foley retired from wrestling. He ended up coming back, but he was slower, broken-down, and couldn't do much at all anymore. With that said, he wanted to put over Edge in 2006 and did everything he could to help make Edge a star.
No one expected Foley to do much in this match at this point in his career, but the second that Edge speared Foley through a flaming table, it made Edge a star in what might be Foley's best latter-day match.
2 ULTIMATE WARRIOR VS RANDY SAVAGE
Almost no one could get a good wrestling match out of the Ultimate Warrior. The Warrior vs. Hulk Hogan match was expected to be great, as it was a "moment match" that was almost once-in-a-lifetime. Outside of that, Warrior had very few good matches, but WrestleMania VII against Randy Savage was one of them.
Savage did everything in his power to make Warrior look good, and he did a great job in the loss, carrying the match like only he could. Then, at the end, when he reunited with Miss Elizabeth, this match went down as one of the best moments in WrestleMania history.
1 THE ROCK VS HULK HOGAN
One of the themes of this list is an older wrestler, who has been out of wrestling for years or is nearing the end of his career, turning in a match that turns back time. At WrestleMania X8, Hulk Hogan had returned to WWE with the nWo, and it was time for the past to meet the present. As Scott Hall vs. Steve Austin showed, it did not always work.
However, an older broken-down Hogan ended up letting The Rock carry him to one of the best WrestleMania matches of all-time as the fans turned Hogan babyface again and created one of the biggest moments in WWE history.
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