Saturday, April 2, 2011

Look back at Wrestlemania VI through X

The sixth Wrestlemania is one of the handful where people can really only remember one match from.

This, of course, being the main event of Hulk Hogan vs. The Ultimate Warrior. Both very popular, at the time, and both good guys.

What made this interesting was Warrior was the Intercontinental Champion at the time, so it was champion vs. champion. Each man had his own rabid fan base and at the time it was like trying to pick Batman vs. Superman.

Once again the torch was passed and the Warrior won. At the time it was a big deal, but Warrior's championship run was almost forgettable. Do you even remember who beat him for the title? Sgt. Slaughter in case you were wondering.

Looking back at Wrestlemania VI, the undercard is a bit underwhelming. Jim Duggan vs. Dino Bravo? Barbarian vs. Tito Santana? A bit boring.

Wrestlemania 7 was back to the same formula of Hogan returning to save the day, this time against American turncoat Slaughter.

Good build up to the match and in the end it wasn't half bad for a Hogan match.

It's also known as the Wrestlemania debut and start of the streak for the Undertaker.

The card also had some great wrestlers on it including the Road Warriors, Kerry Von Erich and Japanese wrestlers Tenryu and Kitao.

Nothing lifechanging stands out from the rest of the other Wrestlemanias.

Wrestlemania 8, on the other hand, was memorable. Maybe not for all of the best reasons.

Months before at the Royal Rumble, Ric Flair won the championship by eliminating Hogan. You'd think that they would build toward having those two headline Wrestlemania. After all, they were the two biggest wrestlers of all-time at that time.

Perfect, right?

Nope.

They split them up into two separate matches. Flair fought Savage, in a very good match. Hogan fought Sid Justice in a God awful match. It was so horrible it couldn't even have a proper end. There was an awkward DQ that made no sense and then Papa Shango came out for some unknown reason. Yes, it did bring Warrior back, but wow it was obviously a stinker.

The undercard was mostly fantastic though. Shawn Michaels, who had just turned into a bad guy and went solo, took on Santana. Great match that showed Michaels could be a future World Champion.

Bret Hart also burst onto the solo scene by defeating Roddy Piper for the Intercontinental Championship. Probably one of Piper's greatest performances as a wrestler.

And the Undertaker continued his streak by defeating Jake "The Snake" Roberts.

If Wrestlemania 8 had some good and bad moments, Wrestlemania 9 set out to be different.

Just too bad it was different alright. Maybe one of the worst Wrestlemanias of all-time.

First it was at Caesar's Palace, outside in Las Vegas. So they decided to do a toga theme. Yes, they put the greatest announcer of all-time, Jim Ross, in a toga. That alone makes it horrible.

The matches didn't help. There was two DQ and one count out endings. For the Super Bowl of wrestling, matches need pins or submissions, not lame finishes.

Undertaker's streak always has an asterisk because of his DQ win over The Giant Gonzales. Just Google that one.

Even The Steiner Brothers couldn't save the PPV. Lex Lugar fought Mr. Perfect in a decent match, but lumped together with the rest it was forgotten.

But, Hogan's ego tried. First he wrestled in a horrible tag team match, then after Bret Hart lost the championship to Yokozuna, he came out, challenged Yoko and then won the title.

Yokozuna held the title for a matter of minutes.

I remember, even then, thinking it was lame. Years later it still is.

Could the tenth anniversary of Wrestlemania be any different?

Overall? Heck yeah.

Two matches alone, even to this day, are considered classics.

The opening match between brothers Owen and Bret Hart was amazing. Twenty minutes of "this is how it should be done" wrestling. What is sad is that everyone thought Owen was headed to an eventual World Championship run.

The other match is one of the greatest ladder matches of all-time between Michaels and Razor Ramon. People watched that match and were amazed at what could be done in the ring with that ladder.

Bret Hart may have lost to his brother early on, but ended the evening on a good note by winning the World Title from Yokozuna. Hart proved he was the best in the business by wrestling more than 30 minutes in two different matches that night.

Overall some good matches, but nothing comes close to touching the Michaels/Ramon ladder match as the best match of this group of Wrestlemanias.

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