To continue with the worthless trivia, here’s a list of the ten longest matches in Wrestlemania history.

10) Hulk Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior (Wrestlemania 6): 22:51
9) Triple H vs. Randy Orton (Wrestlemania 25): 23:34
8) Undertaker vs. Edge (Wrestlemania 24): 23:50
7) Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Benoit (Wrestlemania 20): 25:10
6) Kurt Angle vs. Shawn Michaels (Wrestlemania 21): 27:25
5) Steve Austin vs. the Rock (Wrestlemania 17): 28:06
4) Shawn Michaels vs. John Cena (Wrestlemania 23): 28:20
3) Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels (Wrestlemania 25): 30:41
2) The Rock vs. Triple H vs. Big Show vs. Mick Foley (Wrestlemania 16): 36:28
1) Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart (Wrestlemania 12): 1:01:52

That’s no surprise on the last one. But what of the shortest matches?

10) Big Show vs. Akebono (Wrestlemania 21): 1:02
9) Legion of Doom vs. Power and Glory (Wrestlemania 7): 0:59
8) Butterbeat vs. Bart Gunn (Wrestlemania 15): 0:35
6) Earthquake vs. Adam Bomb (Wrestlemania 10)/Red Rooster vs. Bobby Heenan (Wrestlemania 5): 0:32
5) King Kong Bundy vs. Special Delivery Jones (Wrestlemania 1): 0:23
3) Rey Mysterio vs. JBL (Wrestlemania 25)/Hulk Hogan vs. Yokozuna (Wrestlemania 9): 0:21
2) The Hart Foundation vs. the Bolsheviks (Wrestlemania 6): 0:19
1) Kane vs. Chavo Guerrero (Wrestlemania 24): 0:09

This is going to be a longer update. Between the two reviewed shows, I have 30 matches to work through.

Read the rest of this entry �

Let’s take a second to look at some random Wrestlemania trivia.

Jeff Hardy and Goldust share the worst win-loss records with 0-5. After them are Crush and the Dudley Boyz, each with 0-4.

“Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff is the only wrestler to go from the main event of one Wrestlemania to the opening match of the next. Similarly, Lex Luger and Eddie Guerrero have gone from having world title matches on one show to being in the opening match the following year. Edge and Chris Jericho have done the reverse by being in the opening match one year and then the main event the following.

Hulk Hogan vs. Zeus was once in the cards for the main event of Wrestlemania 6.

For three years in a row, scheduled matches were dropped from Wrestlemania’s card due to time restraints: British Bulldog vs. the Berzerker (Wrestlemania 8), Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Kamala (Wrestlemania 9) and a ten-man tag match (Wrestlemania 10).

Shawn Michaels and Finlay have both opened three Wrestlemanias in a row.

Bret Hart and Owen Hart have a combined 20 matches at Wrestlemania. Only one of those matches (Bret vs. Austin) has ended with a Sharpshooter.

Wrestlemania 4 is the only time Ted Dibiase has won or lost a match via pin. He’s never won or lost via submission despite his finisher.

Yokozuna has wrestled four world title matches over the course of two consecutive Wrestlemanias.

Undertaker vs. Big Boss Man is the only heel vs. heel match to take place at Wrestlemania.

The mini-tournament in Wrestlemania 10 was decided with a coin toss in-story. Had it started with Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna, Lex Luger would have had a singles match with Crush before facing the winner.

If you face Kurt Angle in a title match at Wrestlemania, you will win. If there is no title on the line, you will lose.

Read the rest of this entry �

For the hell of it, I picked up the 2010 Wrestlemania XXVI Almanac, an overpriced magazine that features lots of facts and interviews relating to the past Wrestlemanias. A lot of it makes for good reading, but there are two things that bugged the crap out of me.

First, there’s a part where they talk about the “most evil Wrestlemania” and say that it’s Wrestlemania 24. The first reason on their list is, “Raven Symone was there. Almost reason enough.”

Yeah! Fuck that evil bitch for showing up to endorse the Make a Wish Foundation and bringing 50 kids to the show!

The other thing that gets me is this page where they show a bunch of pics from various Wrestlemanias and have you figure out which show they’re from. It’s a great idea and the choices work for the most part. Doink and Doink, Snoop Dogg clotheslining Santino, Big Show sumo wrestling, the Fink with a full head of hair, etc. But come on, guys. Can you make this just a little bit harder?

Gee… uh… hm… Summerslam ’94?

Read the rest of this entry �

Before getting to today’s installment of the countdown, I should mention that a couple months ago, reader Bearnt! emailed me, hoping that I was planning on doing this whole write-up. I wasn’t sure if I was up for it at the time, but considering I ended up doing it, he was nice enough to reward me for it. How? By uploading the Mountie/Repo Man/Nasty Boys promo from Wrestlemania 8 onto YouTube! What a guy.

I think my favorite part is Repo Man showing up out of nowhere and Mountie happily telling him, “You scared me.”

Read the rest of this entry �

Since I’m spending all this time talking about every Wrestlemania match, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a quick gander at what didn’t occur at Wrestlemania. Here’s a list of the various pre-show matches.

Wrestlemania 6: Paul Roma defeats the Brooklyn Brawler
Wrestlemania 7: Koko B. Ware defeats the Brooklyn Brawler
Wrestlemania 8: The Bushwackers defeat the Beverly Brothers
Wrestlemania 9: “El Matador” Tito Santana defeats Papa Shango
Wrestlemania 10: The Heavenly Bodies defeat the Bushwackers
Wrestlemania 12: The Bodydonnas defeat the Godwinns to win the Tag Team Championships
Wrestlemania 13: Billy Gunn defeats Flash Funk
Wrestlemania 15: Jacqueline defeats Ivory, D’Lo Brown and Test win a battle royal where the last two survivors get a tag title shot at the PPV
Wrestlemania 17: Justin Credible and X-Pac defeat Steve Blackman and Grand Master Sexay
Wrestlemania 18: Rikishi, Scotty 2 Hotty and Albert defeat Mr. Perfect, Lance Storm and Test
Wrestlemania 19: Lance Storm and Chief Morley defeat Kane and Rob Van Dam
Wrestlemania 21: Booker T wins a Raw vs. Smackdown battle royal
Wrestlemania 22: Viscera wins a Raw vs. Smackdown battle royal
Wrestlemania 23: Ric Flair and Carlito defeat Chavo Guerrero and Gregory Helms
Wrestlemania 24: Kane wins a battle royal to earn a match against the ECW champion at the PPV
Wrestlemania 25: Carlito and Primo defeat John Morrison and the Miz in a Lumberjack Match to win the Unified Tag Team Championships.

Now on with the chlorophyll.

Read the rest of this entry �

Over a year ago, I took my enjoyment of the WWE Royal Rumble match and turned it into a week-long list. Watching 20+ 1-hour matches wasn’t too hard and I think it came off pretty well. The one true way to follow it up would be to give the same business to all 25 Wrestlemanias, only as a twelve-day countdown. It’s a tall order.

For one, there are more Wrestlemanias than Royal Rumbles. Secondly, each show lasts somewhere between 3-4 hours, with Wrestlemania 20 lasting a full 5 hours. I had my work cut out for me, so I spent the last two months watching every show in random order. The last major problem is how do I rank it? With the Royal Rumbles, I was only ranking the Rumble matches themselves and that isn’t TOO hard. With all the Wrestlemanias, there are over 250 matches in total.

Some lists I’ve seen don’t so much rate the shows as wholes, but as a handful of moments. A couple good memories or a couple bad memories can paint a full picture in your head about how the show was, even though you’re missing out on all the other bells and whistles. So here’s how I decided to do this.

Each match gets rated 0-10, based on how much I liked it. It doesn’t have to be a great technical exhibition. I know a long while back, Dave Meltzer voted Hogan vs. Andre at Wrestlemania 3 as “negative four stars”, but I’m not Dave Meltzer. I rated it high because it’s an epic match that tells a good story. I’m not going to point out what number I rated each match (I don’t want that to be the focus), but I will tell you this: there’s only one Wrestlemania match I’ve considered SO BAD that I had to give it a zero. I’ll let you guess that one. It isn’t in today’s update.

Anyway, each match is rated 0-10. Every main event and top title match (WWF/WWE Title and World Heavyweight Title) are counted twice, since they have more emphasis on the show. The exception is the Bret Hart/Shawn Michaels Iron Man Match, which I count as three matches. Then there’s “the atmosphere”, which counts as two matches. The atmosphere is the grab bag of miscellaneous stuff from the show that isn’t part of an actual match. Backstage segments, in-ring segments, intro videos, the arena’s setup, musical segments and so on. The bells and whistles of the show. When all that’s done, I average out the tally and give it a final score. Sounds fair, I think.

The two things I don’t take into consideration are the national anthem segments in the beginning – because it’s silly to have to compare them – and the dark matches/Free for All/Heat matches. Though I will hold it against the show if there’s a fairly high profile match during the pre-show that really should have been on the PPV.

Oh, and I’m going to toss in the YouTube videos of WWE Legends of Wrestlemania’s rivalry packages when we get to those specific matches. They rule too much not to.

Just about every Wrestlemania list I’ve seen considers Wrestlemania 9 the absolute worst Wrestlemania. Not me. Check it.

Read the rest of this entry �

I’ve been asked to comment on the recent announcement about the new WWE Heroes comic on its way. For those who haven’t heard, 20 issues will be released by Titan Publishing, depicting the WWE wrestlers as fighting zombies and leopard men and stuff. I don’t know.

The press release mentions the inclusion of these wrestlers and personalities: Triple H, Undertaker, Randy Orton, Batista, Shawn Michaels, Big Show, John Cena, CM Punk, Kane, Edge, Chris Jericho, Matt Hardy, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Carlito, Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler and Kelly Kelly. Wait, Roddy Piper?! What? Why?

Another thing that bothers me is that why are they going to go through the trouble of doing a WWE comic book and NOT include the Hurricane, who is a wrestling superhero? He was born for this role! What is up with that?

I’ve followed the history of licensed wrestling comics. First we had WWF Battlemania in 1991, which I covered in two parts. It was doofy and kiddy, but not overly offensive in the grand scheme of things. A year later, Marvel released World Championship Wrestling, which I reviewed in three different parts. That one was both poorly written and showed the reasons for why doing a month-by-month story based on wrestling that’s written and drawn long in advance is a recipe for failure. At the end of the decade, we were given WWF comics by Chaos. This included comics based on Steve Austin, Mankind, the Rock, Chyna and the Undertaker. I recently reviewed Undertaker in two parts.

So I think I have enough authority to say that this is going to be bad on an epic scale. I can’t wait. I just feel sorry for writer Keith Champagne, who already took a hit for being assigned the job of writing Countdown: Arena. God, what a mess that was.

Read the rest of this entry �

Last time, I discussed the first few issues of Chaos Comics’ Undertaker, as well as the specials that came from it. The Undertaker, Paul Bearer and a newly-created character the Embalmer each hold a Book of the Dead and are going to war over who can get all three Books and become the ruler of Stygian, Hell’s prison. Meanwhile, Kane is sneaking around, watching the Undertaker and Mankind is able to see that some of the wrestlers in the WWF are really demons in disguise.

Just for shits and giggles, for those of you reading who don’t follow wrestling or haven’t followed it for long, here’s a list of some of the Undertaker’s silliest storylines:

– Fought a nearly 8-foot-tall dude who wore a muscle suit with fur covering the shoulders and crotch. Their “epic” battle at Wrestlemania 9 ended with this big dude, Giant Gonzales, chloroforming the Undertaker. This got Undertaker a win via disqualification and they always have to sidestep this fact when they go over how the Undertaker is undefeated at Wrestlemania and show a highlight reel.

– A match was set for Survivor Series of Lex Luger and his patriotic American guys vs. Yokozuna and his evil foreigners. Due to a last-minute injury, they needed someone to step into Luger’s team. This spot was filled by the Undertaker, who proceeded to do a lengthy promo that compared his gimmick to what America is all about. He ended it by growling, “Let freedom RIIIIIIIING…” and opened up his jacket to reveal a 1776 American flag stitched on the inside. Lex Luger saw this and got way too pumped about it.

– Undertaker had a match against Yokozuna where you won by stuffing your opponent into a casket. Just about every bad guy in the WWF came out to help Yokozuna by ganging up on the Undertaker and shoving him in the casket. As the casket is wheeled away, the big screen above the entrance shows a camera inside the casket, where the Undertaker promises he will return. Then he (or Marty Janetty in an Undertaker costume) flies off into the heavens on strings.

– The Undertaker delivered a Dominos pizza to Leslie Neilson as part of the lead up for the Undertaker to fight his evil doppelganger.

– The Undertaker had a rematch against Yokozuna, this time with Chuck Norris there to make sure nobody interfered this time.

I can go on with this for days. To be fair, I do really love the Undertaker and he has had his share of kickass moments. Like that time Paul Bearer did an interview from the safety of his own home and Undertaker burst in, yelling, “Did you think I forgot where you live?!” and pummeled the everloving hell out of him. Then it cut to the arena’s locker room, many miles away as Kane went into a hysteric crying rampage and Mankind had to try and calm him down. That was neat.

Read the rest of this entry �

The history of the WWF/WWE can more or less be broken up into eras. There’s the Golden Age, followed by the Hogan Era, followed by the New Generation, followed by the Attitude Era, followed by the Crossover Era, followed by the Cena Era. At least, that’s how I see it. The Attitude Era is easily the most successful era, regarded for bringing wrestling into the media forefront. Chronologically, it begins with Stone Cold Steve Austin’s rise as a top face and ends with Wrestlemania 17, where Austin turns on the fans shortly after the company had freshly bought their competition, WCW.

Professional wrestling was at its apex during this era, mostly due to WWF and WCW trying to outdo each other. It seems silly now, but the idea of a WWF comic was pretty natural back then. In 1999, Chaos Comics got the rights to the property and let loose with a handful of comics. Mankind, The Rock and Chyna each got their own one-shot, while Steve Austin got a four-issue miniseries. I’ll save those for a later day.

Today I’m going to discuss The Undertaker’s comic. Unlike the others, he got a full-blown series out of the deal. It lasted 10 issues, plus specials. On one hand, it makes sense. Undertaker was always one of the most unrealistic and open-ended characters in the WWF. On the other hand, during the release of this series, Undertaker was the top heel of the company. We’re basically meant to root for the WWF’s top villain.

I’ll get into a who’s who for those uninitiated with wrestling in a bit, but first I’ll go over the Undertaker Halloween Special. While it did come out towards the end of the series, it doesn’t exactly fit in with anything and makes as a good introduction to the four wrestling-based characters.

Read the rest of this entry �

The Royal Rumble was last night, meaning you no longer care about anything I have to say. Yeah, well… shut up, okay?

I thought the event was top notch. Jack Swagger vs. John Morrison is going to make a very fine PPV main event one day.

The Rumble match itself was pretty good. It had a lot of fun spots, but got bogged down by keeping the ring too full. They were so determined to keep every single main eventer in the ring until the end while keeping them scattered on the card that it seemed to blow up in their face.

But the highlight of the Rumble?

MAMA MIA!

(thanks to Jerusalem for the gif)

Let’s finish this off and call it a day.

Read the rest of this entry �