Top 5 WrestleMania Opening Matches

Columns, Top Story

Back in the days when I was all hoked up on markdom and excitement, watching the early years of WrestleMania, the announcers did a grand job of getting my little heart going when it came to the importance of the event itself. Nowadays they constantly shill the enormity of it all but do so with little real emotion, often just reciting lines as they are fed them via a McMahon headset. Back in the day it was more a case of quality over quantity, or at least it seems that way in rose-tinted retrospection, with Gorilla Monsoon, Jesse Ventura, Bobby Heenan and the likes revelling in the uniqueness of the atmosphere and treating it with straight-laced wonder. One moment that stands out in particular is Monsoon and Ventura having a grand ol’ debate about how nervous Koko B Ware and Rick Martel had to be since they were in the opening match of WrestleMania VI. Come to think of it, for the time it was a little peculiar since they were all but admitting that it was staged and that the opening act had to warm up the crowd before the real stars came on. Still, the eyes of a global audience are watching, live, and there is pressure on the guys first out to take the goodwill of the crowd and build momentum on it so that everything following them can keep it rolling. That’s why the order of the card is so important. You have to grab the crowd from the get-go, raise them up a little, cool them off for a period so they don’t burn out, then repeat as necessary until the wave finally crashes with the main event. Here are the best openers in Mania history, plus a guess at what might come first this year…

1. Bret Hart vs Owen Hart (WrestleMania X)

No doubt. For the brief period of time when the Hart family had the WWF by the reigns there was a real old-school approach to their work, just like here. The story of natural brotherly rivalry turning sour, with Owen letting his jealousy turn to hatred and Bret perhaps taking himself and not his l’il bro too seriously, was slowly developed over a matter of months in minimalist fashion. A couple of promos, a bit of a shoving match, a post-match beatdown at the Royal Rumble that was nothing more than one kick… simple yet effective. Then when this match finally did occur it was nothing but straight-up wrestling, with Owen managing to hold his own against the former world champion and even taking advantage of a momentary lapse in concentration to get the pin. Bret goes on to win the world title again at the end of the night, continuing to sell the injuries sustained in this one, but despite his celebrations the show ends with Owen looking on from afar and Bret catching sight of him, knowing that his little brother can indeed beat him. An easy and entirely welcome set-up for a future title match. Bret managed to convince the fans that Owen really was a contender, since before this point he was still best known for wearing shiny pants and smiling at Koko an awful lot, whilst still not losing face in their eyes and remaining a credible champion. All in all, classic. They then went on to top this effort with a thoroughly old-school, almost NWA-style cage match at SummerSlam, in which Owen lost due to not being able to kick Bret’s leg from out of his leg…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voa2sXaKqk4[/youtube]

2. Edge vs Ken Kennedy vs C.M. Punk vs Jeff Hardy vs Matt Hardy vs Finlay vs King Booker vs Randy Orton (Money in the Bank III, WrestleMania XXIII)

On the other end of the spectrum entirely was this gigantic clusterfuck of an eight-man ladder match. The whole ladder match concept has changed a fair bit in recent years. It was originally used to resolve an ongoing feud over a title between two guys, with whoever wanted it the most proving their desire by striving into the heavens to claim it as their own. After the TLC era, it tends to just be an excuse to have as many people doing as much crazy shit as possible, with a couple of Insane Bumps thrown in for good measure. This one was no exception and the results were fabulous. Actually, the result was disastrous, since Kennedy wound up having to drop the briefcase to Edge due to injury, only for the injury to turn out to not be serious at all. That brought about Limogate and the bastard McMahon lovechild offshoot angle to try and get Kennedy back into a major main event push, yet he cocked that up by making a tit of himself during the steroid scandal, which subsequently led to months of leprechaun antics and Carlito running into a wall (a nice change from a glass ceiling, at least). Meanwhile, Edge’s winning streak at WrestleMania came to an end, even though he was the one who wound up with the briefcase eventually and, again, cashed it in to win the title from none other than The Undertaker, whose winning streak he comes up against this year. Undertaker won the title last year, will probably win it again this year, and Kennedy is a prime candidate to win the briefcase again this year. I have no idea what all of this means other than that wrestling is stupid in the face. In any event, the action in the actual match itself was brilliant. Check out the final portion of it before WWE rapes YouTube in return:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41jT8BDCqNI[/youtube]

3. The Rockers vs Haku & The Barbarian (WrestleMania VII)

Little more than throwaway filler, as most PPV undercard matches were at this period, yet it turned out to be Really Rather Good Indeed. Haku and Babs had just started teaming up together because a fortune cookie told them to, or something, whilst the Rockers were on the verge of splitting up so Shawn could get his big singles push – a drawn-out process that would be prolonged for several more months after this. The heels wanted to look manly and oily and wear fur. The faces were coked off their faces, wore tassels and could bump like nobody’s business. With the perfect powerhouse/underdog dichotomy in place and the Rockers on the best form of their career to that point, an enjoyable little bout emerged without anybody paying much attention. Compare it to the Rockers’ match against the Twin Towers at WM5, which is very similarly structured, and their improvement over just a couple of years is obvious. A couple of years after this and they’d be taking even more drugs than ever before, with Marty getting fired and Shawn getting suspended and still neither of them looking as though they’d play a major role in the future of the promotion. Shawn turned it around with a little help from his friends and did. Marty got the drugs. Fair trade? Ah, hell with it, let’s just watch the Barbershop Window skit again…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCljiGVZ5fE[/youtube]

4. Rey Mysterio vs Eddie Guerrero (WrestleMania XXI)

It was one of the best opening matches in Mania history but it was one of the worst Rey/Eddie matches too. This was mostly due to Rey’s continued fascination with wearing clothes of heightened stupidity at WrestleMania, which in 2005 involved a mask that barely covered his face and threatened to fall off altogether each time he tried spinning. Or flipping. Or pivoting. Or going “wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!” Or any of the things that make a Rey Mysterio match unique. It fell upon Eddie to hold things together and work a less frantic match than they had planned, although he is clearly angry at the situation the more the mask complicates matters. When they had their ladder match later that year for custody of a ten year-old boy (uh-huh) Rey would wear a less burdensome mask but the match still caught a dose of cockupitis when Vickie Guerrero missed her run-in cue and left Eddie standing at the top of the ladder looking like a right berk. It’s almost as though fate was trying to indicate that Mysterio and the Guerreros should not have been involved in wrestling angles together anymore… Still, let’s remember the good times:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d90-GG1AgPU[/youtube]

5. The Big Show vs John Cena (United States Title, WrestleMania XX)

It’s not a great match to say the very least, yet it was Cena’s first title win and with everything he’s gone on to accomplish since 2004 that alone makes it significant. The crowd were also well into it and, even if it was MSG and WM20 and they were just high on the atmosphere alone, that makes it hugely successful as an opener. Cena was off his game with the opening rap, especially when compared to his crazy assault on a Jay-Z cardboard cut-out the year before, but there was still plenty of fun to be had for viewers at home as Michael Cole took to comparing being hit by Big Show’s hands to being hit by typewriters, frying pans, franking machines, Megatron, vials of HIV, your own mother, a stegosaurus, the lyrics of “Mandy” carved into a boulder, a balled-up evil midget, a bottle of wine and a hardback copy of The Complete Moron’s Guide to Metaphors. The mind boggles at what he might come up with this year given Big Show’s boxing schtick. Sadly, there’s little chance of getting a good Cena rap this year either, or even a bad one. His gimmick is no longer that of a rapper, nor even of The Marine. Now he’s just well-behaved, mild-mannered sports entertainer and T-shirt salesman John Cena. Shame:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqDK2zriteo[/youtube]

So, what of this year’s event? Well, I would go with the following match order:

MITB
ECW
Floyd/Paul
Irish/Texan
Edge/Taker
Dave/Thumb
Randy/H/H/H/Cena
Whores/Skanks
Flair/Michaels

Check out the Roundtable to find out why…