Pruett’s Blog: WWE WrestleMania Main Event Rankings (Part 1): The ten worst main events in WrestleMania history

By Will Pruett, ProWrestling.net Co-Senior Staffer (@itswilltime)

It’s difficult, as a wrestling fan, not to get excited when WrestleMania rolls around. There’s a certain joy that comes with March and April (and somehow way too far into April this year).

So why rank the main events? I’m a sucker for lists and I know a lot of readers are too. I enjoy looking back at the same event year-by-year and figuring out what worked and why. Or, more accurate for today’s list, what did not work at all. We learn a lot when we look back at the decades of the nationalized and, for a period, monopolistic history of WWE.

Without further ado, let’s get into it with the 10 worst WrestleMania main events of all time!

#45 – Triple H vs. Roman Reigns for the WWE Championship – WrestleMania 32

Somehow this match is still happening. Right now, as I type these notes, Triple H is still trying to have a Zack Sabre Jr. inspired match with Roman Reigns at the end of the longest wrestling show any of us will ever see. I am still trapped in JerryWorld in Arlington, Texas.

When we say “time stood still” during a wrestling match, it is usually a compliment. Something major has happened and we are describing the reactions. In this case, time stood still because nothing happened or would happen or could happen. Let’s look at what makes this the worst main event in WrestleMania history with a little context:

• No one wanted this match. It happened after various injuries and poor creative decisions lead Triple H to an uninspiring WWE Championship win, merely as the boomerang to put the title back on Roman Reigns.
• No one wanted Roman Reigns. He was the choice of WWE’s now disgraced and then senile owner and creative lead. There were more popular wrestlers up and down the card in WWE, but the stubbornness, not just to go with Roman Reigns, but to make him an anti-authority babyface was absurd.
• No one wanted Triple H. The (part-time) Game was part of WWE’s annual “bring the old guys back” strategy for WrestleMania that had already exhausted itself. Multiple generations of WWE talent was held back from major matches on major shows, forced to main event junior level pay-per-views because Triple H and his type were coming in.
• This brings us back to “No one wanted this match” as it was a main event between two stars that were not compelling in the slightest way.

This match was not just a bad main event, but the culmination of over a decade of monopoly-rule in U.S. professional wrestling. There was no competition. There was no motivation to be better. There was just Triple H pretending to be a different professional wrestler and failing to be a good professional wrestler in front of almost 100,000 people.

#44 – Randy Orton vs. Triple H for the WWE Championship – WrestleMania 25

A commonality among bad WrestleMania main events is the existence of a good match that could main event, either elsewhere on the card, or within the match itself. WrestleMania 25 had both.

Randy Orton and Triple H had a truly great build. Orton had turned hyper-evil, shaved his hair shorter, and looked like a straight up killer, as opposed to a legend killer. Triple H had turned into a regular in the main event scene and was a standard-bearer for WWE. This match built on their shared history in Evolution, but also gave us some truly absurd TV with a home invasion and Orton’s fake wife. This was pro wrestling at its finest.

Additionally WrestleMania 25 gave us the pinnacle of Undertaker’s streak, as it was on the line against Shawn Michaels in a match every human alive knew would positively rule.

With its built-up, it seemed like Orton and Triple H could bring us the brawl we would need to counter-act Michaels and Undertaker’s sound wrestling. I anticipated a wild brawl, reminiscent of the greatest Attitude Era main events, perhaps even with some blood to shock fans new to wrestling in 2009.

Instead Orton and Triple H gave us a boring standard match, with none of the intensity, hatred, or creativity of the build up. The expectation of these two having a wild and violent main event was squashed by the desire to be as normal as possible. Why have a WrestleMania main event when you could wrestle your B-town house show match instead?

This was also a match between an established star and a new version of a character who badly needed a win. Since this was WWE under monopoly rule, the establish star would win out and Randy Orton’s truly great character shift of early 2009 would not matter at all. Do not let the regularity of moments like this in the 2000s and 2010s numb you to how poor this decision was.

#43 – Hulk Hogan vs. Sid Justice – WrestleMania 8

Immortality does not protect you from a bad main event and Hulk Hogan had to learn that lesson eventually. While I’d consider most of Hogan’s main events definitively mid, this one stands out as truly awful. What was supposed to be Hogan’s farewell main event ended in the setup for a tag team match that would never happen. So much went wrong with the finish to this match including botched interference, a disqualification when Hogan was never actually hit, and a disastrous story beginning with Ultimate Warrior and Papa Shango.

Perhaps none of that would have mattered if we had not been subjected to a terrible Sid and Hogan match before it. When the beginning is bad, the ending is bad, and the middle is bad, it’s all bad. Imagine choosing Hogan and Justice when you had already booked, promoted, and announced Hogan and Flair. Imagine deciding not to close WrestleMania with a WWF Championship match for the first time since WrestleMania 1, when you knew Ric Flair and Randy Savage would tear the house down.

There is no such thing as a double main event – the show-closing match is the only main event. And the main event of WrestleMania 8 was shockingly bad.

#42 – Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna for the WWF Championship featuring Hulk Hogan – WrestleMania 9

As we’ve learned throughout wrestling history, it is hard to start a new era when the old era keeps hanging on (see Triple H vs. Randy Orton at WrestleMania 25 for more). How can one move onto a “new generation” when the old generation won’t leave?

WrestleMania 9 was the first WrestleMania without Hulk Hogan announced for the main event (or a tournament to be in it). WWF needed new stars and Bret Hart and Yokozuna were there, with a bit of more nationalism than we needed in 1993. Hart had been the standard bearer for WWF when Hogan was gone and Flair left to return to WCW. He put together a perfectly fine match with Yokozuna that could have landed them in the middle of this list (an inoffensive spot and not in the bottom five).

However, Bret Hart would be reduced to a fool yelling “go get ‘em Hulkster” as Hogan was challenged on-the-spot by Yokozuna and would go on to win Yokozuna’s newly won WWF Championship. As a fan, you were reminded that the same wrestlers you’ve been watching for the last decade would always be on top. New blood was not welcome. After the prior year’s awful main event finish, you’d think WWF would have learned its lesson, but the allure of a quick Hulk Hogan high was too much to resist.

#41 – Chris Jericho vs. Triple H for the Undisputed WWF Championship – WrestleMania 18

We are left once again with a WrestleMania main event that does not meet the moment, when a match earlier in the evening would have. The Rock and Hulk Hogan had what would have been a top 10 WrestleMania main event in the middle of this show, leaving fans reeling as the evening was concluding. But I will not blame them for Jericho and Triple H having a bad match.

The build for this was WWF at it’s post-Attitude Era worst. One year into being a monopoly, WWF forgot how to tell stories that didn’t rely on cheap shocks. This is why we had a build that featured a vow renewal wedding-ish thing, a divorce, a cheating spouse causing casual misogyny, and a dead dog. This was all for one match that should have been built up purely by Triple H heroically returning at Madison Square Garden, going onto win the Royal Rumble, and once again being champion. Easy, right?

Jericho and Triple H were not given a storyline to meet the moment, but even the story they were given did not fit their match. They began with a lockup and sought to slowly ratchet up intensity – an illogical choice given that we were discussing the end of a marriage AND a dead dog. At the end of the night, as Jim Ross growled and tried to make a moment out of Triple H hoisting two titles in the air, we were left unimpressed. A month later, as Triple H lost that title to old man Hulk Hogan, we were left wondering what it was all for.

As we wrap WrestleMania’s five worst main events, we now see that the undisputed king of bad WrestleMania main events is Triple H – who somehow found a way to have bad WrestleMania main events in three different decades. This is a stunning accomplishment and we should all be impressed. Now onto another bad Triple H main event!

#40 – Triple H vs. Mick Foley vs. The Rock vs. Big Show for the WWF Championship – WrestleMania 16

WrestleMania 2000 was so much less than the sum of its parts – and I am not talking about the McMahon in every corner of the main event. The WWF was at its height as a promotion and had even withstood losing its centerpiece star to a neck injury. Steve Austin was gone and WWF didn’t miss a beat. Surely WWF would use this as an opportunity to create one or two centerpiece stars to line up for Austin when he returned – and WrestleMania would be the moment to cement those stars!

Sadly, this did not happen. After a straight forward Royal Rumble at Madison Square Garden where Mick Foley made Triple H into a main event star and The Rock won the Rumble match, WWF suffered a crisis of confidence, added Mick Foley and Big Show to the match, and then added four McMahons where none were needed. I don’t believe fascist collaborator Linda McMahon needed a WrestleMania main event appearance and I’ll stand by it.

This match included multiple breaks where the action in the ring would stop so the McMahons could make faces at each other, hit each other with bad punches, or walk around. The focus of this match was not the hottest stars during the hottest period in wrestling history, but the millionaires who exploited their labor to get rich.

What could this match have been? You don’t need to look far. WrestleMania 2000 was surrounded by virtually perfect pro wrestling pay-per-views. Backlash 2000 gave us the definitive Rock vs. Triple H match, complete with Steve Austin walloping humans with a chair when he could barely walk. Austin even blew up a bus in the build to Backlash 2000! What more could you want?

WrestleMania 2000 was the rare miss for WWF in the year 2000 and this main event shows why. It was also the first time a heel left the WrestleMania main event with the WWF Championship.

#39 – Sgt. Slaughter vs. Hulk Hogan for the WWF Championship – WrestleMania 7

Professional wrestling is an art form built on nationalism. As wrestling grew in popularity in the ’70s and ’80s, a foreign heel was a mainstay in virtually every territory in the country. How were so many Russians crossing into the United States and why were they all so mean? Alas, we would never know. This WrestleMania featured a new conflict for the WWF to exploit.

After trying and failing to transition to Ultimate Warrior as the centerpiece star of the WWF, we were back with a vehicle for Hulk Hogan to walk out victorious. This one was both weirder and less believable than any other. Sgt. Slaughter, seeing an opportunity to be the foreign heel instead of the American hero, decided to be Iraqi, just as the first U.S. conflict in Iraq began.

The ending was predictable. The match was bad. And Regis Philbin was not good on commentary. It’s no wonder this show could not even attempt to fill the Coliseum in Los Angeles. This is the only WrestleMania to have to change venues because of ticket sales and this main event demonstrates why.

#38 – Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar for the WWE Championship and WWE Universal Championship – WrestleMania 38, Night 2

We’re doing this again? Really? For the first time ever, the same match would main event WrestleMania for a third time. It would be for WWE’s two World Championships – a contradiction WWE embraces, unifies, and embraces again often. Brock Lesnar was, at this point, another attempt from WWE to bring in major stars instead of making major stars. If no one was as big as Lesnar, no one could truly challenge Reigns.

We had seen these two men have all sorts of matches together. There was nothing new for them to do (and there would not be until a tractor got involved later in the year). Reigns was in the second WrestleMania of his forever title reign here and despite the reputation this run has gained, this match was thoroughly unexciting. The booking leading into it made little-to-no sense, as soon-to-be-disgraced Vince McMahon was at his worst creatively. The match itself lacked any drama.

Reigns and Lesnar were often trying to recapture the magic of their WrestleMania 31 main event (more on that match later in this list!) and they fell far short on this night in Arlington.

#37 – The Miz vs. John Cena for the WWE Championship – WrestleMania 27

This was the first, and only, WrestleMania main event that only served to set up the next years main event. The Rock returned to WWE as the guest host of this show and somehow had match-making power granted to him. The true feud of this show was Rock vs. Cena, but it would be a year before they would main event WrestleMania.

The Miz was a placeholder – a pest heel who could do a good job, but never appeared on the level of the other wrestlers in this story. While he did walk out of this show as WWE Champion, he would lose that title a month later. John Cena was the established major star, but WWE’s booking left him without another star to stand across from, until Rock showed up.

One night after this show, WWE would move on to the next WrestleMania with the Rock and Cena challenge. This was a main event about the next year’s show. It was basically an episode of Raw meant to set up a real WrestleMania to follow.

#36 – Sycho Sid vs. The Undertaker for the WWF Championship – WrestleMania 13

On a show that featured the best WrestleMania match of all time (Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin), WWF chose to close with this clash of giants that was boring at best. Once again, Sid is in the main event of WrestleMania because the plans for said main event got all jumbled about. What started looking like a straight-forward Michaels and Hart rematch changed and changed again because smiles were lost along the way.

Hart would be fine and have one of his legacy defining matches outside of the main event. And we would bounce the WWF title back to Sid and, when in doubt, why not Undertaker. This was the days before “The Streak” was acknowledged and before every Undertaker Mania match mattered.

The match opened with Bret Hart complaining and cementing his heel turn from earlier in the night, but the actual match itself was lumbering and depressing. Undertaker could perform spectacularly in 1997, but he needed a decent opponent to do so. Sid had mystique but not talent in the ring.

This was far from the worst main event, but WrestleMania still deserved better.

Next time on this list – WrestleMania’s 15 mid-est main events!

Will Pruett writes about wrestling and popular culture at prowrestling.net. To see his video content subscribe to his YouTube channel. To contact, check him out on Bluesky @itswilltime, leave a comment, or email him at itswilltime@gmail.com.