WrestleMania XI..

[cabbageboy 0]

Say what you want, but I was old enough in 1995 to understand that wrestling was sucking pretty bad (I was 15-16). It isn't widely mentioned today but at the time there were a LOT of people who felt as I did about Shawn Michaels. At my HS a lot of guys who were wrestling fans felt alienated that they were pushing this wimpy, gay acting guy so hard. Further, Diesel wasn't exactly that over as a face champ. He seemed like an out of nowhere guy to put the belt on. It was like "HUH??" when he won. I was getting into Bret vs. Backlund and wanted to see Bret get revenge and the belt, then all of a sudden they toss the belt onto Diesel. WTF?

 

I dare say I find WM 13 a bit...underrated. Bret/Austin is of course amazing, but as I said earlier the hardcore 6 man tag with Ahmed/LOD vs. NOD is a blast too. People forget that. I even kinda like UT vs. Sid, it's about as good as it's going to be with those guys.

 

As far as the title match at WM 11 goes, I think the crowd reaction bears me out. They started cheering for Shawn, since he was the smaller man and thus the underdog in their eyes. It's just stupid booking, yet it was what they were stuck with.

 

Personally I don't even put the belt on Nash at all, let him feud with HBK on the undercard. Maybe involve Razor or something. Let Bret steamroll Backlund at the Rumble to regain, then have Bulldog win the Rumble instead of finish 2nd. Then you do Bret vs. Bulldog at WM for the title and play off the previous matchup at Wembley. I mean honestly, could it have drawn LESS money than what this show did?

[humanoid92 0]

Interesting perspective. I can't relate to the whole high school thing because I was 11 at the time. I did recognize that it was on a downward slide, a lot of which, in my eyes, had to do with the Bret/Owen program ending and the decision to take the belt off Bret. I mean, I'm with you in a lot of ways here in that I never liked Nash as Champion, I would have preferred a show centered around Bret, and I never liked Michaels all that much either (I respected his matches but I was always a Bret fan. I also disagree with a lot of their general booking decisions at the time. I too would have liked to have seen Bret crush Backlund at the Rumble and go with a Title defense against either Owen or Bulldog at WM, while Shawn and Diesel wrestled in the upper midcard. I just feel for the direction that they did choose to go in, 11 wasn't terrible.

 

As for WM 13, I'm not really a fan of the Nation/LOD match. Every match on the card other than Bret/Austin was not only garbage in my opinion but didn't even make sense from a booking perspective. People fault Razor vs. Jarrett for the non-finish, but what about the Tag Title match at WM 13? Even worse. And that match didn't even have a reason to take place to begin with. And say what you will about Bret/Austin but the booking of the top guys for that show didn't make any sense. Taker/Sid for the Title? Why? Michaels really fucked them over there. When comparing 11 and 13, in my opinion Michaels/Diesel craps on Taker/Sid, Razor/Jarrett craps on Rock/Sultan, the WM 11 Tag Title match is better than the WM 13 Tag Title match, and as underwhelming as Bret/Backlund was, I'll certainly take it over the LOD/Nation street fight. And at least the WM 11 opener and Taker/Bundy were short. WM 13 had a clusterfuck of a tag opener with guys that didn't even belong on the show (not that the Blus belonged either) and HHH/Goldust was just long and boring as opposed to Taker/Bundy which was short and boring. Bret/Austin obviously craps on Bigelow/LT, but that's all WM 13 has going for it.

 

As for the crowd reaction to Shawn, I think that was more because he was the "cool" heel, not because he was the small underdog type. I think he would have gotten cheered against any face other than Bret and maybe Razor at that point. Even in his mini-program with Bulldog he was cheered. And obviously, they were about to acknowledge this since they turned him face the following night. With the push Shawn was getting, Nash as a flat champion, and the midcard booking of the match, I think a lot of fans were anticipating a Shawn Title win, and wanted to get in on it.

 

But I agree, if you're going to change the booking of the entire period, they could have done much better. Bret instead of Nash as the Champion heading into the show changes the whole landscape for the better.

[spman 0]

Is Hartford the smallest venue they've ever held a Wrestlemania at capacity wise? I remember bugging my dad to get tickets to this when I was a kid, but I couldn't convince him. We kinda get the shaft for PPVs here in Connecticut now, WWE comes around fairly frequently, but the Civic Center is somewhat old and dilapidated, and the arenas in Bridgeport and Mohegan Sun, where WWE usually tapes TV here, aren't large enough for a PPV.

[Hawk 34 0]

Is Hartford the smallest venue they've ever held a Wrestlemania at capacity wise? I remember bugging my dad to get tickets to this when I was a kid, but I couldn't convince him. We kinda get the shaft for PPVs here in Connecticut now, WWE comes around fairly frequently, but the Civic Center is somewhat old and dilapidated, and the arenas in Bridgeport and Mohegan Sun, where WWE usually tapes TV here, aren't large enough for a PPV.

 

I think the Trump Plaza or Caesar's Palace makeshift arena were smaller in crowd size.

 

Edit: Caesar's and Hartford drew about the same size. Chicago, for WM2 drew the smallest crowd with 9,000 but obviously that was 1/3 of the shows.

[Guest]

Caesar's is the smallest.

[Ravenbomb 0]

Hey, I liked the WM13 tag match opener...

 

 

Anywho, I wasn't watching wrestling at the time of WM11, so I can't really say much about its hype, but when I was going through watching all the Wrestlemanias when I got the Legacy box set, that was one of the less memorable ones.

[JimmyHendricks 0]

Holy cow, I didn't know some of you were so passionate about frickin WrestleMania ELEVEN.

 

I think it is disliked because of several reasons. It seemed too packed with celebrities-you had Jonathan Taylor Thomas in a 5 minute skit playing chess with Bob Backlund, Nick Turturro conducting a 2 hour search for Pamela Anderson....hell, didn't they have Diesel bring her into the ring before his match with Shawn in a big showoff spot? And of course the LT match, which made Vince keep saying "If you are joining us for the first time....." like all of America bought the "wrasslin show" to see a retired football player wrestle. They even had Salt N Pepa (sp?) sing him to the ring in another 5 minute waste of time. WM 10 had a bunch of loser celebrities as well (Rhonda Shear?), but they had the wrestling to back it up.

 

XI didn't. You had Diesel as World Champion, and the lousy, tamed down lame "New Generation" in full force. Bret/Backlund was boring. I loved how we were supposed to believe that Bam Bam Bigelow was an unstoppable monster who could destroy Lawrence Taylor. And of course LT himself. Vince has a hard on for the weirdest "celebrities". Was anyone excited about that match? Like many people said, it felt more like SummerSlam.

[Lil' Bitch 0]

I wanted Shawn Michaels to win the match so badly back then and I was pretty pissed when he didn't. Then we had to deal with the "boyhood dream" crap the following year when HBK got a second chance at the main event.

[humanoid92 0]

Holy cow, I didn't know some of you were so passionate about frickin WrestleMania ELEVEN.

 

I think it is disliked because of several reasons. It seemed too packed with celebrities-you had Jonathan Taylor Thomas in a 5 minute skit playing chess with Bob Backlund, Nick Turturro conducting a 2 hour search for Pamela Anderson....hell, didn't they have Diesel bring her into the ring before his match with Shawn in a big showoff spot? And of course the LT match, which made Vince keep saying "If you are joining us for the first time....." like all of America bought the "wrasslin show" to see a retired football player wrestle. They even had Salt N Pepa (sp?) sing him to the ring in another 5 minute waste of time. WM 10 had a bunch of loser celebrities as well (Rhonda Shear?), but they had the wrestling to back it up.

 

XI didn't. You had Diesel as World Champion, and the lousy, tamed down lame "New Generation" in full force. Bret/Backlund was boring. I loved how we were supposed to believe that Bam Bam Bigelow was an unstoppable monster who could destroy Lawrence Taylor. And of course LT himself. Vince has a hard on for the weirdest "celebrities". Was anyone excited about that match? Like many people said, it felt more like SummerSlam.

 

I'm assuming you mean me since I've done most of the defending in this thread. I am not passionate about WM 11. Of the 10 WMs that had occured before it I'd definitely take 7 or 8 of them over this show. I just don't like that people bash WM 11 when other shows that are much worse across the board seem to get a free pass. If WM 11 felt more like a Summerslam, as you suggest, then WM 13 felt more like an In Your House, but no one can dare say a bad word about that terrible show because fifteen minutes of it happened to be really good.

 

I don't like that Nash was World Champ either and I don't like that Bret/Backlund got a short blowoff and I don't like the whole LT/celebrity wrestling in a main event. The booking generally wasn't all that great around that time. No argument. But, guess what- Nash was in a great match that night. And the main event was what it was, but guess what- the majority of the PPVs the WWF has ever run have had shitty main events, even for good chunks of the two boom periods. So, this one had a crappy main event... that's nothing out of the ordinary... and then the only other two matches that were no good were 5-6 minutes apiece (the opener and the Undertaker match.) Everything else was good. I'm not saying it's a great show- it is definitely forgettable and certainly nothing special. But the point is that the crap was kept to a minimum. Whereas other shows have a full two, two and a half hours of garbage and get a free pass.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

No one gives WM XIII a free pass. That's considered one of the worst Wrestlemanias of all time that is only remembered because it had one of the historically great matches/moments of all time.

 

If you want to talk about overrated WMs, I nominate X and XII. Wrestlemania X had two good matches and nothing else really (although I love the Bret title win). It was a fun show overall and I still like it, but it's not one of the best of all time. WM XII had a boring main event that took up half a show and was completely forgettable otherwise.

[King Kamala 0]

Even as a mark, WrestleMania XI seemed so average. There was nothing really special about it (no matter how hard they tried to push LT Vs Bam Bam, it was just a washed up football player Vs a midcard heel to me).

 

 

That being said, it's not horrible. There's several matches in the **-*** range, nothing stands out but there's nothing horrible (Except Bundy Vs The Undertaker).

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

If you want to talk about overrated WMs, I nominate X and XII. Wrestlemania X had two good matches and nothing else really (although I love the Bret title win). It was a fun show overall and I still like it, but it's not one of the best of all time. WM XII had a boring main event that took up half a show and was completely forgettable otherwise.

 

XIV is overrated too. The main event is good, but the rest of the card is riddled with bad matches and poor finishes. Even that which was done right (the tag title match) was undone in short order on RAW.

[cabbageboy 0]

XIV is a PPV that gets a free pass mainly because it was the show that sent the WWF back into the stratosphere. I still detest the Rock/Shamrock finish though...I always loathe that finish.

 

One problem, in fact the biggest problem, with WM XII is that the main event was blatantly predictable! Jesus, they had a fucking IRON MAN match for a match that was so blatantly obvious. Michaels was certainly winning the belt, everyone knew he was winning the belt, and yet they took up an hour to do that obvious shit. He had to win after not winning the previous year. And not only that, but they go an hour with zero pinfalls or submissions to bore the hell out of everyone, and then do a pseudo screwjob on Bret to make him continue.

 

To be honest I think WM XII might be the lamest WM. WM shouldn't be a one match show, at least not literally.

[King Kamala 0]

WrestleMania XII is one of my least favorite WrestleManias ever. The Iron Man match is good but kind of dull at the same time and it's hard to think of any other good matches. Diesel/The Undertaker was good considering the participants. I vaguely remember a decent Savio Vega/Steve Austin match but that's about it. That whole pay per view felt like a glorified In Your House. I know I'm going to sound silly but there was none of the WrestleMania mystique or magic with that show with XII at least they did a decent job of making it feel like a big event (even if it wasn't).