30: Hulk Hogan and Mr T vs Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff WrestleMania 1
The main event of the very first WrestleMania wasn’t a world title match, and it was another match that featured a celebrity for the sake of publicity. Mr T was the star of the A-Team and had also been a big star of the Rocky 3 movie. Still, this match summed up what the WWF and WrestleMania was all about – spectacle.
Mr T gained the WWF some main stream exposure, and with Hulk Hogan being his Rocky co-star and all about the red, white and blue. Roddy Piper, one of the greatest characters and talkers in the history of the game across the ring and Mr Wonderful being the muscle of the team was the combination for a big hype huge money match up which would lead the WWF away from a regional promotion and into what would become a national and international giant.
29: Triple H vs Batista – WrestleMania 21
With Steve Austin and The Rock having relatively short reigns as the faces of the WWF, the company would have Triple H as the centrepiece of the company as their successor from the attitude era, and over the next several WrestleManias he would help elevate the next generation of main eventers. The first of these to get the main event push against Triple H was former Evolution member Dave Batista.
Batista wrestled a powerhouse style and was in many ways a new Goldberg crossed with the Ultimate Warrior. It’s interesting to look back at WrestleMania 21 and see that this show elevated both Batista and John Cena at the same time, but obviously time has told us that the WWE seemingly putting more eggs in the Batista basket than the Cena basket at this time was them betting on the wrong horse. That isn’t to say that Batista wasn’t a huge star in his own right, but this match is on the weaker end of the list of WrestleMania main events.
Batista was more noticeably inexperienced in the main event at this time, and this is very much a Triple H lead match. It’s fun and entertaining, but not an all time classic.
