8. WRESTLEMANIA XVIII
WrestleMania XVIII was a spectacle. Nearly 80,000 people packed into the open air Sun Life Stadium in Miami, the home of the Great One. A “One in a Lifetime” dream match. Hell in a Cell – the final conflict and the end of an era. Two world championship matches. You just knew this night was going to be big.
Let’s not forget, WrestleMania XVII was a downright train wreck – one of the worst shows the company has ever produced – so this pay-per-view needed to deliver. For the sake of everyone who stuck with the product throughout 2011, and everyone who dropped hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars to attend the show, WrestleMania XVIII needed to be great.
The show started off with Sheamus beating Daniel Bryan to win the world title in just 18 seconds. Some complained, expecting a 4-star match from two great in-ring workers, but ultimately the spot was a huge surprise that added to the “anything can happen” vibe of the night.
I’ll be the first to admit, this PPV had a lot of crap in the first hour, and not all of it was short and to the point. Kane and Randy Orton were forgettable. The Divas tag match was abysmal and obviously an attempt at getting mainstream exposure by putting Maria Menounos over two former champions. But it was Big Show taking the Intercontinental Championship from Cody Rhodes that did the most damage. Cody was a great champion and brought a lot of prestige back to the otherwise forgotten belt, but Vince was more concerned with getting the giant “his first WrestleMania moment”. The theme of getting Show over at the expense of up-and-coming talent didn’t exactly dissipate over the years.
With the first half of the show out of the way, WWE kicked it into gear. Triple H and Undertaker “ended an era” with a Hell in a Cell match that lived up to not only the massive hype, but the impossible standard Shawn Michaels had set two years prior. CM Punk and Chris Jericho went 22-minutes for the WWE Championship, which had a hard time following a classic, but still delivered a high quality fight.
The night was capped off by the “One In A Lifetime” collision of John Cena vs. The Rock. Their first of two exchanges felt a lot less obligatory, and carried that quintessential “big fight feel” that fans waited an entire year to see. These two greats went 30-minutes in a slow paced match that played off the emotions of the crowd excellently. From a technical standpoint it wasn’t an all-time classic, but the story and electricity of Miami put it over the top.
