I would argue that this is the match that saved the WWF. At this point in 1997, WCW had all the momentum in the “Monday Night Wars” between the companies. WCW was the cooler, hipper promotion and had the backing of a big-pocketed corporation, while the WWF was still a family business. If you had said in 1997 that in four years there would be only one major promotion left standing, I think WCW would have been the 70-30 favorite. But then Bret Hart and Steve Austin went out and delivered a match so compelling, and a story so well told, that it began to turn the tide. 

Austin came into the match as the heel, but had the energy of the crowd with him. By the end, he was undeniably a babyface. Hart entered the ring portrayed as the hero and left as the villain; he wrestled the match in a sullen funk, seemingly furious at the situation he found himself in. He was a man of honor, and the foul-mouthed Austin was trying to embarrass him. Hart didn’t turn heel because he was evil, he turned because his self-righteous goodness was unappreciated. Hart won, but never has a loser of a match been such a winner. The iconic visual of a blood-covered Austin trying to fight his way out of the Sharpshooter launched him into superstardom, and turned the WWF into a phenomenon. 

A matchup of the two most outsized and iconic characters in WWE history, and nearly another double-turn, though this one was done on the fly due to the crowd’s reaction in the moment. Hogan came into this match ostensibly as a heel, a member of the invading nWo faction, but felt the energy from the Skydome crowd and proceeded to wrestle as the red-and-yellow superhero version of Hogan from the 1980s. The Rock also adjusted, not exactly working heel, but feeding into every Hogan punch and boot, exploding off of each shot and making the crowd feel like they were witness to the Hogan of a dozen years earlier. It’s not a match with tremendous athletic execution, but rather it featured two of the greatest crowd conductors in the history of wrestling doing what they do best. 

In many ways, this match was the starting point for fast-paced professional wrestling—the craft was one thing before Savage-Steamboat, and a completely different thing after. The current style of wrestling is often all gas and no brakes, and Steamboat and Savage, two absolute athletic marvels at the peak of their powers in 1987, set that tone. There were 22 false finishes in a match that went just over 14 minutes. Both guys took huge bumps and, jacked up on the adrenaline of an enormous crowd, broke the sound barrier for matches of this style. This kind of match is much more common now—the moves have gotten bigger and the near-falls more baroque—but in ’87 this was like nothing anyone had ever seen.

This is the closest that WWE has ever come to a bloody territory-era wrestling feud blowoff. This felt like it belonged in the Omni in 1983 or the Mid-South Coliseum in 1985 rather than a WrestleMania ring in 2002. Flair came out fired up, throwing great-looking rights and lefts, only to be cut off by equally great-looking punches by Taker. It wasn’t long before Flair was saturated in blood, and Taker kept targeting the open wound. There was an incredible Arn Anderson spinebuster after a run-in, and a sequence with Flair splitting Taker open with chair shots. ’Mania is a stage for polished, epic wrestling matches, but this was a grimy fistfight, and that contrast made it hit even more.

According to WWE, this match is canonically the best match in WrestleMania history, and you can really see why. Everything that could define a major match in WWE is fulfilled here—it’s the most “WrestleMania” match ever. One guy hits a dramatic finisher, leading into a tension-filled two-count and a wide-eyed look of shock on the face of the would-be winner, followed by his opponent hitting a big finisher, leading to his own tension-filled two-count and wide-eyed look. 

All of the history of these two characters is built into the match: Undertaker had never beaten Michaels; Undertaker had a 16-match WrestleMania win streak coming into this showdown; Michaels had previously lost four years of his career due to a back injury he suffered during a casket match against Taker. All of that pretext really makes each near-fall hit in their 2009 bout. And it makes the bigger moments hit even harder, including a couple of eye-popping high spots: Undertaker sidestepping Michaels’s moonsault to the ringside floor, and Michaels pulling the cameraman in front of Undertaker’s tope. Both are truly wild bumps for guys who had some tread on their tires. It did feel like the match went a beat or two too long, but they earned the bloat. 

A brilliant build preceded this brilliant match. Kingston had generated a wild level of organic fan support, and Bryan—once the paragon of heroism—had turned heel, becoming the same kind of big-timing backstage veteran that he had rebelled against five years earlier.

If you ever want to know how a heel “works” in the ring, Bryan gives a master class here. Every comeback attempt by Kofi is snuffed out by Bryan almost immediately, but Bryan shows him and the fans just a little bit of daylight before closing the door again and again—rounding him, grinding on him, punishing Kofi for having the temerity to get in Daniel Bryan’s ring. All of that matters because of the ending: a cathartic Kofi win, and his first world title.

A rare big WrestleMania match between two babyfaces, this felt like a huge deal at the time. Piper was wrapping up his in-ring career (he wouldn’t wrestle again for two years afterward) and wanted to try to elevate Hart on his way out because Piper had been trained by Bret’s father, Stu. The match itself had a unique structure, with Hart taking advantage of the famously hot-headed Piper. Bret nearly rolled up Roddy after faking an injury, which caused Piper to snap and bust Hart open with a punch. The finish was unique as well—Roddy grabbed the ring bell after the referee was incapacitated and went to strike Hart with it, only to be hit by a bout of conscience, leading to Hart getting the win. The tortured battle with your own soul has become an overused cliché in wrestling these days, but the Angel and Devil on Roddy Piper’s shoulders in this match was the best use of it.

The match that defined WrestleMania. Old man Andre had lost the athleticism of his youth, but he was still incredible at being Andre the Giant, a 500-year-old oak tree who was impossible to fell. He took only one bump before the big body slam, and it felt like the biggest bump in the history of wrestling. Hogan was at his bombastic best, every motion and expression aimed to the last row of the Silverdome. This match might lack the action of some of the matches lower on the list, but who cares? It's Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant. Nothing is more pro wrestling than that.

Celebrity matches have been a big part of WrestleMania since Mr. T main-evented the first show in 1985. Despite some stiff competition, I’m confident in saying that this match is the greatest example of that type. Mayweather had such a uniquely hateable charisma that he turned this into the rare David vs. Goliath match in which the crowd was rooting for Goliath. These celebrity matches are often carefully choreographed to shield the celeb from getting too physical, but Mayweather took a shocking amount of punishment for an ostensibly active fighter and showed off his legendary hand speed. Also, give Big Show a ton of credit for being willing to take unpulled punches from a Hall of Fame boxer, even one he outweighed by 300 pounds.

This was a historic match on paper, with Belair and Banks becoming the first Black women to main-event WrestleMania, and the build to the match was all about making history. Somehow, it lived up to its epic expectations. Banks played the wily veteran trying to withstand the less experienced athletic marvel in Belair. The newcomer had some real incredible shows of strength, and there was a cool throughline where Banks was constantly using Belair’s signature extra-long braid against her, only to get laced with a climactic braid shot to set up the finish.

This is the match that personifies the post-COVID era of WWE. The apex of cinema wrestling, a match focused on moments—not just surprise run-ins and entrance-music pops, but the biggest run-ins and biggest entrance-music pops possible. Many of the largest stars of the 21st century dropped in and played a role, leading to the climax of the three-year saga of Cody Rhodes chasing the world title that his legendary father, Dusty Rhodes, never held. It’s really a classic morality tale, a clear light-dark showdown that stood out in a wrestling world that had been focused for years on shades of gray. Cody, the iconic babyface, finally stood triumphant over the world-dominating heel Reigns.

Savage was notorious for his copious scripting and micromanaging of his matches. Most of his peers called matches in the ring with only a couple of agreed-upon moments and a finish, but Savage would script out entire matches move-by-move like Bill Walsh setting up a football game plan. There are pros and cons to that strategy, but this is the best example of its value. Warrior was a guy with athleticism and an undeniable connection to the crowd, but he is nobody's idea of a good in-ring wrestler, and so in this showdown, Savage, a true in-ring genius, took the reins and guided Warrior to a super dramatic match. It was also Savage’s retirement match (though he would return to the ring afterward) and had all the emotion of a career-ender. Savage threw everything at the seemingly unbreakable Warrior, including five top-rope elbows, but he couldn’t put Warrior down and was eventually sent into retirement. Add the emotional post-match reunion between Savage and his longtime partner Miss Elizabeth, and you get an all-time great pro wrestling moment.

We’ve seen variations of this many times over, but this match was nearly perfect, a truly titanic, larger-than-life battle. Who doesn’t love two jacked-up athletes throwing borderline potato shots in a giant stadium in front of a huge crowd? This is Lesnar’s most menacing ’Mania performance—and that’s a high bar. He comes off like the video-game boss who is impossible to beat, shrugging off Reigns’s attacks until he gets tossed into the ringpost, tastes his own blood, and allows Reigns to mount a fiery babyface comeback. Then Seth Rollins cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase during the match, and snuck out with the world title. That’s the moment most people remember from this legendary match, but it kind of marred what was turning into an all-time heavyweight slugfest. Just think, Foreman vs. Lyle wouldn’t have been improved by Ken Norton jumping into the middle of it.

Ladders are a part of almost every big wrestling show these days, so it might be hard to remember a time when they were actually novel—like here, when the WWF put on the first-ever ladder match at a major event. This bout was the blueprint for all that followed. It featured an incredible pinball-bumping performance by Michaels, which amplified the already raised stakes. Not only did Michaels invent a lot of signature ladder bumps, but he took a bunch of crazy bumps in less ladder-centric moments, too—a couple to the floor and others from great-looking punches by Ramon. Michaels’s opponent took some big bumps too, especially for such a big guy, and Ramon ate the ladder in multiple nasty ways. Ladder matches have gotten pretty played out in recent years, but this one still holds up.

This is the greatest brother vs. brother match in wrestling history by such a large margin that it’s hard to think of a second-place finisher. It really captured the dynamic of a younger brother who has been picked on for his whole life snapping and trying to cheap-shot someone he both loves and hates. Bret tooling Owen on the mat until Owen gets nasty really fit with that story line, as did Bret underestimating his younger brother and getting caught for the surprise pin at the end. 

Every kid who grew up loving wrestling remembers smashin’ their action figures together to simulate a match. Hogan vs. Warrior was the real-life version of that fantasy battle, two living cartoons running headlong into each other. You almost never saw superhero vs. superhero matches in this era of the WWF. When Hogan held the world title, the other top babyfaces fought for the Intercontinental belt and never got a shot at the big one; but the Ultimate Warrior was such an explosive star that not only did he get the shot at Hogan’s world title while he simultaneously held the IC title, but he also handed Hogan his first clean loss since the start of Hulkamania. The match delivered the Greek god vs. Greek god splendor it promised, with lots of dramatic tests of strength, big clotheslines and slams, and a finish where Hogan hits his big boot, but misses the leg-drop finisher, only to get hit with Warrior’s big splash. Hogan was pinned and kicked out at 3.1—a millisecond too late. In the long run, Warrior wasn’t able to fill Hogan’s shoes as a box-office attraction, but for one night the torch was passed, and you could feel how significant that was in every beat of this match. 

It was the climax of the "Yes!" Movement and Daniel Bryan’s unlikely rise to the top of the WWE card. He would follow up this opening-match victory over HHH by winning the WWE Championship in a triple threat main-event match against Randy Orton and Batista, but the match against HHH was Bryan taking on and defeating the personification of “the authority” that was holding him back. This was probably Helmsley’s greatest performance, as he was an overdog who broke out a bigger set of moves than he ever had before. In the end, Bryan kicked out of HHH’s Pedigree and then pinned him in the middle of the ring. HHH had a reputation for politicking during his in-ring career, but there was none of that here—he went move for move with the consensus best wrestler in the world in Bryan, and delivered a huge moment to him on a platter. 

Eddie Guerrero’s world title run is a contender for one of the greatest six-month periods in wrestling history. Eddie was an all-time great performer putting everything together at exactly the right moment and ascending to heights no one could have predicted. His WrestleMania match with Angle was Eddie’s first big title defense, coming one month after he'd defeated Brock Lesnar in February 2004 for the WWE Championship.

This was a tremendously paced match, with Angle really grinding Guerrero into the mat early, but the youngest son of lucha libre maestro Gory Guerrero had counters for almost everything. It evolved into a pretty hot fireworks display until, finally, the trickster god Eddie snatched the win right out from under Angle.

In hindsight it is really amazing that the WWE ran a full Japanese-style death match on a WrestleMania broadcast. Prior to that, WWE “hardcore” matches were traditionally very basic and repetitive, with kendo sticks, tables, and chair shots to the back in every match. But here we had Edge’s lover, Lita, taking barbed wire in her mouth, Edge getting sliced with barbed wire and punctured with thumbtacks, and both Edge and Foley flying together through a flaming table in the single most unhinged moment in WrestleMania history. We never saw anything like this in previous ’Manias, and will likely never see anything like this again.

Here we have a passing-of-the-torch match between one generation's showstopping best bout machine (Michaels) and the next generation’s (Angle)—two minds that couldn’t help but have a timeless match. There’s a very cool arc in this match, with Michaels using all of the carny tricks he’d picked up in 20 years of professional wrestling to stymy the Olympic medalist Angle’s mat-based amateur wrestling style. Eventually, this causes Angle to snap and turn the match into more of a brawl, which suited Michaels more. The whole match was set up with Michaels as the savvy veteran, working from a big athleticism deficit and digging deep into his bag to try to pull out the win, only to eventually fall short.

A decade-plus after their legendary stinker at WrestleMania 20, during which the crowd booed both men, we finally got the WrestleMania showdown we needed between Brock and Bill. It was a kaiju battle of two larger-than-life monsters throwing buildings at each other. It was a short match, and Goldberg was still great at sprints like this even with some gray in his beard. And hey, you don’t want King Kong and Godzilla to fight for 20 minutes. When every swing is a potential kill shot, you want someone to get it over with quickly. 

As far as theater goes, this performance was maudlin, overacted, and yet undeniably compelling. It’s a quinnessential Old Man Flair performance, full of stiff old bastard stuff, and the twists on his signature spots—sequences that everyone in the audience had seen a hundred times, now turned on their heads—were pretty nifty. There’s nothing more fulfilling than Flair actually hitting a top-rope move after decades of climbing to the top and getting tossed by opponent after opponent. But not here. It almost makes up for the ending, where Michaels says to Flair, “I’m sorry. I love you,” before he puts him down for good. The Old-Yeller-behind-the-barn spot has been done over and over, but that sort of drama is earned when it’s the final match for someone of Ric Flair’s stature.

This is straight-up one of the most physical and violent women’s matches in WWE history. It felt like both women set out to prove that they should have had a main-event spot, and each thudding, welt-raising strike supported that argument. Everything looked like it really hurt, and the big moves landed in awkward, painful, and thoroughly exciting ways. WrestleMania is traditionally about gloss, but this match had grit in its gears in a deeply compelling way. 

This match stands out from the pack like a John Wick combat sequence in a world of ’80s action explosions—a compulsive, nonstop three-way marathon which really demonstrated how wildly strong the in-ring work of the WWE women’s division had become. Historically, it’s almost impossible to map out a triple threat match without having long stretches of one person lying outside the ring to let the bout focus on the more traditional one-on-one segments, but this match had constant action involving all three participants at once. Belair has proved herself the queen of WrestleMania in the 2020s, and you can really feel her absence from the WrestleMania 42 card.

This was the first tag team match to main-event WrestleMania since the very first edition, when Hulk Hogan and Mr. T squared off against Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff, and it was an absolutely enormous moment for a pair of Canadian kids who went from Montreal bar shows to the top of the biggest show in the world. Zayn was at his peak as a sympathetic babyface and played the face-in-peril masterfully, constantly getting cut off from his corner before finally making that big tag and letting Owens run wild. Add in a big finishing run and an emotional climax, and you get a pitch-perfect 2020s tag match. 

It’s hard to imagine a more epic matchup than these two icons squaring off, and this match was an intense brawl between the superstars, full of blood and big bumps. And yet all of that was overshadowed by the closing angle, which saw Austin shockingly turning heel and joining up with Vince McMahon, his longtime arch enemy. Rock and Austin had great in-ring chemistry, and while they got a little cute at the end with Rock hitting a Stunner and Austin hitting a Rock Bottom, this felt throughout like a deeply meaningful main event. The Austin heel turn wasn’t what anyone wanted, but the lead-up to it checked every other conceivable box.

Here we have a heavyweight slugfest, with Batista coming in with the world title and putting it up against Undertaker’s undefeated WrestleMania streak. Even counting his exhausting late-career showdowns with Shawn Michaels and HHH, this was probably the WrestleMania match where the Undertaker seemed most vulnerable. He worked most of the match as the underdog, with Batista really kicking the stuffing out of him. It’s all high-impact, big-boy stuff, with every move feeling like a mini car crash.

This was arguably the most famous ladder match of all time, and the second three-team ladder match involving these six competitors. It’s just the peak version of six guys finding unique ways to shave years off their careers with masochistic stunts. (It’s pretty crazy that so many of these guys are still active after everything they put their bodies through.) While demolition-derby ladder matches have become pretty common in the 25 years since this one, this was the trail blazer, and some of the spots would stand up to the craziest things done today. In fact, clips of this match still live on through social media as testaments to the match’s innovation. Justifiably, this match made Jeff Hardy a millennial icon, with moments like his Swanton Bomb to the floor and the sequence where he dangled from the belts that were hanging over the ring while Edge jumped off a ladder to spear him off. These are two of the wildest moves in WrestleMania history. Sometimes you want a story, sometimes you want technique and artistry, and sometimes you want to watch Mad Max: Fury Road. 

One of the most famous WrestleMania bouts of all time, this one is, to me, a solid world title match elevated by all the bells and whistles around it. Austin and Michaels worked a cool body part vs. body part narrative, with Austin banging at Shawn’s back, and Michaels working over Stone Cold’s knee, notorious weak spots for each man. Both guys were complete pros and the wrestling looked good despite Michaels being overdue for (real-life) back surgery. But the true highlights of the match were Michaels’s live-band entrance with his D-X faction, Austin ascending to the top, and “special enforcer” Mike Tyson sauntering around ringside. This was 1998 pro wrestling at its most 1998, which, not for nothing, was the WWF at its self-proclaimed peak.

When the card for this show was announced it was initially considered a disappointment, since fans had been clamoring for Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair for so long that it seemed strange not to get it on the biggest stage. In some ways, however, Flair vs. Savage was an equally desirable dream match. While Hogan and Flair had been the two biggest stars of the ’80s in their respective promotions, Savage and Flair were two of the greatest in-ring workers in the ’80s and they had never had a one-on-one matchup before this. Add that to the somewhat deranged but effective “Flair had Elizabeth before Savage did” story line that led up to the match, and you had a pretty heated feud and a fight that reflected that animosity. It was really frenzied at points, with Savage jumping Flair in the aisle and brawling with both him and Flair’s manager, Mr. Perfect. In fact, much of the match felt like a two-on-one affair, which added to Savage’s triumph when he won the title back. 

A live-action Road Runner cartoon, with Zayn and Knoxville indulging in manic stunt after manic stunt. Bowling balls to the groin, giant hands, and tables full of mousetraps. Zayn fully immersed himself in the world of Jackass, and this was a perfect blend of the harebrained vibe of that show and the harebrained vibe of pro wrestling.

This is a decade-later version of the Rock vs. Hulk Hogan, with two enormous stars, the biggest of the current generation (Cena) versus the returning star (Rock). Both wrestlers have such charisma that every move, gesture, and facial expression had outsized importance. Everything had a huge impact, too; this match didn’t need Cena to throw a Stan Hansen–level lariat, or for Rock to kill Cena on a snap spinebuster, but it had them anyway. Having a rematch the very next year made this match slightly less memorable, but it was still great. They had a big meal to make and cooked it up.

In her second WrestleMania, Belair had another show-stealing performance. Lynch had previously beaten Belair at SummerSlam in just 26 seconds. This was the rematch, and Lynch was determined to prove that her quick win wasn’t a fluke. For her part, Belair was trying to prove she belonged in a top spot. Big Match Belair will often break out some of the most incredible feats of athleticism in wrestling, and she didn’t disappoint here—her 450 splash and the deadlift reversal of the triangle choke were two of the cooler spots in modern ’Mania history. 

This was billed as Piper’s retirement match and was the kind of wild fistfight at which Piper was the master. Piper had some of the fastest hands in wrestling history and unloaded on Adonis. This also had an incredible performance by Adonis’s manager, Jimmy Hart, who was bumping like a Rockabilly Darby Allin. Above all else, it’s just so much fun to watch Piper at his most popular, interacting with a huge crowd that was so eager to cheer him after years of hating him. 

This was a great example of the excellence of structure in a pro wrestling ring. It’s basically a classic Southern tag team bout where the catharsis is deferred and deferred to make the moment when it hits mean so much more. The rules of the match allowed men to only wrestle men and women to only wrestle women, so the beginning of the match was Triple H trying to keep Angle from tagging in Rousey, an acclaimed MMA fighter, which would have forced his wife, Stephanie (notably not an MMA star), into the threshing machine. Stephanie at times in her career outstayed her welcome as an on-air character, but this was her masterpiece, playing a cheap-shotting, obnoxious heel who the crowd is begging to see get her comeuppance—a comeuppance that gets delayed enough to cause an eruption among the fans when Ronda triumphantly grabbed her arm like she wanted to take it home with her and cranked. 

This might have been only six minutes long, but it was an all-action sprint. There are few things in wrestling history as fun as Regal in a fight with someone willing to work stiff with him, and RVD was so jacked up on adrenaline from being at his first WrestleMania that his kicks were coming in hot. Regal ended up with a busted mouth, but he just smiled through it and tried to palm-strike the ponytail off Van Dam’s head. It’s hard to say something is a hidden gem when it took place at the Toronto Skydome, but this is the kind of cool, lost masterpiece that might have been hidden on a WCW syndicated show and forgotten until being rediscovered. 

Barrel-chested bruisers taking chunks off of each other has been a big part of wrestling for as long as it has existed. Sheamus and Drew had been fighting each other since they laced up boots as youngsters, and Gunther and Sheamus had one of the coolest feuds of the decade. I imagine that all three guys emptied out bars in their time, and this looked just like that.

This match was dubbed a Belfast Brawl, and was the climax of the supremely silly angle that saw Vince McMahon reveal that he had an illegitimate son: Hornswoggle, a little person dressed perpetually as a leprechaun. However, despite the preface, if you put Fit Finlay, one of the stiffest wrestlers of all time, in a street fight with a game slugger like JBL, you are going to get live rounds. There was typical WWE street fight stuff—think trash can lids and kendo sticks—but with way more velocity than normal. You might have to squint your eyes through some of the more skin-blistering shots from both guys, including Finlay trying to out-JBL JBL by using his own stiff lariat. JBL ended it all with an even stiffer receipt. Hell of a way to try to steal a show. 

This is the Beverly Hills Cop 2 to the previous year’s Beverly Hills Cop. Similar beats, with bigger explosions and more pizzazz. It isn’t as good a movie, but it’s still a pretty satisfying watch. It was Michaels’s retirement match, and he slapped the Undertaker to try to make the big man finish him properly and end his career on a glorious note. That part was a bit over the top, but that sort of cheese is what made Michaels memorable. 

The main-event match that launched it all, an avatar of 1980s glamour, with Muhammad Ali as the special referee and Liberace as the timekeeper. Piper was incredible, just constantly in the mix, agitating, talking shit, cheap-shotting, and (most importantly) bumping like crazy for Hogan and T. This match more than delivered on what was promised, with Hogan playing to the back row and the heroes vanquishing the villains. 

Two of the greatest dance partners in the history of the sport finally got to dance that dance in an underrated WrestleMania match. At this point, Rey and Eddie were WWE tag team champions together, and so this was worked as a technical match between fellow babyfaces, but with the seeds of Eddie’s eventual heel turn being planted along the way. It’s an absolute pleasure to watch these two icons fly around the ring with such speed and precision. This was an appetizer for the all-time main course yet to come, but a delicious appetizer nonetheless.

The greatest art is often created when people work with restrictions. There are few types of wrestling more restrictive than a blindfold match. The story here was that Martel blinded Roberts in the previous year’s match by spraying him in the eyes with cologne, and so the climactic match had both men blindfolded. It’s a unique structure, with most of the bout being pantomiming as they lurch around the ring trying to find one another. This obviously means there’s not a ton of action, but both guys milk every bit of contact for everything it’s worth. Martel had some great stooging, Mr. Magoo–style slapstick comedy, swinging a chair into the ringpost, accidentally touching the bag that contained Damien (Roberts’s pet snake), and being totally befuddled by the rules. Jake used the power of the crowd to finally find Martel, eventually hitting the DDT to end it.