Take up thy wrestling boots and walk - Wrestlemania XXIII, The greatest matches you've never seen
Submitted by Pt2 on Thursday, April 5, 2007 at 1:44 PM EST





Welcome once again to the column that is to wrestling what the Oakland Raiders are to quality NFL performances, Take up thy wrestling boots and walk. I’m the man that owns 22 copies of “Jive Soul Bro’” on vinyl, Pt2, back once again from the perpetual monotony of real life to talk about the crucial facts and matters of the ambrosia of the gods, known only to us as Professional Wrestling.

There was a pretty important show on this week. So I suppose we’d better talk about that, hadn’t we?

I thought Wrestlemania was a resounding success. Last year, I was so unimpressed with the build up that for the first time I didn’t bother to order the show, and to be honest I don’t think from what I’ve heard that I regret it. This time though, I knew I was going to order it well in advance, and I certainly don’t regret spending my money on it. While there was some down moments during the whole show, I think every match that was given due time turned out to be a success.

Kicking things off with Aretha Franklin again was a nice touch, and from that we went straight into the requisite quick opener; The money in the bank ladder match. I’ve never been the biggest fan of this matches predecessors, but this one was pretty good. Rather than high spot, after high spot, after high spot, in this they paced themselves and teased the high spots to become, and I found myself drawn into the match. When the real high spot, between Jeff Hardy and Edge, did come, it was sensational, and I think it meant a lot more for the build up. That was predictably the end of Edge and Jeff’s involvement, and credit has to go to Randy Orton for bringing the crowd’s attention back to the match; after something that impressive, it would have been very possible that fans would feel nothing but anti climax as the match finished, but Orton’s RKO run, finished by a Book End from the ladder, kept everyone enagaged. All in all, I thought this was a very, very enjoyable ladder match. Ken Kennedy wins in the end, and I think that was definitely the right decision. They call him the quickest rising star in Smackdown! History, and while that may not be true, he certainly is one of the hottest prospects in the company right now. A future world champion.

After a post match interview with the victorious Kennedy, the next match is a big man contest between the Great Khali and Kane. As you can imagine, this is not a technical masterpiece. But I’m not going to slate it. Khali has his uses as a big man, and Kane used all his years of experience to make this as good as possible. Nice Andre tribute by Khali, and that got me thinking if having Khali wrestle as close to Andre’s style as possible wouldn’t be such a bad idea? OK, he’ll never be as good as Andre, but if he could prove to be half as valuable then he’d be a real asset. Khali wins, and disposes of the big red machine in such a manner that when someone beats him clean, in a singles match next time, it’ll look huge.

We were then taught that Cryme Tyme like to dance with young girls, while Eugene likes to dance with Mae Young and the Fabulous Moolah. Slick, Dusty Rhodes, Sgt. Slaughter, Mike “IRS” Rotundo, Jimmy Hart and Ricky Steamboat all just like to dance. Ron Simmons, it seems, doesn’t. A purist may debate the use of the time (something I may do regarding later segments), but for those of us who watched Wrestling before we were “all grown up”, it’s nice to see some of the gods of yesteryear trotted out now and again.
The United States title was next up, and I was very impressed with MVP. Benoit is of course one of the greatest wrestlers that the company has ever had but credit to the youngster; he went with him every step of the way. They didn’t get a hell of a lot of time for this one, but with what they did they managed to add an enjoyable match to the card. Benoit retains with the headbutt, and again, that is probably the right decision.

The Boogeyman and Donald Trump in something of a pointless segment…. I’d figure this was just to get the most of Trump’s presence.

The Hall of Fame recap and introduction was next, in what has become an annual tradition. For anyone that hasn’t seen it, this years class includes Dusty Rhodes, Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Curt Hennig, Mr. Fuji, The Sheik, Nick Bockwinkel and The Wild Samoans.

Next up was the first of the two World championship matches – and the match I initially thought would be the overall main event. I was actually disappointed to see this match pushed so far up the card, but I suppose this does tally with the WWE’s desire to push John Cena as their number one guy. I thought this match had the best build up going in, the most intrigue, and I thought the match ALMOST managed to deliver on all that. It was good, but when the match ended, I felt a sense of anti-climax, as if the match had ended too soon. There were several other portions of this event that I would have declared as expendable, that could have given this match the time it needed to become a classic Wrestlemania big man match. Batista here was as good as I’ve ever seen him, and the Undertaker certainly knows how to wrestle bigger men well, with feuds against Hulk Hogan, Giant Gonzales, Yokozuna, Kevin Nash, Kane, Big Show, and many more, to his name in the past. The question about whether Batista would be the man to end the streak was answered with a tombstone piledriver. A very, very good match, but I think an extra five minutes would have made it a special match, and the match of the night. For of all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these: It might have been.

Next was a stupid segment featuring Vince talking to his “granddaughter”, with Steph present, about all the things he was going to do to Donald Trump in their match. The camera was stupidly placed, completely destroying any suspension of disbelief, and the punchline was actually pathetic. While this did help build towards the Battle of the Billionaires, I’m not sure that match needed any extra build up, and I will go on the record as saying that right now, the event would have been much better had the time used on this been given to the Undertaker vs. Batista title match.

ECW’s token spot on the card was next up, and I think while this match wasn’t the worst in terms of in ring content, it certainly had the least interest in it; at least, that is the way it seemed to come across through the TV. Proof that the WWE don’t put enough effort into the ECW brand? I’ll leave that to you to decide. I think the big surprised to virtually everyone was the ECW originals winning. Rob Van Dam hits the 5 star on Dean Douglas 2k7 for the win after a few minutes. Not bad, but instantly forgettable.

The match with the most media interest followed, and there were no surprised as regards the winner. This match was never going to be a technical 5 star classic, but it was always going to be fairly entertaining. Steve Austin, as the extra element, really added something. I know some people are critical of his personal life, but I think that people with his talent come along so rarely that it is inevitable that the company miss him, and just sensible that they would utilise him as much as possible. Good build up to Trump decking McMahon, and even though his worked punches looked abysmal the crowd went nuts. Trump couldn’t take a stunner particularly well either, but how often is it that Billionaires let Austin do that to them? Fair play to him, and it added something to the end of the match.


Now, a question: At the biggest event of the year, if you are going to have a women’s match, and you have at least two women’s wrestler mixed amongst a group of models, wouldn’t it make sense to have a specialist women’s wrestler in there? Melina is ok, but she’s certainly no Nora Greenwald in there, and lets face it, Ashley is a playboy centrefold, not a wrestler. In my opinion, if they wanted to have a women’s match at their most visible event of the year, they needed to have either Mickie James or Victoria in that match to ensure some quality. They put neither in, and as a consequence the match was miles from the standard required. This, like the McMahon and Trump promo’s earlier in the night, was time that could have been used to allow other matches to develop more fully. After all, the girls had 3 minutes in the ring – they can’t do much in three minutes. But take that time and the time from their introductions and give it to Taker vs. Batista, and it could become the special match that I hoped it could become.

Finally, you had the main event: Shawn Michaels challenging John Cena for the WWE title. The sequence with the car to kick off the match was un-necessary and did little for me. Once it started though, they went in with a story to tell, and they told it well. Michaels especially, told the story during the early stages. I’ve criticized John Cena plenty of times in the past, and I think I’m about to pay him the biggest compliment that I think I can; in that Wrestlemania main event, he wasn’t just carried by Shawn Michaels, he played a huge part himself in making it, in my opinion, the match of the night. After his work last year with Edge, I started to buy him as a man that could compete in the main event…. After Wrestlemania, I think I may be starting to buy him as the franchise player. I still don’t like him, and don’t cheer him as a result, but now it’s reaching a point where a John Cena match is starting to feel like a big deal.

In short, there were some very, very good moments at Wrestlemania, and virtually every match that was given the time to be good turned out to be at the very least decent. Both title matches and the ladder match were at 8/10 matches in my estimation, while the US Title match was a very nice, if short, addition. This isn’t the best Wrestlemania ever, but I think it’s a very good one, better than either of the past two.


With Wrestlemania just gone, I’ve been thinking about some of the big WWE matches that would have been huge, but that we never got to see. Especially in the days of the late eighties, there were matches that could have been booked with existing stars that missed out on the big match with a Hulk Hogan or Randy Savage type; and matches that could have become part of WWE history have fallen into the abyss.

First, I was thinking about Hulk Hogan vs. Dusty Rhodes. Dusty was only in the WWE for a short while as “The Common Man”, but was already such an established star that a face vs. face match against Hulk Hogan would have spelled absolute money; if it was marketed right, probably even more than Hogan vs. Warrior drew in 1990. If I had to do it, I think I would probably put it in at Summerslam ’89, since the main event of that event was a tag match based around Wrestlemania. Rhodes vs. Hogan is a match that has so much star power, it would carry as much or more than Flair vs. Hogan in WCW years later.

Before he left for WCW at the tail end of 1990, a match between Rick Rude and Hulk Hogan, preferably for the World Championship (which would mean it would have to be before Wrestlemania VI) would be a classic. Both of these two carried the Ultimate Warrior to the best matches of his career. If Rude can work with the Warrior, literally leading him by the nose, to the quality of the Summerslam ’89 IC match, imagine what he could have done with someone like Hogan – himself a master of crowd manipulation.

Here’s one that doesn’t feature Hulk Hogan: prior to his first retirement in 1987, what about a match between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Ricky the Dragon Steamboat. They certainly wrestled each other in the NWA, but I’m thinking a big match between the two in the WWE to a world wide audience could have been something truly special. Either in place of the Boxing match at Wrestlemania II with Piper as the heel, or later in the year as a huge face vs. face match, this would be a match between two superb in ring performers; Steamboat vs. Savage is regarded as one of the best WWE matches of all time, and I see no reason this one couldn’t go right up there with it.

And although it was highly unlikely because of their status as perennial heels, I would have loved to have seen a match between Ted DiBiase and Ric Flair in the WWE in 1992. Why not an Intercontinental title match in 1991, between Champion Mr. Perfect and The British Bulldog?

I’m sure you can come up with several of your own. There must be hundreds of matches out there that people wish had been promoted by Vince McMahon over the years. It’s just a pity that for most of us, we’re never going to get to see those matches.

I think I’ve waffled on long enough now. I hope you enjoyed the column, but more importantly, I hope you enjoyed Wrestlemania as much as I did. If you want to contact me, with either your thoughts about Wrestlemania or some of the “matches you’d love to have seen”, then you can reach me at takeupthywrestlingboots@gmail.com.

Well, I’ll be back soon. Until then, Take care.

Pt2









*NEW GALLERY* Randy Orton & Other WWE Superstars WILDIN' OUT and PARTYING!

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