5. Sheamus Defeats Daniel Bryan - WrestleMania XXVIII
It may be the most infamous opening match in WrestleMania history, and in a lot of ways it coloured the careers of the two individuals all the way up to today. Daniel Bryan's rise to cult hero continued, before truly culminating at WrestleMania XXX, whereas Sheamus has been saddled with the disdain of the audience ever since. Hindsight says you can look back at this and consider it a good, if not great decision. Bryan went mad after the loss, leading to his eventual partnership with Kane and rise to extreme popularity. This is the realistic starting point of the 'YES!' Movement. The crowd were incensed and took to Bryan in droves afterwards. At the time however, nothing about this made sense. It was the opening match of the card, and pretty much deflated the spectators. It was for the World Heavyweight Championship, and made that look like a joke in the process. Two of the top workers in the company had a match that lasted all of 18 seconds, when later in the show Maria Menounos would get six minutes, a 12-man tag would get over ten and Kane and Randy Orton would follow this by going eleven minutes. At the time, and even today, this was a completely senseless decision.