Ranking EVERY WrestleMania From Worst To Best
Showcase Showdown
Thanks to the foibles of his own bizarre psyche, Vince McMahon has recently done away with the numbering system once loyally associated with his most popular brand. Allegedly, he's taken umbrage with WrestleMania being thought of as 'old' in recent years, presumably transplanting his own insecurities onto one of his greatest creations.
The 34th iteration thus won't be referred to as such by the company, but the fanbase at large hasn't abandoned the event's prestige just because it's entered its third decade. There's a bizarre contradiction at play - McMahon often used roman numerals in an effort to (successfully) brand the show as a 'The SuperBowl Of Wrestling', but the empiric 'Showcase Of The Immortals' nomenclature has recently taken a backseat in favour of the marginally more timeless 'Show Of Shows' moniker.
Now permanently located in stadiums and surpassing six hours in length, WrestleMania's size and scale has advanced beyond its 1980s pomp and mid-2000s ceremony. A bit of transcendent mid-1990s action wouldn't go amiss on the bloated supercards, but the feel of the event has become one of grandiose glory. It doesn't mask a lack of quality, but does at least promise spectacle to make up for creative shortcomings.
The event wasn't always afforded such shortcuts, but nor was it bloated to a fault. The great WrestleManias strike a perfect balance, but stage is still too grand (despite McMahon's efforts) to hide the weaker efforts from cutting critique.
33. WrestleMania 2
Three garbage shows for roughly the same price of a ticket to a poorly-lit half-staffed house show or closed circuit location, Vince McMahon's WrestleMania 2 experiment was a bust in 1986 and performs no better through a nostalgic lens.
Flawed in concept and completely sunk in execution, three venues didn't generate three main events, nor even three passable cards for ripped off audiences in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It still doesn't stand to reason why the Chairman would attempt something so audacious when two venues would have sufficed.
The show could have cut back and forth at least, rather than just delivering the venues in packaged chunks, and surely promising ostensibly to be twice the show the inaugural edition was would have been marketing enough. It was instead a triple threat of poor matches, sh*t sets and even sh*tter celebrity appearances to paper the cracks.