10 Best Matches From B-Level WWE Pay Per Views
7. Shawn Michaels Vs. Mankind - In Your House: Mind Games
This is a match so good that it retrospectively indicts the Bray Wyatt character. That isn’t an unnecessary jab at Bray’s expense; this match should serve as the blueprint for how his act should translate to the ring.
Wyatt exists to get under the skin of his opponents and invoke something ugly from within - and Mankind did this superbly in a match as violent as it was cerebral.
Michaels, up to this point, was an incongruous white meat babyface, a contrived persona betraying his ugly id. Here, after being kicked into the barrier, he met the unique challenge by dropping Mankind onto the exposed concrete and stomping his face in. He then jumped from the top rope and smashed Mankind’s skull onto it again. The thud was sickening. We weren’t in the old-fashioned Kansas of 1995 anymore; this was both brutal gut punch and advanced, character-based storytelling.
Michaels, tormented in the build up, was the aggressor, pulverising Mankind’s knee before succumbing to a hangman, which he sold with his peerless balletic grace. The best spot saw Michaels reverse Mankind’s backdrop suplex attempt and force his opponent to take the brunt of the ringside table’s impact.
Furniture, Michaels’ thin veneer of heroism, the in-ring language of the WWF - this is a match that destroyed so much, and created even more, even if the damp squib of a run-in finish let it down.