10 Greatest WWE WrestleMania Gimmick Matches
Cages, ladders, fire, and plenty more besides.
As the grandest show of them all, WrestleMania is all about settling scores. It acts like the season finale for WWE; we cap off our storylines in exciting fashion, then reset the next night on Raw, ready to go again. And the best way to end any quasi-sporting encounter is with a fair fight, no messing about, a straight down the line battle for supremacy.
Sometimes, though, that’s not enough. When a feud gets too heated, or conversely an angle needs a little something to tip it over the edge, technical chain wrestling and spirited competition isn’t going to cut it. That’s when WWE reaches into its bag of tricks and pulls out a gimmick match.
The company’s stipulation bouts tend to go one of two ways - they’re either utterly daft, up to and including the use of untrained dogs, or brilliant, pushing boundaries and encouraging colleagues to up their own game.
Whether these matches utilised their gimmicks to push a narrative to another level, or if the gimmick was the whole point of the bout in the first place, these encounters added a much needed splash of variety to their respective WrestleManias, and in many cases stole the whole show.
10. Kane vs Raven vs Big Show (WrestleMania X-Seven)
This hardcore match is perhaps most famous - or infamous - for something that ultimately didn’t happen. During the apex of this particularly silly fight, Raven commandeered a golf kart to flee his substantially larger foes, and in his cavalier driving almost severed the power to the entire Reliant Astrodome.
This catastrophe was averted, but the fact that the mishap was even a possibility gives you an idea of how crazy this match was. Raven entered as champion, and brought with him to the ring a trolley full of plunder. He needn’t have bothered; within minutes, all three men are backstage and using everything and anything as a weapon.
They crash through doors and walls, wail on each other with all kinds of material, there’s the aforementioned vehicular pursuit, and Kane ultimately wins the janky belt after leaping off the stage.
Despite all the mayhem, it hangs together remarkable well, three quality performers packing the sub-10 minute runtime with non-stop action.