10 Most Unforgettable Exhibition Matches In Wrestling History
6. The Big Show Vs. Akebono
Back to the big man again. As Vince McMahon Jr’s own pet giant, an Andre for the post-kayfabe, post-territorial era, the Big Show has been stuck with every single nonsensical, over-the-top, idiotic gimmick and storyline you can think of over the last seventeen years.
Where Andre was Vince McMahon Sr.’s special attraction, built up and cultivated to be well-nigh unstoppable, the pituitary giant recast as mythical colossus... Paul Wight gets to be Vince Jr.’s buttmonkey, the guy who’ll slot into any role required, no matter how reductive or belittling, and no matter how contradictory it might be to his character’s so-called continuity.
A case in point saw the Big Show take on Akebono at WrestleMania 21 on April 3rd 2005, a huge Hawaiian who’d ascended to become the first ever gaijin sumo to reach the exalted rank of Yokozuna. What was the storyline that kicked off this seminal feud between these two behemoths? There wasn’t one, and the build for the match pretty much consisted of Michael Cole reminding everyone how heavy each man was for weeks on end.
No one was taking this match seriously. The predominantly American crowd at WrestleMania 21 had no idea what to expect from a sumo match. What they got was two giant dudes in huge black thongs slapping at each other like drunk teenagers fighting over a girl at the school disco.
After Akebono shoved Show out of the ring to win the match (in just over a minute, after over six minutes of entrances and stalling and even longer beforehand for the crew to take down the ring ropes and prepare the mat to look like a sumo circle), the two men hugged each other and left. What a monumental waste of time.