The first three months of 1997 have to go down as one of the most haphazard and chaotic periods in the WWF Title's 51-year history. Between the Royal Rumble on January 19th and Wrestlemania 13 on March 23rd, the WWF saw 4 world title changes and 4 different champions. In that time, Shawn Michaels lost his smile, Bret Hart realised that frustrated wasn't the god damn word for it and Sycho Sid inexplicably found himself champion once again and in the main event of Wrestlemania as WWE scrambled to salvage Wrestlemania once their champion- Michaels- was ruled out with a knee injury. Instead of a feud-ending match between Austin and Bret Hart to sort out the controversy of the ending to the Royal Rumble match at the February In Your House PPV, the match was pushed back to the Wrestlemania card itself and would go on to become one of the greatest, most historic matches in WWE history. Hart was originally planned to win that match and face Michaels in 'Mania 13's main event, in a rematch of the previous year. Instead, with Michaels ruled out, WWE inexplicably put the belt back onto Sid, who was only ever intended to be a transitional champion between Michaels' two reigns to begin with and plucked Undertaker out of mid-air to be his challenger. A random feud with a random match to close your biggest show of the year. It is one of the worst Wrestlemania main events in history. As such, the ire for this one came primarily in retrospect. Whilst fans of the time were tending to embrace the chaos and carnage that was becoming a staple of Monday Night Raw each week, they now tend to look back on WWE's handling of the Michaels' knee injury with regret and despair. Sid as a champion in the Wrestlemania main event was a disaster.
Betting on being a brilliant brother to Bodhi since 2008 (-1 Asian Handicap). Find me @LiamJJohnson on Twitter where you might find some wonderful pearls of wisdom in a stout cocktail of profanity, football discussion and general musings. Or you might not. Depends how red my eyes are.
