40 Years Of Fascinating WWE WrestleMania Facts (Part 2)
5. WrestleMania 16: Four Years Later, One Man Remains
Despite things in wrestling often feeling as though they've never moved faster, things are positively glacial in the 2020s compared to how they shifted in the mid-1990s.
When the industry got red hot on both sides, talent switched sides and switched gimmicks with such regularity that they stood to feel ancient if they did the same thing for much longer than a year. "X-Pac heat" was a brutal takedown of one of the industry's very best in-ring performers for committing the crime of portraying the same gimmick for a couple of years, as if it now doesn't take that long just to get a decent push in the first place.
Four years was a lifetime, and it felt like that when 2000's WrestleMania 16 returned to the venue that hosted WrestleMania XII in 1996. So much so that the card headlined by Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels featured only one wrestler who made it to the next show. It was doghouse-to-penthouse stuff from Triple H, who was elevated from losing a squash against The Ultimate Warrior to headlining and winning the main event as a heel World Champion.