8. The Rock vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin WrestleMania 17 (X-Seven)
In early 2001, WWF was at its absolute peak in terms of talent, storylines and fan support. WWF had just bought out its chief rival, WCW, and its top two stars, Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Rock, were at the top of their games and about to headline what would become known as the best WrestleMania of all time, WrestleMania 17 (X-Seven). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM8kNZfv3cU Austin and Rock had headlined Mania two years earlier, but Rock was still on the rise and not quite the mega-star he had become by 2001. While you could make comparisons to Hogan and Savage in 1989, Rock and Austin meshed together better in the ring, and they put on an outstanding performance deserving of the main event slot. The ending definitely detracts a little from the overall match, but you would be hard-pressed to find a better Mania main event performance-wise.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
