9 Times WWE's WrestleMania Main Event Was The Worst Match On The Card

9. WrestleMania 8: The Delayed Run-In Didn’t Help

Ultimate Warrior Hulk Hogan Wrestlemania 8
WWE.com

WrestleMania 8 was chugging along pretty well with two bona fide classics in “Rowdy” Roddy Piper versus Bret Hart and the WWF Championship match between Ric Flair and “Macho Man” Randy Savage, but then it hit the iceberg known as Hulk Hogan versus Sid Justice.

The result of their tussle during the Royal Rumble a couple months earlier, Hogan/Justice was part of a “double main event” with Flair/Savage, though the World title match took place fifth on a nine-match card. The Hulkster’s ego must be stroked, prestige of the WWF Championship be damned.

At this stage in his career, Hogan wasn’t the guy to carry Sid to a passable match, and the two had a dull, plodding stinker. Worse, Hogan was supposed to be the babyface, but his popularity was waning – he was booed at the Rumble when he appealed to the crowd about Sid eliminating him.

The match was so bad that the only thing positive anyone has ever shared about it was the Ultimate Warrior returning to save Hogan from a beatdown by Sid and Papa Shango. But even that was ripe for ridicule, as Shango missed his cue to interfere in the match, forcing Justice to kick out of the Hogan leg drop and the two wrestlers had to stumble about until the voodoo man could get to the ring to kick off the melee.

Bad, bad match with a botched finish. Not how you want your showcase PPV to end, even with a surprise return. And Warrior was gone from WWF again within seven months, anyway.

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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.