Shawn Michaels WrestleMania Matches - Ranked From Worst To Best

7. Vs. Bret Hart - WrestleMania XII

Michaels Taker Elbow
WWE.com

WrestleMania XII can be seen as the birth of Mr. WrestleMania. In the main event, Shawn Michaels battled Bret Hart for the WWF Championship in a 60-minute Ironman match. Michaels makes his most famous of entrances, flying into the arena via zip line in one of the most impressive arrivals in professional wrestling history. 

Everything about this felt like a big moment, and everything about it felt like the official crowning of a new star.

This is a unique match in modern WWE history, going over one hour as it did, and as such it is difficult to rate it on a normal scale. They start slow for obvious reasons, and the first half could easily be regarded as being tedious and plodding. All of this is forgotten in the second half, and the last 20 minutes or so are particularly thrilling. 

The regulation hour ends with neither man scoring a pinfall, so Gorilla Monsoon heads down to the ring to send the match into overtime. Less than two minutes later, Sweet Chin Music connects and the boyhood dream is realised. 

Mr. WrestleMania had arrived.


Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.