The Rock's WrestleMania Matches - From Worst To Best
10. Vs. The Sultan - WrestleMania 13
The Rock's Mania debut came at WrestleMania 13, where he defended his Intercontinental Championship against The Sultan (Rikishi in an even more ridiculous get-up). With the career that Rock would go on to have it is easy to lose clarity about his early days, easy to assume that he wasn't completely ready and the crowd didn't take to him. If you go back and watch this match, you'll see that the transformation was way bigger than any of us truly remember. Here he was as Rocky Maivia, plucky babyface underdog, overcoming not just his bigger opponent but also the presence of Bob Backlund and The Iron Sheik on the outside. If anyone can think of a more entertaining management duo than Mr. Backlund and Sheiky Baby, I salute you. For whatever reason The Honky Tonk Man was on commentary for this bland outing. Rocky wins, gets beat down by the dastardly trio until Pap Rocky Johnson runs out for the save. Something tells me the match existed purely to get to the post-match antics and the visual of father and son standing tall.
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.
