5. Shawn Michaels vs Steve Austin - WWE Championship - Wrestlemania XIV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwBCKFSq5uk Firmly entrenched in a war with rival wrestling promotion WCW, WWE needed to haul out the big guns for Wrestlemania in 1998, and that they did with a main event between champion Shawn Michaels and challenger Stone Cold Steve Austin. It was a match between the man who had been at the top of the food chain for the last couple of years (Michaels) and the man who had just recently scratched and clawed his way to the top (Austin). Furthermore, in a genius move to attract media attention, the WWE brought in former boxing heavyweight champion "Iron" Mike Tyson to be the special guest enforcer for the championship match. This move paid dividends for the WWE and brought millions of new eyeballs to WWE programming, as the confrontation between Tyson and "The Texas Rattlesnake" got mainstream press coverage from CBS and ABC News. The media blitz did not stop there. Just before Wrestlemania XIV, Steve Austin appeared on "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee", where host Regis Philbin infamously wore a shirt with the phrase "Phibin 911", a play on Stone Cold's popular "Austin 3:16" catchphrase. Then, the day before the "Show of Shows", the WWE held a "public workout" in the streets of Boston, where tens of thousands of fans showed up to catch a glimpse of the superstars that would be involved in the next night's pay-per-view. Despite Shawn Michaels being in crippling back pain (that following this match kept him out of action for four years), "The Showstopper" pulled a rabbit out of his hat and had one more great match with Stone Cold. Austin won his first WWE title, and the rest as they say, is history.