5 Superstars Whose WrestleMania Debut Deserves a Do-Over

A significant portion of the WrestleMania card will feature superstars making their Wrestlemania debut; between established stars just getting their start with the main roster crew, as well as the prerequisite call-ups from NXT that may be required for the men's and women's battle royals (as well as some crossover matches teased on social media), Sunday will be the first time walking the Wrestlemania ramp for at least a dozen men and women.

Many people have succeeded in that spot, putting on classic matches which were part of award-winning feuds (or which won numerous awards and accolades in their own right); today, we look at the flipside: five superstars whose WrestleMania debut left a lot to be desired, and which we're sure they'd like to try again.

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#5 Triple H

One would be forgiven for assuming at this point that Paul Levesque would never amount to anything in professional wrestling

Hunter Hearst Helmsley's WrestleMania debut at WrestleMania XII against a returning Ultimate Warrior is beyond bad; it's legendarily bad, to the point that it's been parodied numerous times onscreen and in-ring in WWE.

The Connecticut Blueblood found himself facing The Warrior by virtue of the front office seeming to say, "We need a body to take a beating; who's free?" and picking Helmsley to pay his dues.

The match consisted of the future Game nailing Warrior almost immediately with The Pedigree, already considered by that time one of the most devastating finishers in professional wrestling (in a kayfabe ranking of finishers in WWF Magazine that year, Helmsley's signature maneuver found itself in the top ten, odd for any heel but especially a rookie). Warrior shook it off like transitional offense, and went into his sequence of power moves and splashes, pinning Helmsley in less than two minutes.

Something also happened with Hunter's valet that night, some lady who would go on to pose for Playboy and then marry Brock Lesnar (among other things).

He'd Get It Right When:

Arguably, Triple H didn't put on a great WrestleMania match (entrances aside) until WrestleMania XX, when he was the losing third in one of the greatest Triple Threat matches of all time; he would also partake in a classic Hell in a Cell with The Undertaker at WrestleMania XXVIII, and would open WrestleMania XXX by losing to Daniel Bryan in an epic encounter which put Bryan on a collision course with destiny.

#4 "Stone Cold" Steve Austin

The Ringmaster looks like he'd much rather be doing a commercial for Alpha Brain right now

Before he was "Stone Cold," (or Ice Dagger, Fang McFrost, Baron Von Ruthless, or Chilly McFreeze, or any of the other ridiculous monikers suggested at the creative table), Steve Austin also made his WrestleMania debut at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, CA, against Puerto Rican sensation Savio Vega.

At the time, Austin was the defending Million Dollar Champion; under the name "The Ringmaster," the innovator of the wrestling podcast wore the diamond belt and rarely approached the microphone, letting his famous manager with the evil, greedy laugh do all the talking.

Austin and Vega didn't put on a bad match, but what they did put on was largely forgettable; nothing about it had the feel of a WrestleMania contest, and their Caribbean Strap Match at an In Your House pay-per-view later that spring would outdo this match in both action and story.

Had Austin been allowed to be the brash, cocky, foulmouthed Austin we grew to love that fall, this could have been much better.

Austin's success in WWE was, by and large, due to massive coincidences; he'd be the first to admit he was brought in just to be a good worker but was never envisioned to be "the guy"

He'd Get It Right When:

Anyone reading about professional wrestling right now is, in some form, doing it because of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, whose career-defining performances at five of the next seven Wrestlemanias (WrestleManias 13, XIV, XV, X-Seven, and XIX) breathed new life into what many considered to be a dying business.

#3 The Rock

Something about the guy on the right looks familiar, and I can't figure out

Anoia'i

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As "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's popularity continued to soar throughout the fall of 1996 and winter of 1997, the World Wrestling Federation would invest far more money and promotional energy into another Superstar touted as the first third-generation superstar in WWF history, Rocky Maivia.

Crowds were skeptical of the smiling Samoan and greeted him and his flowing tassels with lukewarm reactions; figuring they would need to double their efforts, the WWF creative team made the call to give Maivia the Intercontinental Championship on a special Thursday edition of RAW (the same night Shawn Michaels lost his smile). Maivia sneakily rolled up a man with whom he would one day make millions in PPV revenue, Triple H, and coast into WrestleMania 13 to face the foreign heel du jour, The Sultan.

Pictured: a man who is definitely NOT Middle Eastern

Sultan wore a suffocating face mask and let his managers Bob Backlund and The Iron Sheik do all the talking; in storyline, this was because Sultan had lost his tongue but, in reality, this was because the man behind the mask was Solofa Fatu, Jr., a.k.a. Headshrinker Fatu, a.k.a. Rikishi.

Maivia and his real-life cousin squared off in a beyond-meaningless Wrestlemania match with no definitive finish; in a match that barely cracks a single star rating, Maivia won with a cross-body (this was before he added his set of definitive, flashy finishers to his repertoire), prompting Backlund and Sheik to attack. Maivia would have to be helped from an attack by two retirees with help from...another retiree...when his father, Rocky Johnson, hit the ring to back him up.

Smiling more and getting help from stars who hadn't been relevant for decades: Vince McMahon's recipe for babyface success

He'd Get It Right When:

Rock would go on to a classic trilogy of matches with the number four entrant on this list, as well as a two-part series with the number two entrant as well, at WrestleManias XXVIII and 29.

#2 John Cena

You can't see [how poorly this match was rated by critics at the time]

Cena's unofficial Wrestlemania debut was at Wrestlemania XIX, where he "rap battled" a series of cardboard cutouts of some of the biggest hip-hop superstars of the day (rumor and innuendo would have you believe that some of these men, like Jay-Z, Eminem, and Fabulous, were seriously considered for appearances and were offered considerable sums to battle Cena).

His in-ring debut at WWE's Super Bowl came a year later, as the rapper gimmick had gotten Cena over huge with crowds and propelled him to challenge The Big Show for the United States Championship to open Wrestlemania XX.

Big Show's weight and level of effort have swung through various extremes in his long career; at Wrestlemania XX, the former was at its highest while the latter was low

The match isn't terrible, and the Madison Square Garden crowd is very gracious with their cheers (odd to say that a New York crowd's support of John Cena buoyed a subpar match, when it's usually their disdain for him which threatens to derail a well-worked contest); however, Show was far from mobile at this point, and Cena showed little offense outside his signature moves and a shot with his chain-and-padlock necklace.

It's exactly the match one would expect from Paul Wight in 2004, but not the debut one would expect from the man who defined WWE for the next decade, at least.

Well-received, but John Cena didn't have to do much to get a massive pop at this point in his career

He'd Get It Right When:

At Ford Field in Detroit, MI, in 2007, John Cena and Shawn Michaels closed out WrestleMania 23 with a classic encounter, a huge step in trying to silence many of the "you can't wrestle" doubters. Cena and Show would put on a far better contest as part of a Triple Threat (also featuring Edge) at WrestleMania 25, where Show would be slimmer, balder, and trying much harder.

#1 Shawn Michaels

Shawn Michaels is so synonymous with stealing the show at WrestleMania that at least two of his nicknames, "The Showstopper" and "Mr. WrestleMania," are direct references to his ability to perform at the highest level on wrestling's grandest stage.

It's worth noting, then, that his first Wrestlemania contest, at WrestleMania V in 1989 as part of The Rockers tag team with Marty Jannetty, stole precisely nothing, except maybe eight minutes of viewers' lives.

Taking on the team of the Twin Towers, made up of The Big Bossman and Akeem the African Dream (also known at one point as The One Man Gang), the big-versus-little dynamic never really clicked; Marty and Shawn tried a lot of the high-flying tandem offense which made them massively over in the AWA, but Bossman and Akeem weren't ready to play on that level and couldn't keep up with the smaller men's cardio.

The Twin Towers squashed the Rockers (literally, as a powerbomb and a splash put Shawn down for three, despite the match actually being fairly competitive) in a pretty standard Superstars of Wrestling match, although the Atlantic City crowd was surprisingly into this one (surprising considering how apathetic the same venue sounded a year prior).

Michaels fought out of one Bossman powerbomb before falling victim to another, costing his team the match

He'd Get It Right When:

Shawn Michaels averages just under four Meltzer stars for his remaining 16 WrestleMania matches; the very next year, Marty and Shawn would put on an underrated opener with The Orient Express, and five years later Michaels would set the standard for WrestleMania success against Razor Ramon in the WWF's first pay-per-view ladder match.