4 Era-Defining Matches Responsible for Our Readers' Fandom

Last weekend, wrestling social media was abuzz with a simple question: which four matches formed the basis for your wrestling fandom?

the movie version of this brought some incredible discussion - so this felt needed..we want to see the four matches that shaped you into the wrestling fan you are today. #ringstruck4

— Pro Wrestling Sheet (@WrestlingSheet) April 20, 2018

An innocuous question, the hashtag had tens of thousands, or more, participants, and dominated discussions in a lot of social media groups.

We posed the question to you, our readers, in a Facebook post earlier in the week and, while your responses were far too varied to narrow down to just four, a theme of four era-defining men, moments, and series emerged, which we've collected here.

Unsurprisingly, a significant number of our readers' fandom-defining matches occurred at The Grandaddy of 'Em All, WrestleMania.

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#4 Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant, WrestleMania III

This match's greatness, like Andre's size in the picture, is all a matter of perspective.

His stock is significantly diminished for many in the modern era, to say the least, but it's no shocker that wrestling fans born before 1990 would cite Hulk Hogan's three biggest WrestleMania main events as their fandom-defining match.

At WrestleMania III, regardless of the legitimacy or lack thereof in the official story WWE has crafted around the match, The Hulkster defined wrestling for an entire generation by slamming Andre the Giant to retain his WWF Championship at the Pontiac Silverdome. Andre may not have been as big as the company and Hogan claim, the Frenchman may not have actually been undefeated, it wasn't the first time the two had locked up, and there may not even have been as close to 100,000 fans present as the company likes to claim.

However, the fact remains that the Slam Heard 'Round the World earned its place in wrestling canon, and inspired fans and superstars alike (while that night's Intercontinental Championship match was much more his speed, a young Rob Van Dam was in the audience and cites this WrestleMania as a defining aspect of his choice to train to wrestle).

Professional wrestling isn't about what's real; if it were, the revelation that it's all staged would have killed off all of our fandoms. Wrestling exists in a realm beyond real, which is why the disputed "facts" of Hogan-Andre take a backseat to the larger narrative that planted in our heads and hearts.

The match itself is a stinker, but the finish, and the swell of applause for the triumphant bodyslam, is six-star pro wrestling magic; it created its own archetypical match story (look to any size mismatch and, the moment the underdog tries his or her first bodyslam and collapses, fans know the finish beat-by-beat) and inspired an entire generation to believe in kayfabe.

#3 The Ladder Match

Spots like this were memorable in 1994 because they were unique; they're still memorable 24 years later because of how well they told the story of our readers' favorite 90s match.

This match is on my personal top four list (alongside the Iron Man Match from WrestleMania XII, Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H from WrestleMania XXX, and Nakamura-Zayn from NXT TakeOver: Dallas, if you're curious); my copy of the WrestleMania X VHS had to be taped together multiple times because of how often I watched it between 1995 and 2002 (when the Shawn Michaels DVD set came out, featuring this contest).

My first features for Sportskeeda were a gimmick match retrospective, and I solidly refused to cover this match for one solid reason: there's nothing more a writer can say about it. A creative writing professor in college once told me the mark of a true artist is whether they can say something original about the moon; as wrestling goes, this match is basically the moon.

Wrestling fans are the most notoriously fickle bunch of fans on the planet; nobody hates and criticizes the thing they love like us. It's telling that one of the few contests where most fans would not change a single second is the WrestleMania X ladder match.

It has every element fans could ask for: a hot crowd, two men in their prime willing to do absolutely anything to steal the show, a unique match type where fans had no idea what to expect, and a fantastic set of visuals with the dual Intercontinental Championships hanging from the MSG ceiling.

Great matches are timeless, and this one is no exception; its high spots would still excite even in the modern era, and the dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of ladder matches that have followed have failed to top the excitement and drama that Michaels and Ramon brought to Madison Square Garden.

#2 The Attitude Era's signature trilogy

This rivalry created more than its fair share of wrestling fans (and, possibly, wrestlers' careers).

For two men whose wrestling legacy is so powerful, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and The Rock have very few WrestleMania matches compared to some of their contemporaries, and the bulk of each man's March/April resume is in the three matches they shared at WrestleMania XV, X-Seven, and XIX.

WrestleMania XV was peak Vince Russo gaga; it had multiple guest referees, interference galore, multiple teased swerves, and a chaotic finish that brought Philadelphia to its feet. WrestleMania X-Seven told the story of a desperate man making a deal with the devil, selling his wrestling soul to reclaim his championship glory, and brutalizing his friendly rival in the process with repeated blows from a Vince McMahon-provided steel chair. Finally, WrestleMania XIX was Austin's swan song, Rock's lone win in this trilogy but, as his Hollywood-inspired character reminded us in early 2003, the third act matters most in a film.

The feud got high standing at three separate WrestleManias and never once felt stale.

When fans commented on our thread that Austin-Rock at WrestleMania was their defining match, it was interesting that very few people specified which Austin-Rock match was their favorite; each match has its own unique charms and brings something new to the series, and to the company. Further, each match defines its time period (the early peak of Attitude, the nominal end to the Era, and the fallout and the new direction of Attitude, where Rock-Austin is on the undercard to newer stars) perfectly.

#1 The WrestleMania GOAT and its career-ending sequel

Few men can say they've ended their career on a hot streak on the level that Shawn Michaels did.

Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels is for younger fans what Hogan-Warrior was in 1990. Two of the most colossal stars, not just of that time period, but of all time colliding in front of over 70,000 fans in a classic 25-minute encounter.

Most of WWE's current audience was not watching, let alone alive when Undertaker and Shawn Michaels had their pre-Attitude series, including the epic origination of Hell in a Cell (which many fans mentioned in our Facebook thread), and the nearly career-ending casket match at 1998's Royal Rumble PPV. For them, Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels was a dream encounter occasionally teased in Rumble matches but never to be seen, as the pair seemed always separated on separate shows or sectors of the card.

Like with Rock-Austin, choosing a favorite among the two matches in this series is difficult for many, and the more highly-rated (by WWE and by critics) WrestleMania 25 clash (WWE's pick for Greatest of All Time) seemed to have just as many votes as the Career vs. Streak sequel at WrestleMania XXVI.

Both were instant classics, and features spots which will undoubtedly live forever; for personal preference, Shawn Michaels begging to be put out of his misery before slapping Undertaker into the greatest WrestleMania Tombstone of all time gives Part II the edge, but that's one man's opinion.