It really speaks to the marketing genius of the WWF that Wrestlemania is still seen as this huge unique event after all of these mediocre PPVs. The wrestling here is alright but everything else is well below par.

I'm fortunate that I had just started watching wrestling regularly again at this time. Not so much for what was happening, but because it allowed me to see what was about to happen (Stone Cold, Rock, NWO, cruiser-weight division, etc.) live. I'm pretty sure I saw this Wrestlemania live, and I would not have if WCW had not already got me interested in wrestling again with what they were trying to do. This is another reason why it is better for wrestling to have two big companies; one can get people interested in the other.

Warrior vs HHH is one match I have the great pleasure to remember entirely. Because it only lasts a few seconds. The squash was actually part of a planned huge push for HHH. If HHH doesn't participate in the Madison Square Garden incident, he wins King of the Ring a few months later, and "Talk about your Psalms, talk about John 3:16. Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!" never happens.

It is amazing that this was only 9 years after Hogan/Andre, and it now has been over 18 years now since Austin 3:16 and the NWO. Somehow it seems that the years should be switched around there in terms of subjective experience of time.

Steve Austin vs Savio Vega: Vega almost certainly wrestled his best match against Austin, but it wasn't this match. This match is alright but gets buried by sideshows. Being great in the ring doesn't get you over with the fans by itself today and had even less of an impact back then, as Austin had been one of the best in the business for half a decade and 1% of all wrestling fans cared. Vince shows he is well aware of this by showing the car chase during the match. Hard to rate because I can't tell how good it would have been if it wasn't treated as an afterthought that was only on because somebody felt begrudingly obligated to actually have wrestling on for most of a wrestling PPV. 1 1/2*

Yoko etc. Pass. 1 1/2*

Diesel vs Undertaker is pretty good for an Undertaker match of this era. In ring at the time he was sort of like a poor man's Kane; he had the athletic ability, but his matches often just turned out to be garbage anyway. It certainly doesn't compare to his best work, however. 2 1/2*

Piper vs. Goldust: The crowd loves the last couple minutes of this 'match'. Personally I think this match adds negative value at a Wrestlemania anyway. The first part of the match seems inconsistent with the rest of wrestling, where foreign objects and being slammed into hard things almost always puts somebody down for some time and very often just leads to a pin and here they just carry on immediately after the normally devastating blow. The second part is obnoxious. Whatever the merits of this match in isolation, it makes it more difficult to get into the rest of the matches after seeing something like this, both for me and the live crowd. -1*

The build to the Shawn/Bret match could have been better. They had Bret attempt to run on an icy road (so he had to jog slowly to not fall down) and struggle while wrestling with his then elderly father on the promos, and so the build made him seem old, slow and weak. If you are going to pass the torch, make it seem that the guy passing the torch is a powerful obstacle to overcome and not somebody limping to the finish line.

Shawn had all those goofy outfits and mannerisms then and it was hard for me to root for him as a face at this time. Bret was becoming harder for me to root for as well because it was easier for me to see how bland his promos were, due to his faults and the faults of the company. Come to think of it, this really paved the way for the Attitude Era. If Bret and Shawn had been great on the mic as well as in the ring, if the WWF had found Hogan 2.0, if the Warrior was more tractable, if the writing had been better in wrestling, people would not have been so willing and ready for a dramatic change. The companies may not have even been willing to make such changes. The Attitude Era was a Phoenix that rose out of the ashes of many failures.

As for the match itself, I can certainly see people who had not followed the careers of Bret and Shawn for years being bored half to death for the first half of the match, and 30 minutes is a long time to be bored at a PPV. Usually the great strength of an iron man match is the ability to tell a story that is not limited to one fall, but instead they just had a time limit draw, something I had seen tons of times in early 90s WCW TV matches. A time limit draw is an underused tactic in wrestling. But this is Wrestlemania, and they need to have a winner, so the official rule is officially deemed to be less important than the unofficial rules and the match is restarted. Although the match was enjoyable at this point, I would have rather seen them just have an official clause going into the match that it cannot end in a tie and will go into sudden death if it does. 3 1/2*.

Overall, this PPV is close in quality to XI (which is close in quality to IX and V and VI). I'm going to switch from 3 tiers to 4 because it seems clear to me VIII and VII are better than V, XII (etc.), but trying to pick between XI and XII seems analogous to the theological debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

III>X
VIII>VII
VI>V>IX>XI>XII
IV>I>II

Warrior squashing HHH was a great moment as a kid, not knowing what a squash was. Warrior was awesome.

WrestleMania 13, the ultimate one-match show, is now open for business.

Who will ever forget the epicness of Undertaker/Sid

This is one that's not nearly as bad as most people (including me) remember.

Man, can't say I agree. I think it's brutal. I know that a fair number of people like the Chicago Street Fight, but I think it's a mess without much entertainment value. That said, Bret/Austin being a firm contender for GOAT obviously singlehandedly keeps it off the bottom of the heap if nothing else.

I can see that. I tend to have rose-coloured glasses for this period now, so I might tend to overrate. I truly didn't think this was all that much worse than XII, though.

I've got a writeup waiting, hopefully I remember to post it tonight. Off the top of my head I thought that Taker-Sid was the most painful awful thing ever since they took a match that wouldn't be passable even if kept brief and made it go for 20+ minutes, and I also thought that Rocky vs. Sultan was just absolutely horrendous. That entire first IC title reign for Rocky, before anyone in the crowd actually liked him at all and before that title had been ruined, was indefensible.

Lol, Rocky/Sultan is one of the worst matches. Rocky playing like a face in peril when nobody gives a single **** about him is great

My favourite moment was Rocky getting booed when his arm didn't drop for the third time in the sleeper spot.

Ahahaha

It was just such an awful spot in the sequence of WM IC Title matches.

Valentine vs. JYD
Savage vs. Steele
Savage vs. Steamboat
Honky vs. Brutus
Warrior vs. Rude
Warrior vs. Hogan (sort of, this is being a bit dishonest to include this really)
Mr. Perfect vs. Big Boss Man
Bret vs. Piper
Michaels vs. Tatanka
Michaels vs. Razor
Razor vs. Jarrett
none
Rocky vs. Sultan

Even the other two biggest clunkers in that list (Savage vs. Steele, Brutus vs. Honky) don't come close to sticking out as being as horrendously terrible as Rocky vs. Sultan. At least those other two got a crowd reaction.

I can say that I remember nothing of WrestleMania 13 outside of Austin/Bret and Taker posing with the belt at the end.

WrestleMania 13

The Godwinns vs. The Headbangers vs. Furnas & LaFon vs. The Blackjacks: Couple of half-decent spots here and there. Crowd really didn't care about this. *1/4

IC Title: Rocky Maivia (c) vs. The Sultan: Such a joke that they had a belt on Rocky at this point. A wrestler could hardly be less over. Obviously Rocky and The Sultan (as Rikishi) would go on to bigger and better things, but this match was completely horrendous. A couple of decent spots late (Rocky's float-over DDT and Sultan's piledriver) rescue this from being zero stars, but it was still inexcusably boring. 1/4*

Triple H vs. Goldust: This was interesting at times, but there was just SO much slow-down stuff in it that it wasn't very enjoyable. Pretty good endgame sequence though. *1/2

Tag Team Titles: Owen Hart & British Bulldog (c) vs. Vader & Mankind: Heel vs. heel with no personal grudge between the two sides. I never understood why this match was the direction they went, aside I guess from a lack of creative direction for Vader and Mankind at the moment. This was a fairly boring match too, though it had a few more good spots than HHH-Goldust did. *3/4

Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin: Here, of course, is the match that did all that a match possibly can to save a show. This is obviously incredible. Amazing brawling, amazing psychology, GOAT storytelling. I'm willing to give this one the ultimate compliment and put it above Savage-Steamboat. *****

LOD & Ahmed Johnson vs. Nation of Domination: Well…the spots weren't very creative. Most of the bumps weren't impressive. The whole thing was kind of a mess that was difficult to keep any sort of track of. I'm pretty dumbfounded by Meltzer finding 3.5 stars for this one. Hot enough crowd and good enough pace I guess, but I can't even find two stars for it. *3/4

WWF Title: Sid (c) vs. The Undertaker: Sid wrestled on two Manias, and closed both of them out. I think that this may have been his final WWF match ever. Kind of crazy that Taker was on his sixth year as a main eventer here and hadn't really been involved with the WWF Title outside of his quick six-day reign with it as a heel back in 1991.

This match is absolutely dreadful. You cannot give these two guys over 20 minutes. Just absolutely ridiculously boring. I was not entertained at any point. 0*

Overall: The most lopsided one-match show in the whole series of WrestleManias to this point, and I'm guessing that holds up through the present. There is absolutely nothing outside of Bret-Austin that needs to be seen here, and most matches outside of that one should be actively avoided. Even in spite of the greatness of that match, this is one of the worst Manias ever.

WrestleMania Rankings
1. WrestleMania III
2. WrestleMania X
3. WrestleMania VIII
4. WrestleMania VII
5. WrestleMania V
6. WrestleMania VI
7. WrestleMania XII
8. WrestleMania XI
9. WrestleMania IV
10. WrestleMania
11. WrestleMania 13
12. WrestleMania IX
13. WrestleMania 2

Because of the comments, I had to watch Rocky Maivia vs. The Sultan immediately. In the few minutes before the match all of the announcers are stumbling over their words, as if they are all anticipating and dreading trying to put over Rocky despite the clear failure of his push and persona. The fans largely boo the Sultan (although some do cheer), so it isn't like Rocky is facing a completely worthless heel either.

On the plus side at least the crowd is alive. It does help make it an entertaining spectacle of a kind as opposed to something that is just boring and dull. Some people are legitimately behind Rocky. The crowd is upset when the Sultan is kicking out of pin attempt. But perhaps that is because they want the match to be over. Seriously though, some wrestling fans still wanted to root for the clean cut smiling good looking guy at this time, but more wanted something else.

Overall, this is an absolutely generic textbook underdog face vs. Monster heel with manager match, complete with post match beat down and appeals to family and nationalistic values. But the fans didn't follow the script. It is hard to rate it much above zero stars, but at the same time it is recommended watching for historical reasons.

So 11, 12, & 13 were all bad. Three straight years of lackluster shows with your promotion's marquee event is a pretty bad streak.

I just remember watching it live going, "Seriously, WTF is this? I guess I'm stuck rooting for The Sultan if I want Rocky to lose the belt? This is terrible."

I would have put it about a billion to one that he would go on to become one of the top five stars in the history of the business. So yeah it's a decent historical artifact. This dreadful push started back at Survivor Series the year before, and only finally ended when they pulled the plug in mid-summer and gave the belt to Owen and yanked Rocky off-camera altogether to repackage him and try again. Him coming back was, business-wise, the GOAT heel turn even though in a vacuum it was a very generic turn. But the second they gave him a mic as a heel, the rise to the top was on.

Wrestleamania XIII review:

Four Corners tag: I don't see why this is on first as it is a change up. I like the concept of the match but the execution and scheduling is bad. 1*

Maivia vs Sultan: posted above. 1/2*

Goldust vs HHH: I'm not sure what kind of psychology they were trying to pull in this match, but they ended up just psyching themselves out. This match should have been shorter as it could have easily been a decent seven minute match.
Vince makes a couple comments about everyone using DDTs tonight; he seems irritated about it. 1*

Vader and Mankind vs Bulldog and Hart: It seemed like Bulldog was a face teaming with a heel partner here; Lawler puts Bulldog down and keeps talking about how Owen is the leader of the team. Perhaps they saw how well the Luger/Sting heel/face tag team worked and were going to borrow it. But it doesn't work here. The crowd seems bored, including Owen's parents. Although the wrestling is mostly solid, it is very disappointing to get solid and dull out these four. **.

Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin: What else can I say about this match that hasn't been said? This match is not similar in style to the other elite matches at Wrestlemania. It is dirtier, tougher; stylistically it is more like an old school NWA match than a Wrestlemania match. As I mentioned before, Bret and Steve both were worried that this match was going to be terrible. They thought they had given their all at Survivor Series only to suddenly be thrown back together out of nowhere for another feud shortly thereafter. They saw the submission clause as being an obstacle as well because it limited what they could do. Lack of confidence may have played role in making this so legendary. *****

LOD/Ahmed vs NOD: A ton happens at once instead of the usual singles or tag match style of a single narrative. Normally I'm in favor of having a bit of variety at PPVs, but because the Hart/Austin match was so different, they probably should have had a more traditional match before and after it.
The match is a bit sloppy, a bit cheesy, and a bit silly. I'm interested in Meltzer's rating as well. Sure, the crowd was hot, but the hometown Road Warriors were in this match, and may have been hot if they were beating down Barry Horowitz and the Brooklyn Brawler. This isn't to say it is awful, but I don't see how it is above average. 2*

Sid/Undertaker

Pointless, outside of them furthering Bret Hart's storylines. This match is exactly what I would expect out of Sid vs Undertaker from this time, but then watered down significantly to make it longer. The crowd was somewhat ready to enjoy this, so if they would have just kept it short instead of mysteriously stretching it out, it wouldn't have been horrible.1*

Overall: Frankly Austin/Hart alone has more value than several Wrestlemanias. If somebody told you "I've never watched wrestling. I'm going to watch five Wrestlemanias, and probably never watch another wrestling match after" you would probably at least consider suggesting this Mania because otherwise they would never see this match. Jim Ross is a welcome addition to the broadcast team. Lawler has improved since he started.
Several of the matches seem like good 7 minute matches stretched out using filler. Rock/Sultan and Sid/Undertaker should have been shorter also. They could have added a match or three after shortening them. Only 1 match is above average.
But in addition to Austin/Hart, this PPV can be seen as a turning point in WWF history. The Harts becoming heels in the US while faces in Canada is good. Face Austin obviously was even better, especially from a business perspective. It isn't an easy PPV to rate.


III>X
VIII>VII
XIII>VI>V>IX>XI>XII
IV>I>II

Rewatched Austin/Bret. Hard to imagine too many better matches being out there. Just as close to perfect a match as I'd ever seen. The only negative in my mind was Vince's announcing, Jesus he was awful. JR and King did a good job of Heel/Straight man, but Vince was bad.

WrestleMania 13
March 23, 1997 - Rosemont Horizon, Rosemont IL

- Well, if you're going to book an arena instead of a stadium, Chicago is the place to do it. The crowd usually does not disappoint, as we saw at WM2 when they had such incredible energy despite being fed a **** sandwich for most of their portion of the show.

- Vince makes his last appearance at the announce table this year, thank God. JR makes his return to commentary for the first time in four years, to begin his outstanding 10+ year run.

Four-way elimination match, winners become #1 contenders: Godwinns vs. Headbangers vs. Doug Furnas & Phil LaFon vs. New Blackjacks **
Dubbing update: Still no "Don't Go Messing with a Country Boy", which was the music for the face Godwinns. You would know the New Blackjacks better as Barry Windham and JBL. Interesting rules for this one, as anyone can be tagged in by anyone else. Blackjacks and Furnas/Lafon get disqualified rather quickly. Not sure why they didn't just do Godwinns/Headbangers, then. Headbangers liven things up with a few good highspots, culminating with Mosh hitting the Stage Dive (seated senton) for the win and a title shot they'd actually never cash in.

IC title: Rocky Maivia [c] vs. The Sultan -***
Honky Tonk Man is down to do commentary, and JR wastes no time making an in-joke about his being the King's cousin. The Sultan would go on to bigger fame as the decidedly non-Arab Rikishi. We get a couple of "Rocky sucks" chants early. Match was incredibly boring, and the crowd cared not one iota about either of these guys -- the Iron Sheik was the most over guy in the match. They were on Rocky so much that they even booed during a sleeper spot when Rocky got his arm up at 3. Rocky retained on a fluke small package, then needed his dad to save him from a 3-on-1 post-match beating. He had the athleticism, but virtually nothing else that would suggest he'd eventually make his way onto wrestling's Mount Rushmore as The Rock.

Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Goldust *1/2
Heh, I'd forgotten about the letterboxed entrance. This was about what you would expect from these two, also I'm not impressed that they basically did an extended version of stuff they'd already done before.

Tag team titles: Owen Hart & British Bulldog [c] vs. Vader & Mankind **1/4
You have no idea how strange it was to see Vader and Mick Foley teaming up at the time. Bulldog was the inaugural European champion at the time, having beaten Owen for it a month previous. Good wrestling for the most part, although Bulldog's timing seemed off. However, it went a bit too long, especially since the crowd really didn't have anyone to get behind here, which hurt (well, aside from the small section of fans at ringside cheering for Owen). Conventional wisdom was that Bulldog was about to turn face, making the heel/heel match make more sense, but that of course went by the wayside due to future events (I've heard that Bret wanted the finish changed to set up the Hart Foundation angle, which would make sense).

Submission match: Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin *****
The GOATiest GOAT that ever GOATed. I cannot think of a single match that told a better story than this one - it was obvious in hindsight from the introductions which way they wanted to go with this, and they got there in amazing fashion. So many incredible moments...the glass literally shattering for Austin's entrance, the brawl into the crowd to start, the ringpost figure four, Austin passing out without giving up. If the shot of a bloody Austin in the sharpshooter isn't the most iconic picture in the history of wrestling, it's damn close. Bret's nine-year face run ends as he leaves to huge boos, while the formerly hated Austin leaves with the fans ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. Just perfection.

Chicago street fight: Nation of Domination vs. Ahmed Johnson & Legion of Doom **1/2
Chicago crowd pops HUGE for LOD. This is a wild hardcore-style brawl with all kinds of weapons -- garbage cans, a 2x4, a nightstick, a fire extinguisher, a street sign, a noose...and yes, even the kitchen sink Hawk brought to the ring. Best spot of the match goes to Ahmed (?!?), hitting a plancha over the railing onto Crush. Faces pop the crowd at the end with a Pearl River Plunge on the still-unknown D-Lo Brown and a Double Doomsday Device on PG-13. As garbage matches go, this was pretty fun to watch.

WWF title: Sid [c] vs. Undertaker DUD
Shawn Michaels is out for commentary, looking like he's found his smile (and repeatedly flashing the Wolfpac sign). And Bret Hart is out just to cement his heel turn by whining some more. So that's ten minutes burned up before the match even starts. And we get a bearhug three minutes in, are you ****ing kidding me? This was everything everyone was afraid of prior to the show, slow, plodding and so very boring. Sid is horrible. Crowd was not into this whatsoever until the finish, a really, really bad sign for a main event title match. And even the finish is cheap, with Bret running out again to nail Sid, leading to the tombstone. Despite the cool moment with Taker finally posing with the belt at the end, LKJ was right, this is the worst Mania main event ever.

Overall: 4.5/10
It was bad, but it wasn't as bad as I remember. 13 gets a really bad rap because of the ****ty main event and the unwatchable IC title match, but there's really nothing else on here that was that terrible. Plus, you can't say that a show with the greatest Mania match of all time on it could be one of the worst ever. So, with that said, where does this rank? For me, it's right in the mediocre range with V, VI and XII. The fact that the main event was so much worse than any of those three puts it clearly below them, though.

Ratings so far:
III - 9.5
X - 8.5
VIII - 7.0
VII - 6.0
VI - 5.25
V - 5.0
XII - 4.75
I - 4.5
13 - 4.5
XI - 4.0
2 - 3.5
IV - 3.0
IX - 2.5

According to a previous vote on the forum, none are.

Can anybody tell me where i can watch that Hart-Austin match?

Sure can, for just $9.99!!!!!

Surely it's on DailyMotion.

Nope. Several copies of the Survivor Series match, but the WM match isn't there.