WrestleMania XIV, where The Undertaker stood backstage threatening HBK to go out and put Steve Austin over as booked, is our WrestleMania of the week.

WrestleMania XIV

Fifteen-Team Battle Royal: This is a mess. Typical "too much to keep track of until we're down to the final handful of competitors" match. Really nothing interesting happened, and nobody was a believable winner outside of LOD, so this was worse than the average battle royal. 1/4*

TAKA Michinoku vs. Aguila: By the lightweight/cruiserweight standards of the day (largely set by WCW) it was nothing special. Still, it was plenty watchable with several fun spots. **1/4

The Rock cuts a great pre-taped interview that airs in between matches here. Shows just how incredibly far he had come since the pathetic early Rocky Maivia days. Pretty sure this is when he debuted "If you smell what I'm cookin'." Then Billy Gunn said it a couple of weeks later on Raw, and hopefully got his ass kicked for it since he never said it again and Rocky took full possession of it going forward.

European Title: HHH (c) vs. Owen Hart: This was very enjoyable; Owen at the top of his game and HHH busting his ass and pulling his weight as well. Good storytelling, good chemistry between the combatants. I will forever be bitter about the booking here, but the match itself was very good. ***1/2

Marc Mero & Sable vs. Goldust & Luna: JR calls this only the third mixed tag match in Mania history, but I'm guessing that he's not counting the Bundy midget match at WM III in that. This was the fourth, whichever one he was failing to count. This overhaul of the Goldust character, which thankfully was just temporary, was an early example of the Attitude Era being a caricature of itself. Edgy is good, or can be. "OMG LOOK HOW EDGY WE'RE BEING FOR THE SAKE OF IT" is obviously AIDS.

All of those minor criticisms aside, this is good stuff. Good action, well-booked, crowd was very into it. Couple of Mero botches (including his own finisher), but even he was pretty damn good overall here. Very likable match, and a clear runaway winner to this point for best mixed tag in Mania history. ***

IC Title: The Rock (c) vs. Ken Shamrock: What a difference a year makes. A year ago Rocky had no place being on a television doing anything, and was an absolute disgrace to the (still-proud at this point) IC Title. A year later he has been repackaged and regained the belt and was an obvious star on the rise.

This is a watchable match with a really stupid finish. An especially stupid finish for WrestleMania. **

Tag Team Titles: New Age Outlaws (c) vs. Cactus Jack & Chainsaw Charlie: Road Dogg wearing the "Dogg 4:20" shirt. REALLY HIGH-LEVEL AND CLEVER THERE, CHIEF. This was a really entertaining brawl. I didn't remember this being such a solid Mania, but I'm duly impressed. ***1/2

The Undertaker vs. Kane: Pete Rose making the first celebrity heel turn is pretty great. Can't say I understand heel Kane coming out and attacking him over it though. It's like they turned Kane face and then wanted people to forget it five seconds later. Pretty cool entrance by Taker.

Unfortunately I'm flipping the script from the last few matches, where I insulted something and then praised the match. The pre-match stuff was good here, but unfortunately this match drags and isn't very good. There's the occasional interesting spot, and I think that this could have been good if it was kept to 5-6 minutes, but it got over 16 minutes and these two were never going to keep something compelling going for that long together. I do really like the finish they went with. *1/4

WWF Title: Shawn Michaels (c) vs. Steve Austin: Great job of doing the little things in the pre-match build to make this match feel huge. Wrestling is so much better when the WWF/WWE Title is the most important thing in the world. JR putting Michaels over as the greatest champ ever to this point is eyeroll-worthy of course, since there was zero legitimate argument against Hogan to this point, but I realize that Hogan was playing for the competition at this time.

Michaels's back was ****ed to hell here, and while he didn't quite replicate the greatness that Mr. Perfect did in a similar situation at SummerSlam 1991, this was an incredibly gutsy performance. I can't believe some of the bumps he took in this match considering the shape he was in. His injury still showed through and clearly brought the match down from what it would have been with a healthy Michaels, but still, respect. Match of the night, and a great moment to see Steve Austin reach the top. ***1/2

Overall: Very solid show top to bottom. A significant recovery after a really bad Mania the year before. Nothing on the card reaches the four-star plateau, but I was still thoroughly entertained for the vast majority of the show.

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

LOL LOTS of marks give 5* to that UT/Kane match because ??? idk. I lol when I see that.

I fully intend on posting on this WM at some point. I d/l'ed it yesterday and I've not seen any of it since 1998.

It really was the most pleasant surprise so far for me. I didn't remember it well at all, and there are a few weak spots but the show as a whole just absolutely works IMO.

Yeah its there thanks. Enjoyed it again.

The buildup was insane. I guess I was a mark.

- Paul Bearer's random cuts about a long lost brother
- The first Hell in a Cell match with UT / Shawn Michaels @ Bad Blood in 97? (My first traded video tape) where Kane debuts
- Kane squashing every fool on Raw with the Red Lights
- Kane's Ring Entrance
- Undertaker disappearing / coming back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvPpXVXiek8
- UT's entrance at WM
- 3 Tombstones! and one for Pete Rose
- That Inferno Match pretty much

I couldn't remember it much either, I was able to piece together some of the card from memory but forgot about half of it. From what I recall, this was easily the best Mania from 11-15, looks like I was right. Looking forward to reviewing it now.

This might be my favorite WM ever. Austin/HBK/Tyson and Taker/Kane were two of the best built matches ever. I'm going to try to post a writeup sometime this week.

The end of HBK/Austin with Tyson counting the 1-2-3 is still amazing to me. At the time, I was convinced that this would end up in some sort of reversal/title held up situation. IIRC, Tyson even does an unintentional, I presume, fast count.

It's been a while since I have watched Austin/HBK, but it seemed like the pop at the end wasn't quite as huge as it should have been. It was still great, but I feel like the crowd wasn't sure if that was the actual end or not.

I don't even remember them making a big deal about Tyson counting the pinfall. Was much ever said about it in kayfabe?

Nah, nothing really. HHH went on Raw the next night and buried HBK for not properly making sure that he had Tyson in the fold, then said that he was taking over DX (obviously this was a necessary burial since there was a very real chance that HBK would never physically be able to wrestle again at that point). Nobody in the DX camp bitched about the ending being unfair.

People without a referee's shirt rarely count the 123, and when they do it generally is unofficial. Surely most of the fans are confused or uncertain when this happens. This could have been the biggest pop ever if counted by a ref.

WrestleMania XIV
March 29, 1998 - Fleet Center, Boston, MA

- This was an historic WrestleMania on a number of fronts. It was the official launching of the Attitude Era and the Austin Era, obviously. It was also the first real Mania of the Internet age -- many of the most popular early websites started to see their traffic go through the roof as a result of the Monday Night Wars, and especially the Montreal Screwjob and its fallout. People were able to follow the backstage goings-on as much as the in-ring action for the first time, and this Mania had no shortage of backstage intrigue. And, of course, Mike Tyson drew in a ton of casual fans, which left many thinking the WWF had finally gotten its **** together after floundering for several weeks after Survivor Series.

- JR and King are your announcers. They're not quite in their groove yet, but they're a terrific improvement over any team with Vince on it.

Tag team battle royal
I've said it before, I'll say it again -- YOU DO NOT OPEN WITH A BATTLE ROYAL. Crowd pops big for the returning and repackaged Legion of Doom, but that's pretty much it. This was hard to follow due to the rules, as an elimination meant the partner had to leave the match. Bad even by battle royal standards, pretty obvious from the get-go that LOD was going over. My god, Sunny was hot, though.

Light heavyweight title: Taka Michinoku [c] vs. Aguila **
So here we have Taka before he was EEEEEVIL, and Aguila before getting with Lita. They tried hard and busted out some really nice spots, including a beautiful corkscrew tope con hilo from Aguila, but they really just moved from spot to spot without much flow. WCW was doing it much better, and the WWF was really half-assing it as far as making the fans care about the cruisers.

- The Rock deliveres his famous promo with Gennifer Flowers. If you want to know where the Rock was really born, this was this place.

European title: Triple H [c] vs. Owen Hart ***1/2
Chyna is handcuffed to Commissioner Slaughter before the match starts to eliminate the possibility of interference. Yeah, let me know how that works out. Both guys worked their asses off here, as Owen was still near his peak and HHH was rounding into someone who could be depended on to deliver a decent match. The last 5 minutes were tremendous, the fans badly wanted Owen to win this one and he and HHH had them standing, no small feat for a match this early. I might have given this four snowflakes were it not for the hit-and-miss selling of the ankle by Owen and for the finish. But, of course, Owen was never going to go over in this feud, no matter how much we may have wanted it.

Mixed tag: TAFKA Goldust & Luna vs. Marc Mero & Sable ***
The backstory for this match was so convoluted that they needed a video package of nearly five minutes to sort it out. Suffice to say that Sable is the only face in this match, but she is over enough for all four of them with plenty remaining. Crowd went ape**** whenever she was tagged in. Mero and Goldust provided enough action to keep them interested in between, though. It's impossible to believe this is Sable's first match, she looked like a seasoned pro. Forget just WrestleMania, this is one of the best mixed tag matches ever, extremely well-booked and entertaining action throughout.

IC title: The Rock [c] vs. Ken Shamrock *1/2
DQ rule has been waived here to counter the Nation at ringside. Rock works so much better as a heel it's not funny. You can see that he still has a way to go to become a good worker, but his presence as a heel is incredible, even managing to get the crowd behind as lukewarm a face as Shamrock was. They go with one of my least favourite finishes, where Shamrock dominates Rock to win the title, but has it reversed on a DQ for not letting go of the anklelock and then attacking the Suit Brigade. Rock gets stretchered out, but still manages to hold up the belt to piss off the fans even more.

Tag team titles, dumpster match: New Age Outlaws [c] vs. Cactus Jack & Terry Funk ***
Road Dogg comes out with one of my favourite shirts: "LOOK MOM, NO CURSE". It still amazes me how over the Outlaws had gotten, two jobbers thrown together and just laying waste to the tag team division. This was easily as good as the Chicago street fight at 13, with some hellacious bumps, one of which left Funk with a gigantic bruise on his hip. This would be reversed on a Dusty Finish the next night due to the Outlaws getting thrown into the wrong dumpster. Pathetic, but it did lead to Foley's terrific heel turn, so it wasn't all bad.

Undertaker vs. Kane 1/2*
The build for this was incredible (although a bit over-the-top at times), stretching over the entire year, almost from the moment Undertaker won the title at WM13. To say anticipation for this was high would be a wee understatement. This was the start of the running gag of Pete Rose getting tombstoned by Kane every year. This was also the first of Taker's spectacular Mania entrances, with druids, torches, Carmina Burana and everything. Sadly, they then had to wrestle, and it was not good. For all of Undertaker's strengths, being able to carry a poor worker to a good match has never been one of them, and Kane, while he would get better, was still really green. These were not the two to have a 15+ minute match. Way too long, too many restholds, and not enough solid action to hold my attention.

WWF title: Shawn Michaels [c] vs. Steve Austin ****
To put the rumour to rest, Shawn himself said the whole Taker at the Gorilla position story was an urban legend on Austin's podcast. The DX Band plays Tyson down to...X-Pac's theme? I'm sure that's it, and X-Pac isn't even here until tomorrow and wouldn't get his own music until late in the year. Oh my God, I'd forgotten how massive the pops Austin got were. Tyson gets a "Holyfield" chant thrown at him by the Boston crowd. Watching this match now is a much different experience than 16 years ago -- I've gained a much greater respect for what HBK was going through to even get through this match, let alone do some of the spots he was able to do (the upside-down in the corner spot, the kip up, the flying elbow). Back then, I just thought Shawn was an *******. It's certainly not a typical Shawn Michaels match, it's very much a mat-based brawl, in keeping with both men's new limitations. I'm pretty sure that this is the genesis of the now-standard big match ending sequence, trading reversals a couple of times before Austin would hit the stunner for win and the title. This would not normally be a four-star match, but the fact that Shawn was a walking cripple and still put on this match earns a whole bunch of extra credit. But can you imagine what this match could have been if they'd been able to do it as they felt at King of the Ring?

Overall: 8/10
This one broke the string of mediocre-to-poor Manias in a big, big way. I'd forgotten just how good it was. Not only historic and wildly entertaining for the most part, this was the first Mania in a long time -- possibly since VI -- that felt like a Really Big Deal. It was clear that the WWF had turned the corner and was gaining momentum against WCW, and the next night would cement that. I put this as the third-best Mania to this point.

Ratings so far:
III - 9.5
X - 8.5
XIV - 8.0
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

I'm not going to review entire WrestleMania cards, but it just so happens I saw the Undertaker/Kane match a week ago (was watching an Undertaker DVD) and actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Surprised it's getting less than 2*

(I watched the Taker/Kane match quite a while ago now so I can't speak intelligently on it beyond the notes I took down at the time, I got like 10 weeks ahead in this project...it's about to catch up to me now as I haven't watched any WrestleMania in quite a number of weeks. Of all things, I stalled right when I hit the GOAT, WM X-7.)

Stayed up last night and watched all of WM XIV but the main event. Will finish it tonight.

My initial thoughts:

Why did LOD never sustain momentum in the WWE? They were always super over and they didn't really get jobbed out a lot, but it seems they had really bad timing. Their feud with Demolition fizzled due to Ax's injuries/retirements, their own injuries, and the stupid "Rocco" doll never allowed them to succeed as much as they should've.

Aguila sucked in the match with TAKA. The moves in this match were so damn choreographed!

Owen Hart was a face during this time? Don't remember that at all.

Sable may have been the most over "Diva" in WWE history, but even in her prime, her looks wouldn't rank in the top half of today's roster. She was so damn plain and housewife-y besides the fake tits. I remember thinking she was hot back in the 90s, but I guess it was just because I was a young teenager getting to see boobs. I suspect her entire allure was getting to be the first "Diva" to really push the envelope sexually.

I would support a HOF induction for Luna. Kind of surprised she never had a reign as women's champ.

Ken Shamrock is really underrated. Even though his run was relatively short, I always enjoyed his work and his storyline with Val Venis and Ryan Shamrock still makes me laugh.

I think Triple H should thank his lucky stars that the New Age Outlaws joined DX. I remember watching a shoot where NAO came across really bitter and took a lot of credit for getting DX over, but, in hindsight, I think they were right. Triple H was still getting a bit of a tepid response from the crowd at this point.

Owen's face turn came in the aftermath of him being the only Hart left after the Montreal Screwjob. It went over well at first, but they kept jobbing him out to HHH and friends until he lost all his heat, and then they rebooted him with a heel turn sometime that summer.

Shamrock was pretty enjoyable in the ring, though he was truly at a laughably "what is a mustache?" level of bad on the mic.

LOD was just a victim of bad booking, plain and simple. Vince wasn't satisfied with having the greatest monster team ever, he wanted to put his own stamp on them and pissed them off as a result.

The entire Vachon family was incredible and Luna is probably the best of the bunch. It's a shame she doesn't get more recognition

1998 is one of the best years in WWF history. The storylines, writing, and announcing during this year are excellent. So many of the people that watch wrestling to this day fell in love with it during this era.

Tag Team Battle Royal: "Let's repackage the Road Warriors yet again even though they are still over as hell and a natural merch seller". It could have been worse but a battle royal is a change up, which is most effective after a fastball. *

Taka Vs. Aguila: The WCW cruiserweight division will likely never leave my memory, so even over a decade after the fact it still makes this pale in comparison. The crowd digs the spots but they aren't that great and the match has no semblance of psychology. *

Owen vs. HHH: Love the stipulation, almost love the ending. Heels should try cheat often and this an innovative obstacle to them cheating that was overcome in a sensible manner. But it doesn't make any sense for Owen to then go over by Chyna taking swipes at her. It accomplishes nothing. This might be a 4 star match if she had grabbed Owen's leg when he was going off the ropes or something. 3*

Shamrock vs Rock **

Undertaker vs Kane: Pete Ross taking the tombstone is the best part of this segment. I've never liked these cheesy supernatural Undertaker entrances. Has anybody ever come out and kicked the hell out of every last druid and smashed every relic during one of these? That I would like to see. Undertaker's walk to the ring is fine though.
The crowd is dead for almost the entire match despite them working so long and hard on the build for this and many people thinking the build was great. Personally I didn't care at all about either of these wrestlers at the time.

The match in three words: Punch after punch.*

Outlaws vs. Foley/Funk: The ending is truly horrific, and the fans who otherwise are into the match have almost no reaction to it. Otherwise it is good for a match of this kind, for what that is worth. 2 1/2*

Mero/Sable vs Dustin Rhodes/Luna Vachon: Sable is so over; perhaps more over than anybody outside of Austin on the card. The crowd boos massively when Luna tags out and cheers massively when Sable lands offense. This match is extremely effective and is a very nice change of pace. It is better and more over than any Marc Mero vs. Goldust singles match could ever be. One of the problems I have with the WWE now is that so many of the cards consist of several very similar singles matches without any special clause and one tag match that is similar in style to the others and previous tag matches. That homogeneity gets boring for all but the most intense fans of wrestling and makes the crowd less interested. ****

Austin vs Michaels: Ross saying Michaels was the greatest champion of all time is something I remember to this day as shocking. "Did he really just say that? Did he mean it? Was he told to say it?" I recall thinking HBK was a middle of the pack champ watching this live, but that Austin had a chance to be the actual GOAT.

I had something with Austin that was similar to what people who watched CM Punk in the indies had with him when he hit it huge. I had watched Austin from very early in his career and was greatly impressed. I watched Nitro, but for about the last year and a half before this I had watched any RAW segment with Austin in it live whenever I could. As Austin segments were increasingly common, I was doing a ton of channel flipping.

Hurt or not, Shawn Michaels could sell.

I thought Austin extremely likely to win the title because of how over he was (and because Shawn was a middle of the pack champ). Still it was an absolutely amazing moment, one of the greatest in wrestling history, made more amazing by the rest of JR's announcing throughout the match. Having Tyson count the three was a bit confusing (because very rarely can a non-ref count an official three) and probably lead to the pop being about 1/3 as loud as it would have been had somebody else count in. It was nice to have Tyson involved, as he had once had the most dangerous punch in history, and now was a figure of fear and symbol of insanity after the ear bite, but he shouldn't have counted it. ***1/2

I may be rating this higher because I actually loved the WWF in general this year. On one hand, it might be seen as unfair to years that I didn't watch the WWF much. But on the other hand, if they had better storylines those years, I would have watched it, and storylines have a big impact on how good an event is perceived when watched live, if not ages later.

The announcing makes such a huge difference. Ross actually puts over the battle that is occurring and the importance of winning. If you are going to pretend fight, pretend it is important too as opposed to acting like it is something I should be ignoring. As a card as a whole, this show really flows well.

Tier 1=Must See=III>X>XIV
Tier 2=Glad I watched it=VIII>VII
Tier 3=Not completely awful=XIII>VI>V>IX>XI>XII
Tier 4=bottom feeders=IV>I>II

Watched the first three matches and gave up.

You gotta watch Taker/Kane and Austin/HBK if for nothing else but the awesome entrances and pre match stuff.

You didn't like the mixed tag?

(And again I generally thought this was a top-end Mania.)

Hawk's awful drug and alcohol problem likely had something to do with LOD ****ting the bed as well. They were only good for a squash. Not great at excessively planned matches.

That's the fourth match.

Speaking of Austin's entrance. If I ever watch it, I'm sure I'll just think about how it's the one time he wore his t-shirt instead of a vest because of his marital problems before his flight to Boston.