Not every show can start off hot and these are the ones that didn't. These are the 10 worst WrestleMania Opening Matches Ever.
00:00 - Start
01:03 - 10
02:00 - 9
03:00 - 8
03:57 - 7
04:54 - 6
05:50 - 5
06:51 - 4
07:51 - 3
08:57 - 2
09:58 - 1
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00:00 - Start
01:03 - 10
02:00 - 9
03:00 - 8
03:57 - 7
04:54 - 6
05:50 - 5
06:51 - 4
07:51 - 3
08:57 - 2
09:58 - 1
SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/
Buy wrestling merchandise here: https://www.wrestleshop.com/
Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/
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SportsTranscript
00:00 The most important part of a movie is how it starts. Odds are if you look at your favorite movies,
00:05 they have an awesome opening. Star Wars, The Dark Knight, Fellowship of the Ring,
00:10 Inception. You gotta hook the audience and set the tone. And you could make the argument that the same is true in wrestling.
00:16 Yes,
00:16 many people will likely point to the main event as the most important match on a wrestling show because it is all about how
00:22 you leave them, but how a show starts can have just as much of an impact on the night's proceedings as how it ends.
00:27 Nothing quite takes the air out of a building quite like a dud of an opener, and there is nowhere that applies to more than
00:33 Wrestlemania. We've already done our lists of the best and worst main events,
00:37 but now we shall close out our pairing of best and worst opening matches with this list.
00:41 I draw the short straws around here, it seems, but I'm Tempest hailing from parts of unknown,
00:46 and these are the 10 worst Wrestlemania opening matches ever.
00:49 But before we get on with our list, make sure of course that you like this video, subscribe, and enable notifications to always on
00:54 so you never miss a fun list just like it, and make sure you check out Adam's list of the 10 best
00:58 Wrestlemania opening matches. I bet it's a little bit cheerier than this one's gonna be.
01:02 Number 10, the Usos vs. Shinsuke Nakamura and Rick Boogs, Wrestlemania 38 Night 1.
01:08 Oh, man, this one isn't their fault. A lot of the matches on this list will feature
01:12 incompetence in some form or another, whether that be the incompetence of the workers involved or the idiot who put them together. In this match,
01:19 however, it merely comes down to the incompetence of Rick Boogs' quads.
01:22 Boogs and Nakamura were a fun one-note act, even if the one note was Boogs playing several notes of Nakamura's entrance,
01:28 and this was shaping up to be a perfectly adequate
01:30 tag team match until Rick Boogs tried to muscle up both Usos at once, only for his quad to completely give out under the sheer
01:37 weight of two Usos. I really feel for the guy. Imagine you're as excited as possible for your first ever
01:43 Wrestlemania, and your night ends in a hospital bed knowing you're gonna be out for a long, long time. Just heartbreaking.
01:50 Thankfully, he's back now,
01:51 but this was the end of the night for the artist formerly known as Eric Boogenhagen, as Nakamura and the Usos struggled to the finish,
01:56 fumbling their way through an unfortunately unsavable match.
01:59 Number 9, Kane and the Big Show vs. Carlito and Chris Masters, Wrestlemania 22.
02:05 Let me just tell you, tag team matches do not come out of this list looking good. When your babyface team is a pair of
02:11 monster giants, your psychology is probably gonna be a bit backwards. Sure enough,
02:15 this is one of them backwards matches, where the heels get cheered because they're the underdogs, and the babyfaces get booed because they're the obstacle
02:22 to overcome. Kane has his working boots here, hitting a dropkick and a flying clothesline to the outside,
02:27 but Big Show is indeed the Big Show,
02:29 bringing the pace to a crawl whenever he can, and Carlito and Chris Masters don't do much to warm up the crowd because that's not
02:35 their role in the f***ing match. This match is just a prime example of
02:38 WWE's apathy towards real tag teams during the Ruthless Aggression Era, to the point that it makes me want to go on TV next to
02:45 Mike Myers and say WWE doesn't care about tag teams.
02:48 Wrestlemania 22 is a pretty solid mania, what with a Money in the Bank ladder match, Edge and Foley,
02:53 HBK scalping Vince, a good albeit short world title triple threat, but the opener was not one of the highlights.
03:00 Number 8, Big Boss Man and Bull Buchanan vs. D-Lo Brown and the Godfather,
03:04 Wrestlemania 2000. The most interesting thing about this match is looking at D-Lo Brown and Bull Buchanan dressed up as their partners. As
03:11 is the case with many mania openers, the crowd wants to give this a chance because they're at
03:16 Wrestlemania, and they want to be excited and have fun, but by the end there just isn't anything to be excited about.
03:21 Buchanan gives D-Lo a bear hug at one point that is really just a big cuddle.
03:25 It looks quite sweet actually. The team being managed for the night by Ice-T doesn't even win!
03:30 How does the celebrity guest manager not even manage his team to a win? I don't have any real thoughts on Bull Buchanan, honestly.
03:36 It's just a dude.
03:38 Wrestlemania 2000 is a bad mania with a semi-dated three-way ladder match to keep it afloat nowadays, and boy,
03:43 does this opener sure not f***ing help matters.
03:46 Christ, Jerry Lawler on commentary is having a field day with the women of the night who have agency at ringside. Just an all-time bad
03:53 commentary performance during an all-time bad mania opener.
03:56 Number 7, Showmiz vs. Truth and Wisdom, Wrestlemania 26.
04:01 Wrestlemania 26 is a solid Wrestlemania regardless of what Luke says, but it sure does not start hot.
04:06 You know what will really get the crowd amped for your biggest show of the year? A
04:10 three-minute match where dick all happens and the heels win.
04:13 Imagine waiting all year to wrestle at Wrestlemania and being told you have three minutes. The f***ing entrances were longer!
04:19 This is about the lowest point for WWE tag team wrestling.
04:22 You have the straight-to-DVD sequel of Jera Show and Showmiz taking on the
04:27 anti-chemistry vacuum of R-Truth and John Morrison, and you will not find a worse display of tag team cohesion
04:33 than John Morrison kicking Big Show causing him to nearly fall into R-Truth's head. The match never gets out of first gear.
04:39 Big Show just bops Morrison in the head and wins before anyone could even finish their overpriced hot dogs.
04:45 I cannot believe this is the only Wrestlemania encounter between The Miz and John Morrison despite all of the history they have shared.
04:52 Wrestlemania, baby, whoo!
04:54 Number 6, Lex Luger and British Bulldog vs. The Blue Brothers, Wrestlemania 11.
04:59 Lord above Wrestlemania 11 is a bad show. At the very least the crowd seems alive for this opening match,
05:05 which is more than I could say about most matches on this list,
05:08 but maybe the people of Hartford, Connecticut were just still in shock that WWE actually decided to hold Wrestlemania in Hartford, Connecticut.
05:14 This match starts with the Allied Powers immediately power-slamming the Blue Brothers on top of each other in a Nazi-tattooed heap,
05:20 and I can't exactly say that it got better from there. The Blue Brothers look f***ing untrained at points here.
05:26 Can't bump, can't do things safely. It's just a mess.
05:30 It is incredible to see how far Lex Luger's stock had fallen in WWE by this point.
05:34 Summerslam '93 seems primed to beat Yokozuna and win the WWE title.
05:39 Wins the '94 Rumble, is in a WWE title match at Wrestlemania 10, then one year later
05:44 he's in the opening tag match against whatever the Blue Brothers even were. Bad. Bad is what they were.
05:50 Number five, the new Black Jacks versus the Godwins versus the Headbangers versus Phil LaFon and Doug Furnas, Wrestlemania 13.
05:57 What the f*** is this set of rules?
05:59 You know how these days when WWE does a four-way tag, the people in the match can tag out to other teams to keep the action one-on-one?
06:06 I know some people don't like that style, but I can understand why they do it. Keeps things far less chaotic, more straightforward, easy to follow,
06:12 less bodies lying around, I get it. What I do not get, however, is in this match,
06:17 where one Headbanger starts the match and then his opponent tags in the other Headbanger and
06:22 commentary proceeds to say that the Headbangers must fight each other or forfeit the match.
06:28 What? What possible set of rules? Would it make any logical sense for one partner to have to fight the other?
06:35 What advantage could they possibly gain from fighting one another? This is a f***ing elimination match.
06:40 Were the Headbangers supposed to eliminate themselves? Surely that would just cause this simulation that we're living in to crash.
06:46 I have nothing else to say about this match. I'm glad Doug Furnas got a WrestleMania payday.
06:50 Number four, Hardcore Holly vs. Al Snow vs. Billy Gunn, WrestleMania 15.
06:55 I think this match was designed specifically to piss me off.
06:58 It would be difficult for me to find any three wrestlers that I could dislike more than these three.
07:03 But I may just be extra mad at Billy Gunn for spawning his booty boy sons.
07:07 Hardcore matches often get a bad rap for being aimless nonsense with no story, no psychology, and no structure.
07:13 And while it is not fair to paint the entire genre with that brush, this match sure does fit the bill.
07:18 Al Snow grabs a hockey stick, prompting the crowd to chant "Let's go Flyers!"
07:22 Which subtracts a star from this match because f*** the Flyers.
07:25 They grab a broom,
07:27 prompting Lawler to ask if they have curling in this building too, which adds a star back to the match because curling is as
07:32 Canadian as a beaver tail. And you know how everyone gets new gear for WrestleMania these days?
07:36 Did Hardcore Holly not get the memo that he was going to win a match at WrestleMania?
07:41 Stealing Madcap Moss's old gear for the biggest show of the year and winning the Hardcore title in a dog s*** match wearing the most
07:49 uninteresting gear possible.
07:51 Number three, the WrestleMania 14 Tag Team Battle Royal.
07:54 There is absolutely no reaction to 95% of what happens here because somehow this match manages to simultaneously have nothing happening and
08:03 everything happening at once. This match is just white noise manifested into physical form.
08:08 The camera misses half the eliminations because there are just bodies getting chucked out with no rhyme or reason and this match has the stupid
08:15 rule of if one member of the team is eliminated, the whole team is eliminated.
08:19 So you will just see people leaving the ring voluntarily, even if we did not see their partner get eliminated.
08:25 I didn't know that the Rock and Roll Express were in this match until Ricky Morton got eliminated.
08:29 Some of the people in this match don't even know the rules of the match, like Mark Henry
08:34 remaining in the match long after his partner got eliminated. And the teams in this match, holy s*** the teams in this match.
08:40 You get classic duos like the Harris Brothers and their SS tattoos, the Godwins and their Confederate printed shirts,
08:47 Bradshaw and Chains, Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor and whoever the f*** Recon and Sniper are.
08:54 This is as bad as battle Royals can get folks.
08:57 Number two, Sheamus versus Daniel Bryan, WrestleMania 28.
09:01 Ha ha ha, thought WWE, we'll get one over on the loudest, angriest and most passionate section of our fan base on the biggest stage possible.
09:09 Ha ha ha, assholes.
09:11 Considering how great their two out of three falls match was at Extreme Rules the following month after this debacle,
09:16 you could theorize that Sheamus and Daniel Bryan's World Heavyweight Championship match could have been the best match at WrestleMania 28.
09:23 Now, I don't know about you,
09:24 but I think I would prioritize having another potential match of the night on my biggest show of the year over pranking my fan base
09:30 to the detriment of my show, my top heel of SmackDown and my top baby face of SmackDown,
09:35 but hey, I'm not a bats*** insane old man that hates his fans.
09:38 The 18 second match that Sheamus and Daniel Bryan had at WrestleMania 28 may have been the best thing to ever happen to Bryan
09:44 considering it ignited a groundswell of fan support that really never stopped all the way up to WrestleMania 30,
09:51 but it also crippled any chance Sheamus had of getting over with the hardcore fan base as world champion.
09:55 Whoops, idiots.
09:58 And number one, The Fiend vs. Randy Orton, WrestleMania 37 Night 2.
10:03 It takes a special kind of bad to top the insulting corporate douchebaggery that was the opening of WrestleMania 28,
10:10 but while that was indeed bad on an all-time level, sparking a backlash like few other matches,
10:16 it really isn't a match. This, however, is a f***ing garbage match to open Night 2 of WrestleMania 37.
10:23 Randy Orton has had some bad f***ing luck with WrestleMania matches,
10:27 particularly with Bray Wyatt, and it seemed highly unlikely that they would be able to sink lower than their WWE title
10:32 maggots on the ring match from WrestleMania 33.
10:35 Well, boy howdy did WWE ever pull that one off.
10:38 What the f*** was this? This is how you choose to open a show? The return and death of The Fiend.
10:45 He steps through the magic portal that heals all his burn wounds, pops out of a giant fiend in the box,
10:50 has a match with a Randy Orton who thoroughly does not give a f*** about any of this bullsh*t,
10:54 and then loses via distraction because of a melting Alexa Bliss, never to be seen again.
10:59 WrestleMania 37 Night 2 did a lot to make up for this start.
11:03 Riddle and Sheamus, Owens and Zayn, Ripley and Asuka, a great three-way main event,
11:07 but never before or since has WrestleMania opened with a bigger...
11:12 [fart noise]
11:17 And that's our list. Make sure, of course, that you like this video, subscribe, and enable notifications to see more fun wrestling lists just like it.
11:23 And make sure you click Adam's list above of the 10 best WrestleMania opening matches. I'm gonna go have a nap.
11:28 The opening match wasn't exactly a vaunted spot on the card back then.
11:31 However, especially in the last decade or so,
11:33 WWE have started putting stonking match-ups on our screens straight out the gate,
11:37 and it's time to give the curtain-jerkers their due.