The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 WrestleMania Retirement Matches

Last week, I wrote about the top WrestleMania debuts. This week, I’m looking at the other side of the coin, to matches that looked to be the finales of great stars’ careers, not only at WrestleMania, but in wrestling in general.

In crafting the countdown, I opted to take one huge liberty: I counted not only actual retirements, but matches meaningfully billed as someone’s retirement match, even if that performer did ultimately come back. So, for a match to qualify, it had to have wound up being someone’s actual last match (for example, Brie Bella’s finale at WreslteMania 32), or have been advertised as such (e.g., Hulk Hogan’s supposed farewell match at WrestleMania 8)

I took a variety of elements into consideration for this odd countdown. Match quality was a big one, but I also aimed to consider even less tangible factors such as poeticism built into the match to represent that performer’s career coming to a close. As is the case for most of my lists, this is far from a scientific endeavor—personal opinion weighed in heavily.

#7. Roddy Piper vs. Adrian Adonis at WrestleMania 3

No, this would not actually turn out to be Roddy Piper’s retirement match (besides continuing to wrestle for decades after this point, he’d even wrestle at WrestleMania itself multiple times, including a final outing at WrestleMania 25), but it was billed as such at a time when Piper looked to walk away from the wrestling business to pursue his acting career. Moreover, this match did feel like a career culminating moment as Piper prepared to say goodbye at the largest iteration to date of ‘Mania—the culmination of the WWF’s biggest show that Piper had been so integral in selling in the first place via his rivalries with Hulk Hogan and Mr. T.

At this point, Piper played the beloved, veteran face, squaring off with an upstart who dared try to replace him—outrageous heel Adrian Adonis, who had gone so far as to literally take Piper’s place as talk show host, converting the Piper’s Pit staging area into the Flower Shop.

While Piper-Adonis didn’t have the mystique of Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant, and couldn’t touch Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage from a workrate perspective, I’d argue it was the third best match on one of the WWF’s most iconic shows, and is a too-often overlooked early ‘Mania gem. Extra points for the finish—Adonis threatening to take the match via heelish antics, only for newly turned Brutus Beefcake to save the day and help Piper score the feel-good win. While it didn’t quite work out, I’ve always felt this whole scenario was built to position Adonis as a Piper-like heel on the WWF landscape, and Beefcake as a replacement upper card face so they could collectively fill the void that Hot Rod left behind him—in theory, a pretty optimal way for one of the top players on the roster to ride off into the sunset.

#6. Mick Foley vs. Triple H vs. The Rock vs. The Big Show at WrestleMania 2000

Bear with me on this one—sure Foley didn’t really retire after this match (though he did more concretely transition from full-time wrestler to part-time legend and periodic authority figure). And the emphasis going into this match was not, purely speaking, on Foley’s retirement. But this was, at least tacitly, sold as Foley’s last ride to offer some extra sizzle to an unusually constructed main event.

Going into WrestleMania 16, the path seemed clear. Triple H was the dominant top heel. In the absence of Steve Austin, The Rock was not only the de facto top face, but had somehow actually risen to a more or less equal level of popularity to Stone Cold. Throw them together with the world title on the line, and you have as straightforward of a main event scenario as possible.

But in the year 2000, nothing could be straightforward.

Though 2000 was actually a great year for WWF PPV, ‘Mania was one of the few misses—not necessarily a bad show but one of the few that was not so successfully booked and that underperformed given the roster at hand and how hot the company was at the time. This is the lone ‘Mania to not feature a single one-on-one match, and the main event is representative of the mindset of the time—not leave anyone off the card, and to wedge in every talent at their appropriate level. So, The Big Show was a main eventer. And to round out the face-heel dynamic, put a McMahon in every corner, and to give Mick Foley what amounts to a lifetime achievement award, the WWF plugged the Hardcore Legend into the match for one last chance at glory, after having already lost a retirement match to Triple H the month before.

This match lands on the countdown for several reasons. First of all, despite not being a great WrestleMania main event, it was a perfectly good match that did tie together a lot of the WWF’s top angles from the preceding months. The Rock was the obvious top challenger who already had a long history with Triple H. The Big Show was still a blue-chip prospect on the rise at this point, not to the mention the man who had relieved Triple H of the world title at Survivor Series only to drop it back to him on Raw two months later. And Foley, despite consistently coming up on the losing end, had been Triple H’s arch-rival for the preceding months, in addition to having a storied history as a friend and foe of The Rock, and even WrestleMania-specific history with Big Show based on their match the year before.

Best of all, this match was representative of a lot of what was best about Foley. He was the main event talent and former world champion who was nonetheless always a loveable underdog. And while The Rock was the favorite to win, and Triple H would end up retaining, Foley was the wild card. Might the WWF give him that ultimate moment of glory—retiring the WWF Champion after winning the main event of WrestleMania? Few would actively predict that outcome, but you also couldn’t quite rule it out at the time.

#5. Edge vs. Alberto Del Rio at WrestleMania 27

There wasn’t an overwhelming amount of sentimentality attached to this retirement match as it happened. That’s because, at the time I don’t think anyone—management, Alberto Del Rio, and Edge included—knew it would be The Rated R Superstar’s last match. But Edge’s previous neck and spine injuries caught up to him, and he would end up never having another match.

But here we had Edge defending the World Heavyweight Championship against Alberto Del Rio. By this point, Edge had emerged as the establishment—after grinding his way up the card over a period of years, this was his fourth consecutive ‘Mania world title match, and he had arguably reached his prime as a face, finally attaining that top-level veteran status at which point the fans are loyal to a guy regardless of what’s going on in storylines. On the flip side, Del Rio was an ascendant villain who had debuted in dominant fashion—submitting Rey Mysterio clean—and gone on to win The Royal Rumble. It would have made complete sense for Del Rio to go over here and win his first world title in spectacular fashion.

But he didn’t. Edge picked up the duke in a match that wasn’t great, but was quite good, particularly in the odd spot of being the first world title match to ever open a WrestleMania. And while the performance didn’t exactly light the world on fire, if you look at it in retrospect, it was a special moment for a special performer. Edge, who ten years earlier leapt off a super-sized ladder to spear Jeff Hardy as he dangled from the ceiling, was now successfully defending a world title in front of a live crowd of 70,000-plus. His old partner in crime Christian had his back, and in the aftermath of the match, the two teamed up to wreck Del Rio’s car—one final shenanigan for the compulsively sophomoric tandem. When we think about the poeticism of a retirement match, it doesn’t get much better than that.

#4. Steve Austin vs. The Rock at WrestleMania 19

Let the arguments begin—this is the point of the countdown at which we go from good to great and I could understand an argument for any one of the top four to land in the number one spot.

While Austin himself says that he knew this was his last match as it was going down, for us fans, this last match went down more like Edge’s, for which we enjoyed the match and didn’t realize until afterward that we’d witnessed the end of something. But in the days leading up to ‘Mania, Austin’s assorted injuries caught up to him, and it was clear the end was nigh. So, he went to the ring and did what he’d done best for the preceding fifteen years—putting on a hellacious in-ring performance.

I suspect we’ll never come to a consensus about ranking the Austin-Rock ‘Mania trilogy (to me, 17 was clearly the best of the three, but every time I’ve written it, I’ve received a lot of dissent), but I think most of us can agree that this final collision between a broken down star on his way to pasture and an increasingly part-time star on his way to Hollywood was a worthy sequel to the men’s previous efforts, and a fitting part of the three match sequence, landing safely in high-three-star to four-star territory.

And then let’s talk poeticism. Six years earlier, Austin had put on arguably the greatest match in WrestleMania history and turned face, and five years earlier Austin had won his first world championship in the main event of WrestleMania, a crowning achievement in his ongoing journey to save the WWF and win the Monday Night War. And here was squaring off with The Rock, his in-ring arch-rival with whom he had main evented two ‘Manias, and whom Austin had beaten twice. This was the final chapter, and like the traditionalist Austin was at heart, he wrapped up his career on his back. Say he was returning the favor, say he was putting Rock over, say he was just following orders—regardless, this was a storybook end to one of the greatest careers in wrestling history.

#3. Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker at WrestleMania 26

Again, I’ll understand arguments for this match to be ranked higher. Stripping away emotion and theatrics, there’s a pretty legit contention it’s the best pure match on the countdown, not to mention that it got the main event spot, ended the career of a guy billed as Mr. WrestleMania, and featured two of the most iconic WrestleMania performers of all time. I get all of that, and its mostly personal preference that keeps this match in the number three spot (that, and while this isn’t an entirely fair metric, I was a little let down that this epic conclusion didn’t quite live up to the match these two guys put on a year earlier).

So here we had Michaels, eight years removed from his comeback WrestleMania after a three-year-plus retirement/sabbatical from the business, putting his career on the line for the chance to end The Undertaker’s undefeated streak. In terms of storyline stakes, all of this was huge and I’d argue WWE made the right call to have this match go on last to further validate how important the match was (not to mention learning from the previous year’s lesson that no match could follow HBK-‘Taker).

And the match was great in its own right. A back-and-forth battle full of false finishes, culminating in a great final visual. Michaels was beaten. ‘Taker told him to stay down. Channeling all of his defiance, the man who founded DX managed one last show of resistance, mimicking The Dead Man’s cut-throat signal, and then slapped The Phenom across the face. The Undertaker responded with not just a Tombstone, but a divergently vicious version of it, leaping in the air to hit the move with a little extra flourish and send Michaels riding off to the sunset.

#2. Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 24

I’ve watched wrestling my whole life, and in many ways grew up with WrestleMania. As an adult, I don’t know that there’s any wrestling match anywhere that I grew more emotionally invested in than the career-threatening match between Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels.

By the time I’d come of age as a fan—it had already been engrained in me that Ric Flair was great. Moreover, he was that rare superstar who transcended and completely overlapped my time as a fan. Sure, The Nature Boy was off TV or out of the ring for various spells, but I’d never really known a wrestling landscape without him. Thus, when WWE launched the angle that Vince McMahon would force him to retire the next time he lost, it seemed inevitable that I was witnessing the end of his run, and with it, the end of one of those final pieces of my childhood wrestling fandom.

Flair’s retirement angle wasn’t all sadness, though. It gave an old school wrestler an old school, wrestling-centric storyline in which wins and losses very much mattered. Moreover, it put Flair into a final stretch of solid one-on-one matches against the likes of young stars like MVP and Mr. Kennedy, not to mention McMahon himself. And then there was Michaels.

If, thoughrout my childhood, Flair were the incumbent greatest of all time, then Shawn Michaels was the candidate my generation of fans most readily put forth. As a kid, watching him run to the ring alongside Marty Jannetty, I’d never have expected greatness out of him, but before my eyes, he’d blossomed into a spectacular singles performer who readily entered the conversation for best all-around performer in wrestling history. Given that trajectory, not to mention the fact that he had previously idolized Flair, and since become his dear friend, there was no more fitting opponent for Flair to perform opposite in his final WWE match.

And the match was excellent. I can understand arguments that HBK-‘Taker from two years later was objectively better from a pure in-ring perspective. But then there’s the emotional factor. This was Ric Flair performing at the highest level he had in at least a decade, and probably more like fourteen-to-fifteen years (I’d argue that the last time he had a match this good it was Spring Stampede 1994 with Ricky Steamboat). This was Ric Flair leaving everything he had on the mat to put on one last show. And this was Michaels, about the most worthy dance partner imaginable, going toe-to-toe with him, trading holds, trading blows, eating a moonsault into a table to add to the suspense that maybe Flair could pull it out and not retire after all.

And then there was the ending sequence. Flair, demanding that Michaels finish him off. Michaels–in possibly the only recorded case of one performer telling the other he loved him mid-match—kicking Flair’s head off to pin him once and for all.

WWE billed this as a career-threatening match. And yes, Flair did go on to work a few indy spots and matches in TNA. But in this case, I’m very much willing to accept apocryphal WWE mythology as truth, for in our hearts, we’d seen the last of the best of Ric Flair, and he never would lace up the boots in WWE again.

#1. Randy Savage vs. The Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania 7

Remember what I said about personal opinion weighing heavily in this column. I won’t argue that Savage-Warrior was, as an in-ring performance, as objectively great as any of the three matches I’ve ranked directly below it. Moreover, I’ll concede the fact that Savage didn’t really retire—that he’d even be in a world title match at ‘Mania a year later—does rob it of some of its historical gravitas. But I was a kid when this match happened, and perhaps fell at just the right age to both appreciate the history going into this match and maybe even over-appreciate it’s gravitas because it encompassed so much of my life experience as a wrestling fan.

You see, watching WrestleMania 3 on Coliseum Video is one of my earliest memories and WrestleMania 4, despite not objectively being a very good show, still stands out to me from a child’s eye as an epic spectacle of a tournament. To put a finer point on it, The Macho Man was part of the fabric of my childhood, from that show-stealing performance with Ricky Steamboat, to winning the world title, to engaging in the most heated feud I could comprehend opposite Hulk Hogan. And while I wouldn’t be able to define it in such terms then, Miss Elizabeth was probably my very first celebrity crush.

And then there was The Ultimate Warrior. Before I could understand concepts like work rate or anabolic steroids, he was a supercharaged super hero in real life. I was raised to understand wrestling was fixed, but Warrior with his facepaint, arm tassles, and wild run to the ring was an infectious enough character, and with his press slams and physicque an awesome enough spectacle, that he was easy to idolize.

So, Savage versus Warrior was a epic match up. Add in the stakes that the loser would need to retire—a stipulation I’d never before seen at the time—and there was a recipe for a positively historic match.

A child’s perspective and nostalgia do help to elevate this match in my estimation. But even without those factors, I’d maintain from my adult perspective that it was a great match up—one of those occasions when careful planning pushed Warrior to one of his top career performances, and Savage was Savage, nailing both the athleticism and character work necessary to achieve greatness.

And then there’s the poeticism. For Savage was deep in his Macho King gimmick and had Queen Sherrie in his corner, but it was Miss Elizabeth’s presence in the crowd that added a special emotional edge to this match, and further communicated just how momentous the match was.

Warrior won, and it was great. Then Sherrie attacked Savage. And it was Elizabeth—Elizabeth who had never gotten physical before, who had never so much as hinted at a heel turn, who seemed altogether too good and pure for all this wrestling mayhem—who stormed the ring, tore Sherrie off of Savage, and flung her to the outside. Suspend your kayfabe disbelief that Sherrie would allow herself to be vanquished so easily and drink in the moment. For this was five plus years of storylines paying off in Savage turning face, and Savage and Elizabeth together again. Argue it all you want, but for me that remains the greatest WrestleMania moment ever, and the cap to the greatest WrestleMania retirement match.

Which ‘Mania retirement matches would you add to the list? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.