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The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Most Important WWE PPVs Of All Time

December 11, 2017 | Posted by Mike Chin
WWE WrestleManias WWF WWE WrestleMania III Andre the Giant Hulk Hogan WrestleMania's Hulk Hogan’s Image Credit: WWE

I’d like to start of this column by acknowledging a small milestone that might otherwise go unnoticed. I present to you today the 200th edition of the Magnificent Seven under my authorship. I came to 411mania when a friend from college drew my attention to it, after the site I had previously relied on for wrestling news, rumors, and reviews fell stagnant for several months. I got hooked on the 411mania, like many readers checking back multiple times a day to read up on backstage happenings and to read other opinions on what was happening in the business. I wound up responding to a call for new columnists back in 2008, and for a year and change, I authored a column known as “The Importance of…” before my professional life got too hectic to keep up with it. Then at the end of 2013, in response to a call for a new columnist to come in and starting writing “The 8-Ball,” top eight list column, I reached out to Larry Csonka about coming back to the site.

It turned out my message went to Larry’s spam folder and I missed that opportunity, but he told me a few weeks later that if I wanted to write top seven lists instead, the site could revive the old “Magnificent Seven” gimmick. I climbed aboard, and nearly four years later, here I still am. Four years may not seem like long , but then we can consider that when my first edition of this column posted, it was less than a week after WWE first announced the WWE Network, and over a month before it launched. Daniel Bryan was a full-time in-ring talent for WWE and we had questions about if WWE would ever let him lay hands on the WWE Championship again. NXT hadn’t yet aired its first Network special, Kurt Angle was working full-time for TNA, and the general consensus was that AJ Styles would never sign with WWE (let alone Samoa Joe, Bobby Roode, or Kevin Owens; the jury was still out on Sting, too).

Even more so than wrestling history, this is a period in my personal life that saw a lot of changes. My long-distance girlfriend became my wife and we’re expecting our first child any day now. I moved from Maryland to Oregon to earn my second master’s degree, and then back to the east coast again. I went to two WrestleManias and published a chapbook of poems about wrestlers.

Through all of these changes and developments, this column has been a constant. I learned early on not to dwell too long on the comments section for my posts, because often as not it only made me angry. Rest assured, though, that I do give the comments a quick read each week, and whether we by-and-large agree or disagree, I appreciate all of you who have taken a bit of time to read my material engage with my thoughts. Thank you.

With all of that preamble and reflection squared away, on to our regularly scheduled column…

Today, WWE puts on an average of more than one PPV a month. These super shows have made it a staple to book around big shows that WWE makes its audience pay to watch from the comfort of home, in contrast to the old model of selling folks on seeing top grudge matches play out at house shows. Not all PPVs are created equally, though. There are those that are great and those that are lackluster. There are those that are forgettable, and those that have a meaningful impact on wrestling history.

This article looks at the seven most important WWE PPVs. To be clear, while there’s some overlap, this is not a countdown of greatest shows—I’d even say that some of the PPVs I picked were on the weak side—but rather ones that said something important about the company. As a clarifier, the countdown includes actual PPV events, closed circuit TV events that predated pay per view, and WWE Network special events that have for the most part supplanted traditional pay per view. The list does not, however, include television like special episodes of Raw or SmackDown, or Saturday Night’s Main Event.

#7. WrestleMania 21

WrestleMania 21 lands on this countdown for being arguably the single most important show when it came to launching a cluster of new main event stars. This is the show where Edge won the very first Money in the Bank Ladder Match, in a moment that both helped establish a new paradigm for booking the world title picture and nudged Edge toward the permanent main event status he would latch onto the following year. This is also the show where Randy Orton went hunting for The Undertaker’s ‘Mania undefeated streak, in the process turning heel again and regaining the mojo to be a serious main event talent. Meanwhile, at the tip-top of the card, two new world champions were crowned. In the main event, Batista beat Triple H clean as a sheet the shore up his place on top. In the next match down, JBL dropped the WWE Championship to John Cena to launch the definitive top WWE star of the decade to follow.

Edge. Orton. Batista. Cena. Take the christening of four main event stars, and a lesser version of a similar dynamic with Rey Mysterio picking up his first WrestleMania victory when he pinned Eddie Guerrero. Add on top of that a classic between Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle, and you have one of the most important shows WWE has ever put on.

#6. Over the Edge 1999

Look up the match results from Over the Edge 1999, and it’s not all that remarkable of a show. While The Undertaker vs. Steve Austin and The Rock vs. Triple H are good match ups on paper, they happened at a number of other shows, often in more memorable fashion. There’s some intrigue to the New Age Outlaws exploding, but it’s not a match that really sells a PPV, much less lends it historical significance.

Over the Edge 1999 is one of the most infamous shows in WWE history, though. It’s show at which Owen Hart fell to his death.

Owen’s death alone makes the show historic, but it’s all the more important for the choices Vince McMahon made to follow. Jim Ross would deliver the news to the PPV audience, and WWE would continue the show. WWE was in a no-win situation. Had they made the justifiable call to end the show early, they would have sent live fans and the PPV audience not only saddened but feeling ripped off. Going on with the show, naturally, made WWE appear callous for carrying on despite the tragedy.

For the choices WWE did make, it established a piece of its identity—strictly adhering to the mantra that the show must go on, even under surreal and profoundly sad circumstances.

#5. The Wrestling Classic

While WrestleMania was available for pay per view in some markets, and largely launched the model of the company putting on live wrestling super shows, The Wrestling Classic was the first event WWE marketed exclusively as a PPV and live event, not to mention WWE’s first real follow up to WrestleMania.

There’s a sense in which this show as a pre-cursor to Survivor Series, for happening in November at more or less the halfway point between ‘Manias. There’s a sense in which it was the forefather to King of the Ring for booking the PPV show around a single night tournament, plus a world title match between Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper.

This show tends to get forgotten for not becoming an annual tradition, and not featuring any good matches. Nonetheless, the show was enough of a success in terms of buy rate to shore up the PPV centric model WWE has followed for over thirty years.

#4. Survivor Series 1997

Here we enter the upper tier of the countdown, for which I could imagine in an argument of any of the top four showing up at or around the number one spot. Survivor Series 1997 happened in the early stages of the Attitude Era and featured a reasonable enough card. In the end, though, the historical importance of this event comes down to one match: the final confrontation between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels.

The match was fine, but hardly worthy of recognition relative to classics the two had put on in preceding years. Their main event war culminated, however, in the Montreal Screwjob—the single most infamous tearing-down-the-fourth-wall moment in pro wrestling history.

Plenty has been written about the Screwjob, but in a column focused on historical importance, you can’t overstate how big this one was. It was WWE’s most overt, public acknowledgment that wrestling was predetermined. It was the unofficial introduction of one of the greatest heels in wrestling history in Mr. McMahon. It blew off the kayfabe and real life rivalries between Hart and Michaels, and essentially said Hart into exile from WWE for a decade.

There are few moments in wrestling history that we can universally agree were fundamentally important to the evolution of the business. Montreal is one of them, and places Survivor Series squarely among the most important WWE PPVs ever.

#3. WrestleMania 14

By WrestleMania 14, WWE realized that it had caught lightning in a bottle with the Attitude Era and its burgeoning top star Steve Austin. The key was getting as many eyes as possible on the product at just the right time.

WWE capitalized on the annual mystique of WrestleMania and the coronation of Stone Cold as world champion by casting Mike Tyson as a guest enforcer referee to get as many people to watch as possible. Add on beautifully produced vignettes to introduce each match, and the show was designed to lure in fans, catch them up to speed, and hook them on WWE’s product.

No, WrestleMania 14 wasn’t the greatest WrestleMania when it came to match quality. It was, however, a show chock full of matchups between iconic stars of the day—Steve Austin vs. Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker vs. Kane, Mick Foley and Terry Funk vs. The New Age Outlaws, The Rock vs. Ken Shamrock, Triple H vs. Owen Hart, and more. It was the show in which WWE capitalized on all of its momentum, planted its feet, and got on the path to win the Monday Night War.

#2. WrestleMania 3

WrestleMania 3 is a particularly intriguing show from a historical perspective on account of its combining the spectacle of being one of the most watched wrestling shows of all time—both in terms of PPV audience and live attendance—and quite arguably being the best PPV offering WWE had served up, up to that point.

It was, in many senses, a two-match show. There was Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant—a match up that had happened multiple times before that underscored Vince McMahon’s marketing genius to make it feel like the most epic collision in wrestling history. No, the match itself was nothing to write home about, but it served its purpose as the definitive Hulk Hogan vs. Giant clash and it was the reason WWE packed a purported 93,197 fans into the Silverdome.

Add onto that Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage. This match up was high profile, even if it couldn’t compete with the marketing immensity of the main event. Moreover, it was the first truly great match that WWE ever put on PPV, and arguably the first truly great, timeless match that the company ever broadcast on any television. This one would foretell the classic matches that would follow over decades to follow, besides putting Savage in particular on the map as one of the very best talents WWE had to offer. He would be involved in world title matches at three out of the next five WrestleManias, and engaged with no lesser stars than The Ultimate Warrior and Dusty Rhodes in his other outings.

#1. WrestleMania

The original WrestleMania was not a great show by many definitions. There’s little debating that the best match on the card was the main event tag match that pitted Hulk Hogan and Mr. T against Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff. Not to take too much away from these guys, but no match that featured Mr. T was really going to break three stars on any objective scale. That main event was, however, a success, in drawing fans to shell out their money to watch this show on closed circuit television, in the arena, and, yes, on PPV in select markets.

More than just garnering viewers, though, the original WrestleMania cemented WWE’s paradigm. Wrestling need not be believable and matches need not be great. It was the spectacle of heroes like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, the fun of celebrities like Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper, and the marketing genius of Vince McMahon that made this a can’t-miss show for not just hardcore wrestling fans, but a new generation of youngsters and more casual fans who actually found it cool to watch wrestling.

Without the first WrestleMania, we’d never be looking ahead to WrestleMania 34, nor do I expect we’d have any other PPVs. It’s the single most important PPV WWE has ever put on.

Which shows would you add to the list? WrestleMania 17, Survivor Series 1998, and Money in the Bank 2011 were among my top runners up. Let us know what you think in the comments.

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

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WWE, Mike Chin