Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

This is was total one trick pony. Usually, you have wrestling cards that only have one great match, but the promise is that there are good matches on the undercard. Here, they simply said, we're going to have a match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels and it's going to be great, but you're going to have to sit there for an hour to watch it. If you think about it from a time standpoint, you have one match that is going to take a full hour out of your three hour PPV. The rest of the matches and skits will have to be cut into two hours. Basically they were telling us that they didn't really care for anything else but the main event. Oh yah, they promised the return of the Ultimate Warrior, again.

The Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart classic (it was a good match, but it's legend has grown over the years) was built up for a long time on television as "a boyhood dream" for Michaels to win the belt. Michaels had been a wrestling fan as a kid and even though he was on the smaller side, he always wanted to win the WWF Heavyweight Title in a league of gargantuan monsters. At least that's how Vinnie Mac was selling it to us. And since Vinnie was giving us two great wrestlers in the main event rather than two slow moving, punching and kicking heavyweights, he made sure that we were going to see pure wrestling. He made the match an Iron Man match. The rules of an Iron Man match are simple. There is a clock set with a one hour time limit. The person who scores the most falls in one hour wins. The hardest thing to do in a match like this is to keep the fans entertained at the same time as making sure Hart and Michaels don't wear themselves out. While they did a great job at doing that, many of the fans live weren't satisfied and left before the match was over. The detractors say that although they were entertained for most of the entire hour, they didn't like the finish. Neither man won a fall in the entire hour and Bret Hart decided that since it was a draw, he was still champion. WWF President at the time, Gorilla Monsoon, came out and said there must be a winner and ruled that the contest must continue and there would be a winner in sudden death(1). Soon thereafter, Shawn Michaels, the Heartbreak Kid, broke the Hitman's heart with a side kick (The Sweet Chin Music) and won the match and the title.

Does one match make or break a card? In this case yes. The strength of that match makes this Wrestlemania watchable. The rest of the card was absolutely horrible. There were only six other matches on the card and of those six, the only one that was decent was Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Savio Vega. Vega was really Austin's first feud with his new "Stone Cold" character and getting wins over him helped establish him as an up and comer, even though he was awesome in WCW years before. The big slap in the face to this match, which Austin won, was that they cut away from the match to show "taped" so-called live coverage of the Goldust vs. Roddy Piper "Hollywood Backlot Brawl" which was horrendous beyond imagination. The entire plot to their feud consisted of Goldust coming on to Piper and Piper being a man's man, trying to turn Goldust into a "man". It really reaked of trying to be edgy but coming across as low class. They started in the backlot and in supposedly a real live deal, Piper was hit by Goldust's car. That wasn't rigged, so says Piper in his book. The match took on a new level with Piper following Goldust driving a "Bronco" like OJ Simpson with the freeway opening up simply so he could drive with no one around him. It was cheesy beyond belief. They finally went back to the arena and finished off the match, with Piper winning. Could be one of the worst gimmick matches of all time.

One of the more hyped matches on the undercard was the Undertaker defeating Diesel, in a match-up of two huge guys who don't work very well in the ring, let alone together. I'll give the Taker credit for trying to make this a match, but Big Daddy Cool Diesel didn't make it easy on him. Luckily, it wasn't a long match and the Taker won.

The second most hyped feature on the show was the return of the Ultimate Warrior. The Warrior first disappeared after Wrestlemania VII and had left a couple other times before appearing here. He made his comeback, beating young up and comer Hunter Hearst Helmsley (with Sable) in a matter of seconds. Hunter probably made sure this never happened to him ever again, but he's done it to wrestlers himself, though much later in his career. The Warrior didn't last long as he was fired by Vince and hasn't been seen since.

A one match show, but the match was good enough to make this PPV recommendable.

Terminology
1. sudden death - A bad term for "the next score" wins. In wrestling, it would be the next fall, be it from disqualification, count out or pinfall.

Results
Owen Hart, Vader & the British Bulldog defeated Ahmed Johnson, Jake "The Snake" Roberts & Yokozuna via pinfall
Roddy Piper defeated Goldust in a Backlot Brawl
Steve Austin defeated Savio Vega
Ultimate Warrior defeated Hunter Hearst Helmsley via
pinfall
Undertaker defeated Diesel via pinfall
Shawn Michaels defeated Bret Hart in an Iron Man Match to win the World Wrestling Entertainment Championship


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older