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THE SPECIALISTS
PWTORCH SPECIAL: Top 10 Winners & Losers of WrestleMania Era, plus a surprising big name who has never won at Mania

Apr 6, 2014 - 3:22:36 PM
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By Michael Moore, PWTorch Collectibles specialist

In Brief: Statistically speaking, who are the ultimate WrestleMania winners? Who are the biggest losers? Some of the names may surprise you.

Paul Heyman has done his part to make fans understand just how big The Undertaker’s undefeated streak at WrestleMania really is. But here’s one interesting statistic that wasn’t mentioned: if you added up the total number of wins for the next three men on the list, they would only have four more wins combined than Taker’s 21.

On the other side of the coin is Shawn Michaels. For a guy who calls himself “Mr. WrestleMania,” he sure lost a lot of matches on wrestling’s biggest stage. Of his 17 matches, Michaels lost 11 – more than anyone else in WrestleMania history.

While The Streak is the most talked about statistic in WrestleMania lore, there are 29 years’s worth of numbers to discuss. Nearly 400 men and women competed at the first 29 WrestleManias, and this article presents the 10 men who have won more matches than anyone else – and then 10 who have lost the most.

The Winners

(10) Big Boss Man (5-1). The Top 10 list of winners is full of WWE Hall of Famers, guys who were the top stars of their respective eras. It’s somewhat surprising to see the Big Boss Man check in at number 10. While Ray Traylor was a talented worker who was respected by his peers, he never had much of a main event run in the WWF.

Three of his victories came in tag team matches, and he won singles matches against Akeem and Curt Henning (DQ). His only loss was to the Undertaker. It’s worth noting that Steve Austin, Owen Hart, and The Rock also had five wins each at WrestleMania. However, Big Boss Man had a higher winning percentage than the other three.

(9) Shawn Michaels (6-11). No other wrestler in history has put together as many great WrestleMania matches as Shawn Michaels. Most of those great performances were in losses. The Rockers won just one of their three WrestleMania matches, and Michaels’s only victories from 1992 to 1996 were a squash match over Tito Santana and the famous Iron Man Match against Bret Hart. Michaels returned in 2003 with a win over Chris Jericho, but would win just two more WrestleMania matches (against Vince McMahon and Ric Flair).

(8) Edge (6-4). Edge won just as many matches as Shawn Michaels but lost far fewer. Edge had his own little mini-streak going for a while, winning his first five WrestleMania matches. He lost four in a row, but in three of those matches he wrestled in either the WWE or World title match. He ended his career on a high note, defeating Alberto Del Rio at WrestleMania 27.

(7) Randy Savage (7-4). The “Macho Man’s” win total gets a boost from WrestleMania IV, when Savage won four matches in the tournament to crown a new WWF champion. He defeated Ted DiBiase in the tournament final, the first time that a WrestleMania ended with a wrestler other than Hulk Hogan victorious in the main event. He also scored a big win over Ric Flair for his second WWF Championship and won his last WrestleMania match by beating Crush.

(6) John Cena (7-3). Cena has ten WrestleManias under his belt now, with an impressive 70 percent winning percentage. In most of those matches he has either been competing for one of the top titles or main-eventing with The Rock. Cena has defeated some of the biggest names in wrestling history at WrestleMania, including Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and Rock. A WrestleMania showdown with Undertaker seems inevitable.

(5) Triple H (8-9). Triple H’s biggest moment came at WrestleMania 16 (or 2000, whichever you prefer) when he defeated The Rock, Big Show, and Mick Foley to retain the WWF Championship. At that moment he became the first heel to ever win a WrestleMania main event. He won the WWF Title again at WrestleMania X8 and main-evented WrestleMania 25 with a victory over Randy Orton. Though he failed to break The Streak, Triple H did cause irreparable damage at WrestleMania 29 when he defeated Brock Lesnar. If a part-timer like Triple H can beat Brock, who honestly thinks that Taker can’t?

(4) Bret Hart (8-4-2). Hart holds the same number of WrestleMania victories as Triple H, but with far fewer losses. Bret got his first chance to shine at WrestleMania VIII, when he defeated Roddy Piper in a classic match for the Intercontinental Title. His crowning moment came at WrestleMania X, when he defeated Yokozuna to close the show. Hart’s victory was an indication that Vince McMahon had chosen him over the much more muscular Lex Luger. Bret defeated Steve Austin in one of the greatest WrestleMania matches of all time in 1997, and returned for one final bout with Vince McMahon in 2010.

(3) Hulk Hogan (8-3-1). The first seven WrestleManias were built on the back of Hulk Hogan, and though his popularity had waned by 1992, he still found himself closing the show at WrestleManias IX and X. Hulkamania reached its peak in 1987 when Hogan defeated Andre the Giant in the main event of the monstrously successful WrestleMania III. After nearly ten years away, Hogan returned to WWE at WrestleMania X8 in an emotional match with The Rock. His final WrestleMania match was a victory over Vince McMahon at WrestleMania XIX.

(2) Kane (9-8). Technically, the other “Brother of Destruction” has more wins than any other wrestler except his storyline brother. But it really feels like there should be an asterisk next to his name. Many of Kane’s wins have come in throwaway tag team matches, and at WrestleMania 24 he scored two wins by winning a pre-show battle royal and then defeating Chavo Guerrero in seconds to win the ECW Title. His most prestigious win may have been at WrestleMania 28, when he cleanly defeated Randy Orton.

(1) The Undertaker (21-0). What more can be said about the Undertaker’s legendary streak? He has defeated seven of the 20 men on this winners and losers list at WrestleMania – three of them multiple times. Undertaker is sure to go 22-0 this year. The only thing left for Taker to do is to face John Cena in The Undertaker’s final match, whenever that may be.

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The Losers

(10) Jeff Hardy (0-5-1). Shocking, isn’t it? Hardy was part of one of the most popular teams during wrestling’s hottest era, and then he became arguably the hottest babyface in WWE. Yet through all that, Jeff Hardy never won a match at WrestleMania. He and brother Matt lost several multi-team matches and Jeff also faltered in one TLC match. His final WrestleMania match to date was a loss to his brother Matt five years ago at WM25.

(9) Shelton Benjamin (1-6). Before fans wondered what Kofi Kingston would do next in the Royal Rumble, they were asking what Shelton Benjamin would do in the next TLC match. Benjamin was involved in some very good matches and pulled off some incredible bumps, but his only WrestleMania win was in a multi-team tag match.

(8) Matt Hardy (2-6-1). Like his brother Jeff, Matt’s early WrestleMania losses were in memorable matches with Edge and Christian and the Dudleys. Matt seemed destined for stardom when he became a heel and defeated Rey Mysterio at WrestleMania XIX. But Matt fizzled out after a hot feud with Edge, and finished his WWE career with just two Mania wins.

(7) Randy Orton (4-6). Orton has been given chance after chance to succeed by WWE, but that hasn’t turned into WrestleMania victories for “the Viper.” Half of Orton’s wins came in 2010 and 2011, when WWE was trying to re-establish him as a babyface. Orton has often been well positioned at Mania, but came up short in matches with Undertaker, Triple H, Kane, and The Shield.

(6) Tito Santana (2-7). Poor Tito. He won the very first WrestleMania match over the masked Executioner (“Playboy” Buddy Rose, not Terry Gordy) and then lost seven in a row. At first it was Tito’s job to come to the aid of fellow babyfaces who were outnumbered, such as Junkyard Dog and the British Bulldogs. But eventually he became a jobber to the stars, losing to whichever heel the WWF wanted to push next, whether it was The Barbarian or Shawn Michaels. Tito was finally "rewarded" for his years of doing the job with a dark match victory over Papa Shango at WrestleMania IX that no one saw.

(5) Chris Jericho (4-7). Jericho’s WWF career started off so promising. He was often the only person worth watching on Nitro, and when he jumped to the WWF and appeared on millions of TV screens as the millennium clock reached zero, a star was born. But Jericho was never quite the star that he or his fans thought he was.

Jericho was the third wheel in a feud between Triple H and Stephanie McMahon at WrestleMania X8, and he was placed in an anticlimactic WWF Title match with C.M. Punk that was overshadowed by the return of The Rock. And in his last WrestleMania appearance to-date, Jericho lost to Fandango. Yes, Fandango. It may be safe to say that Jericho will never – ever – be the same again.

(4) Kane (9-8). Yep, the guy at number 2 on the winners list is also number 4 on the losers list. When one guy competes at 17 consecutive WrestleMania events, that’s bound to happen. Kane lost some matches that he should have – like the two to The Undertaker – but others are real head-scratchers. Kane and Rob Van Dam lost a pre-show tag match to Lance Storm and Chief Morley at WrestleMania XIX – go ahead, read that again if you have to. He also lost to the Great Khali and failed in three Money in the Bank ladder matches.

(3) Big Show (4-9). Big Show was supposed to be the second coming of Andre the Giant. Instead, he’s the big guy who loses train wreck matches to quasi-celebrities. He lost a sumo match to Akebono that absolutely nobody wanted to see, and fell in a brawl with Floyd Mayweather that turned out to be better than anyone thought it would. A couple years ago, WWE tried to make fans believe that Show’s victory over a much smaller Cody Rhodes for a damaged and worthless Intercontinental Title was the WrestleMania moment Big Show had been waiting for.

(2) Triple H (8-9). If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you might look at Triple H’s record as a sign that he’ll beat Daniel Bryan this Sunday. Triple H doesn’t want to have a losing record at WrestleMania, does he? Triple H’s woes began with the short-lived return of the Ultimate Warrior in 1996. He suffered through a losing streak from 2004-2008, which included losses to Chris Benoit, Batista, John Cena, and in a three-way match with Cena and Orton. From 2001-2012, he also lost three matches to The Undertaker.

(1) Shawn Michaels (6-11). As it turns out, the guy who wouldn’t lie down for anyone actually did so more than anyone else in WrestleMania history. Mr. “WrestleMania” went 6-11 during his career, winning just 35.3 percent of his matches. In his last seven WrestleMania matches, Michaels’s record was 2-5. His only victories were over Vince McMahon and Ric Flair, two men pushing 60 at the time.

PWTorch Collectibles specialist Michael Moore can be reached at MichaelMooreWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @MMooreWriter .


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