Best match from every WWE WrestleMania event in history

WrestleMania 13

Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin

There are a couple of underrated matches at WrestleMania 13 but there’s nothing on the card that comes close to the grudge match between Stone Cold Steve Austin and Bret Hart, which gave us arguably the best double turn in the history of the business and a great match to boot.

Austin tried to come into this match as the heel and was still showing some heel tendencies towards the Chicago crowd as he made his way down to the ring, which was preceded by another iconic entrance with the breaking of the “Austin 3:16” glass. And Bret Hart had been showing signs of turning heel in the weeks and months before this event but just quite hadn’t made the full switch yet. He didn’t like the direction in which the company was going and had actually taken some time off the year before to get away from it, and when he came back a new era was just getting ready to break out and Austin was right there waiting for him. They had a nice match at Survivor Series and also battled it out at the Royal Rumble, which Austin actually won that year but had his main event spot taken away after Shawn Michaels gave up his belt in the infamous “I lost my smile” speech, which Austin might have lost anyway due to the fact that Hart and Michaels were supposed to have a rematch of their WrestleMania XII classic. But things worked out the way they did and the wrestling world is better for it.

Even though both of these guys could wrestle quite well, this match was always going to be a fight and it turned more into that than the actual Submission Match that it was billed as. Adding Ken Shamrock to the mix as the referee only helped in that aspect of things and this was a brawl from the start as things went to the outside early and they went through the crowd for a while before heading back to the ringside area for an awesome Figure Four spot around the post. After a few minutes, they were back on the outside and Austin took a header into the guardrail and was busted wide open although it’s pretty clear that he took care of that cut himself. He was gushing at one point and it gave the match that little something extra and the crowd loved it. And the crowd was so crucial to this bout as about halfway through, or maybe even before, you watched them start cheering for Austin and booing Bret and it was beautiful. Bret started acting like a heel and getting a bit more vicious and ended up locking in the Sharpshooter at the end but Austin just wouldn’t give up and his bloodied face while screaming in pain is one of the most memorable moments of Austin’s career and really put him over the top.

Eventually, he would end up passing out for the loss but who won and who lost didn’t matter at that point. Bret completed the turn by going after Stone Cold following the match and Austin completed his face turn by refusing to give up in the match and then refusing help following it. This was the real start of the Attitude Era and one of the best matches in WrestleMania history.