The Best Opening Matches in WWE WrestleMania History

With a wrestling show, the opening match can be nearly as important as the main event. While the main event is about finishing the show in a climactic fashion and leaving a lasting impression, you also need to get the audience into the proceedings with a killer start. Get the blood pumping and jumpstart all […]

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With a wrestling show, the opening match can be nearly as important as the main event. While the main event is about finishing the show in a climactic fashion and leaving a lasting impression, you also need to get the audience into the proceedings with a killer start. Get the blood pumping and jumpstart all the energy to carry the next few hours.

With WrestleMania being WWE’s biggest show of the year, those opening minutes can sometimes bring us some fantastic matches to get the ball rolling. Here are the openers that truly started the show off right. For the sake of ground rules, we’re counting matches on the official show itself, so no pre-shows or dark matches.

The Rockers vs. Haku and The Barbarian (WrestleMania VII)

WrestleMania VII was a solid WrestleMania show with an extra hour or so of nothing matches topped on for the sake of getting everyone a paycheck. This opener worked to that advantage, as there was zero story between The Rockers and Bobby Heenan’s goons going in, but they ended up pulling off exactly the kind of match the show needed. It helped that this was the last real gasp of tag team wrestling actually mattering in WWF and just having two teams go out there and put on a solid performance was a regular thing.

It also helped that it had a great dynamic that any new viewer could pick up on: the lumbering and powerful heels up against the plucky faces who were smaller but could run rings around them. Lots of fun tag tropes and teamwork thrown in from The Rockers made this work and showed that even before he broke out as a solo star, Shawn Michaels was earning his reputation as Mr. WrestleMania.