This Is The Worst Match In WWE WrestleMania History
- Thomas Hall
- Mar 15
- 6 min read
I’ve watched a lot of wrestling in my day. Over the course of nearly forty years, I’ve probably seen somewhere around 100,000 matches (a rough estimate). Out of everything I’ve seen, I tend to pride myself on WrestleMania more than anything else. I’ve seen most of them quite a few times and for the most part, the series lives up to its mantra of the Grandest Stage Of Them All.
However, there are some matches which might not be so good for one reason or another. There is something about them that brings them down and it isn’t quite worthy of WrestleMania. Unfortunately, those are the matches that stand out above the rest of them in the worst ways, which is what brings us to a certain match today. There is one that stands beneath the rest as an absolutely horrible example of what happens when WrestleMania goes wrong.
By my count, there have been around 433 matches in WrestleMania history (not counting pre-shows, dark matches, and throwing in some things like the Hollywood Backlot Brawl, boxing and the Brawl For All etc.) so we’ll say 430 for a round number. That is quite a collection of matches, with some of them being absolutely historic, while some of them were totally forgettable (What do you remember about Kerry Von Erich vs. Dino Bravo? The opening match of WrestleMania XIII? The ten Divas tag at WrestleMania XXVI?). There have been some terrible matches too though, and that’s where we’re going today.
Michael Cole Vs Jerry Lawler Is The Worst WrestleMania Match Of All Time
The year was 2011 and WWE had returned to one of its always annoying ideas: the heel commentator. In this case it was Michael Cole, who had slowly become a huge Miz fan, to the point where he ultimately cost Jerry Lawler a match for the WWE Championship. Lawler had absolutely had it with Cole, so it was time for them to fight. At WrestleMania XXVII. In front of 71,000 people. In a match between a 60+ year old Lawler and a non-wrestler in Cole. Oh this wasn’t going to go well.
Now, even WWE seemed to know that this was going to be quite the mess, so they added in two more people. On one hand you had Jack Swagger, that ball of charisma, to serve as Cole’s mentor/coach. That only added so much, so Steve Austin was added as the special guest referee. It wasn’t something that really helped at WrestleMania XX with Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar, but what else were they supposed to do here?
Hopefully the answer was “not much”, as this is the kind of match that should last all of five minutes, with Cole possibly getting in a few cheap shots, posing and running his mouth a lot, and then probably doing something to annoy Austin so Lawler can make the comeback. Right hands, a dropkick, middle rope fist, bingo, bango, bongo and Irving: the piledriver finishes for Lawler. Normally beer would be consumed but Lawler doesn’t drink so... oh who cares as Lawler would win and get his nice moment.
So take all of that and throw it all out the window, because that is absolutely not what happened at all. No, instead we had Lawler beating Cole up (with the one funny spot of Lawler pulling him into his Cole Mine box) before Cole took over, worked on the ankle, used one of about 143 ankle locks, and having Austin make the save so Lawler could win, of course with an ankle lock, in the end.
After the better part of FOURTEEN MINUTES (longer than one World Title match, about a minute and a half shorter than the main event), Austin did get involved and Lawler won in the end... but it wasn’t done, including after Booker T got one of the most random Stunners of all time. No, of course it wasn’t, because that would make too much sense. Instead, we got an email from the Anonymous Raw General Manager (Hornswoggle, because that was a choice they made) saying that Austin’s interference was enough for a disqualification.
Believe it or not, the fans did not seem to care for the result, as they didn’t get the layup of layups as a result. Instead, Cole won to take the air out of the stadium and it wouldn’t really recover. It makes you wonder what WWE was thinking with the whole idea, and somehow, it STILL wasn’t done. Cole continued to torment Lawler and Jim Ross, resulting in this continuing for the better part of TWO MONTHS, with Swagger and Cole even winning another pay-per-view match. Lawler would finally beat Cole in late May to end the feud for goo... ok there was nothing good about this whole thing.
I have no idea what WWE was thinking here, as they got every possible thing wrong. First, there’s the story as a whole. While Lawler is a beloved legend and the voice of one of the most popular eras in wrestling history, he is best known as an announcer. That’s the positive side of things, as Cole is entirely known as an announcer. At the end of the day, this wasn’t a pair of wrestlers having a match, but two announcers fighting, with one of them having no idea what he was supposed to do. That’s not the kind of thing that makes for a great story anywhere, let alone at the biggest show of the year.
Then there’s the length of the match, as this should have been short and to the point, lasting all of ten minutes including the post match celebrations. At the end of the day, Lawler can wrestle a match with anyone, but Cole was supposed to be someone in over his head who was finally going to get what was coming for him. That was the entire point of the match, but instead it was focused on Cole being on offense. You know, because that’s a great place to put Cole’s first ever time being on offense, as an audience of 70,000+ is a fine start.
And finally, of course, there’s the ending. What in the world was the point in having Cole win in the end? To keep the heat going in theory, but this is a good example of how everything was set up perfectly and then they just went in the entirely wrong direction. Yeah, Lawler won and got Cole to give up (because when you think of Lawler, you think of submission holds), but then the email came in.
That’s where it makes things even worse, as it felt like the whole thing was designed to laugh at the fans for being disappointed. They had what they wanted (eventually, after the disaster of a match) but then they took away the one good part of the whole thing. Instead of letting Lawler win to get his revenge, we had to wait until the end of the next month, with Cole tormenting him even more in the process, before that happened. It was a classic example of “this isn’t what the fans want” but WWE kept going with it because it’s what WWE wanted to do, which is almost never a good idea.
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In a word, the match missed. It was everything that could have gone wrong cranked up to a twelve or so. Cole later said Vince McMahon called it the worst thing he had seen in sixty years of wrestling, and that is probably being generous. Cole didn’t know what he was doing (fair enough) and the whole idea was a total mess. Lawler and Austin are two of the best to ever be associated with wrestling, but there is only so much they can do when they are put in this spot.
I’ve seen a lot of wrestling over the years and I’ve watched a lot of WrestleMania. In all that time, I don’t think there has ever been anything that both angered and perplexed me as much as this mess. It was like the biggest effort imaginable to annoy the fans at every turn and then they JUST KEPT GOING WITH IT for another several weeks. When you’re making Uncle Elmer vs. Adrian Adonis, Jey Uso vs. Jimmy Uso and the Miss WrestleMania Battle Royal look great, something has gone very wrong. This was an all-time disaster, and I can’t imagine it’s ever being topped.
Did You Know...
This Was The Biggest Payday Of Jerry Lawler's Entire Pro Wrestling Career?
My lone WrestleMania match led to my biggest payday ever in the wrestling business. [...] I got paid $130,000 for that match. - Jerry Lawler, Dinner With The King Podcast Episode 16, 2017 (h/t Wrestling Inc)
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