WrestleMania Trivia: It's 3/16!
Being that today is 3/16, I figured that rather than write a snarky post about how every one of Stone Cold Steve Austin's appearances the past six years has been like watching a bad cover band, I'd instead point out an impressive bit of Stone Cold history -- that the Rattlesnake is the only man to have won the WWE Championship in three consecutive WrestleMania appearances -- at WM 14 over Shawn Michaels, and at WM 15 and 17 over The Rock.
Which brings me to today's trivia question.
The one WrestleMania missing in that equation is 16, when Austin was still recovering from his neck surgery. At that show, the WWE Title match featured Triple H retaining the title in a Fatal Fourway against Rock, Mick Foley and Big Show -- one of only two times in the pre-split title era (i.e., before we created separate world titles for Raw and SmackDown in 2002) that a heel successfully retained the title at a WrestleMania.
Besides Triple H in 2000, who is the only other heel champion to ever successfully RETAIN the championship in a WrestleMania match, prior to the split-title era?
The answer is Yokozuna, who successfully defended the WWE Title against Lex Luger in the forgotten title match at WrestleMania X, about an hour before dropping the belt to Bret Hart in the night's main event.
Yokozuna is also the only heel ever to actually win the WWE Championship at WrestleMania, having beaten Bret Hart the year before, only to lose the title to Hulk Hogan just seconds later.
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Comments (1)
As for heels that have won the world title before the brand split, do we count Stone Cold at WM 17 or not? Technically he turned heel before winning the title from the Rock, even if the crowd didn't really acknowledge this as so.