WrestleMania XII is a show I've tended to avoid reviewing/rewatching over the years mostly because of its main event. But as I've made my way through a ton of the mid-90s WWE shows, it was time I forced myself to check this show out again as a whole. Here goes...
The show starts off with a six-man tag - Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Ahmed Johnson, and Yokozuna taking on Camp Cornette's Vader, British Bulldog, and Owen Hart. Owen is the standout performer in this match, just absolutely killing it every second he's in the ring. Yokozuna looks and moves exactly like how one would expect a 600 pound man to move. Jake Roberts doesn't look much better. So, really, this is a match carried by the overness of the wrestlers involved and the crowd's general enthusiasm for being at a WrestleMania. There is a stipulation in place that if the faces win, Yoko gets 5 minutes alone with Cornette, which would suggest that the babyfaces had to win here...but they don't. Instead, we get all sorts of chaos before Vader lands his Vader Bomb on Jake to get the W. I'm not even sure Roberts or Vader were the legal men either. A good enough opener that showed just how important Owen (and to a lesser degree Bulldog) was to keeping the in-ring product from being complete garbage in the mid-90s. Vader gets to shine a bit too, but placing him in a six-man in the opener of WrestleMania still feels like maybe not the best showcase for a guy that needed to be pushed even stronger upon joining the WWE (as he had, undeniably, had some of his credibility taken away jobbing to Hogan in WCW on his way out). (2.5/5)
From here we go to the first part of the infamous Goldust/Roddy Piper "Backlot Brawl" match. Piper looks badass waiting for Goldust to arrive in the backlot of a Hollywood studio and the Bizarre One pulls in an all-gold Cadillac, which is equally sick. From here, things get less cool as Goldust and Piper brawl in a fashion not dissimilar but far less cinematic than what Hot Rod did in They Live. Goldust ends up back in the Caddy and tries to run over Piper in a ridiculous stunt. The scene ends with Piper jumping into a white Ford Bronco...
We're then back to the ring for "Stone Cold" Steve Austin vs. Savio Vega. I was surprised that Austin was already going by "Stone Cold" as I didn't think he'd picked up that nickname until a couple months after this (I thought he was billed as "The Million Dollar Champion" primarily during this span). They get 10 minutes but this match feels a little longer, dragging a bit as the crowd isn't super into it. I've come to see Vega as a better brawler and performer than I thought he was as a kid, but I still can't say I'm a superfan of him or anything. Austin is Austin, but all the pieces and parts weren't clicking yet and he was clearly still finding his footing in a new environment. Not a bad match, just not a particularly good one either. (2/5)
The Ultimate Warrior made his much-anticipated (but ultimately very brief) return next, squashing Hunter Hearst Helmsley in a match that went under 2 minutes. While this could never be considered a high point in either guy's career, the crowd is definitely into it and Warrior did at least look incredible. Its a shame that Warrior, at this point, had veered so, so far from actually caring about the pro-wrestling business and had no interest in actually becoming a good performer as, if he had put in the time and dedication that Sting did (and maybe set his aside his ego), there could've/would've been some real fun in seeing Warrior face guys like Vader and Austin or do babyface/babyface matches against Ahmed Johnson, Shawn Michaels, or Bret Hart. Oh well. (1/5)
We now get more of the "punchline" from the Goldust/Piper brawl earlier as their high-speed chase proves to be just footage from OJ's low-speed chase from 1994, which was, yes, almost a full 2 years earlier.
Back in the ring, Diesel takes on The Undertaker in a Battle of the Big Men. At the time, The Undertaker being undefeated at WrestleMania wasn't a "thing" and, because Nash was in the midst of negotiating with Vince (but leaning towards leaving), its possible that Vince offered to let him go over (though that's never really been confirmed). Anyway...this match starts off with some awesome offense out of Taker, but things slow down when Diesel takes over. I also don't like how Diesel's dominance is stretched out with playing to the crowd and generic heel gloating. This sort of arrogance would've made sense if Diesel was just your average dumb big man, but I always liked that Nash played his role as not that and actually had some brains behind the brawn. In this match, the arrogance is just too much when, during the build, Diesel may have been confident about his chances to beat the Deadman, but he also respected that the Undertaker couldn't be treated lightly. Once Diesel has the Undertaker hurt, he is comically overconfident. It just plays as a bit of a cop-out compared to the intense back-and-forth that starts the match and makes this one seem like it might actually tell a more engaging story than the rather formulaic Babyface Shine/Heel Heat/Babyface Comeback narrative. Now, that's not to say there aren't some cool moments - especially out of Nash, who delivers two beautiful Jacknifes on the Phenom - but this was underwhelming even if, up till then, it was probably one of Taker's best Mania matches yet. (3/5)
At this point, Roddy Piper and Goldust end up in the ring to wrap-up their night-long segment. The big shocking reveal is that Goldust is wearing women's lingerie. At the time, this was scandalous and established further how "bizarre" the Bizarre One was. Once again the crowd pop bigged for it too, though one has to wonder what the kids in the audience thought of all this nonsense. This was the kind of stuff that Bret Hart wasn't a huge fan of, I'm guessing, but as we would see in the months and years to come, clearly the WWE was going to have to "shake things up" a bit as WCW sharpened its own tone and grew darker with the creation of the nWo. Anyway, as a storyline running through the whole show, this was a mixed bag. It started off kinda cool and then got progressively sillier and then ended with a weird punchline that seemed too "adult" compared to the rest of the show. (1.5/5)
Main event time - Shawn Michaels challenging Bret Hart for the WWE Championship in a 60-minute Ironman match. Like several of Bret's most famous matches (and to a lesser extent Shawn's), this is one that many fans either like (or at least respect as a "genre exercise") or absolutely loathe (and believe to be either masturbatory or needlessly detached, a match that Bret designed to show he could go an hour rather than designing a match that should go an hour. Its interesting to think if this match would've been received better if there was no stipulation at all and they just went 60+ minutes with the very same finish, but I kinda doubt it. The pacing issues that make this one not work are there regardless. Early on, the extended mat work makes sense to build tension, but as the match goes on, every time it seems like they're going to kick this into the next gear, they slow things back down. For a match built up around guys trying to score as many pinfalls as possible on their opponents, the nearfalls and finisher teases are limited. In later interviews, Bret revealed that he believed the match should've been broken up by pinfalls, that they could've had a very similar finish (an overtime ending with a Sweet Chin Music) with each guy scoring 1 or 2 pins during the hour but that Vince's vision was to have it go 0-0 until the end. Theoretically, this should've built up the suspense until a thrilling final 5-10 minutes, but the journey to get there has been so unremarkable that it just doesn't match the hype. Now, there are individual moments sprinkled throughout this match that are thrilling. Michaels takes some great bumps to the outside that wake the crowd up and there's a great superkick spot on the outside to the timekeeper. Bret hits his signature spots with gusto, the Excellence of Execution living up to his name, but I would've liked to see both guys dip into their heel bag of tricks a little - even if the audience might've turned on one or the other or both - as another way to lively things up. Ultimately, that's the largest failure of the match: it just never escapes the shadow of what it could've been, should've been, or would've been. (2/5)
With a Kwang Score of 2-out-of-5, WrestleMania XII is not one of the better Manias that the WWE has produced. In some ways, they had the pieces to make for a very good show. Vega and Austin would go on to have a pretty solid strap match some months after this. The main event is a disappointment considering the workers involved, but the stipulation did them no favors and, according to Bret, the bad decision to end the match 0-0 (before the "overtime") that was made by Vince ended up leading to a match that feels aimless when it should feel urgent. Vader, Piper, Goldust...they're all on this card and while none are used especially poorly, none are used in the best possible way either. Even Diesel/Undertaker, which is arguably much better than it would sound on paper, has its shortcomings despite being the Match of the Night.
FINAL RATING - High Risk Maneuver
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