Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, and The One True King's Road

Between the roaring Houston crowd, those big emphatic finisher nearfalls, Taker and Michaels lean on the most obvious tropes to create an epic, but pretty much get away with it in the moment.

Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, and The One True King's Road
WWE

It’s been almost sixteen years since this match. Already preordained as something of a legendary clash between two of the WWE’s longest tenured legends, the WrestleMania XXV bout between The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels was received with pretty much instant acclaim from both fans in attendance and those watching worldwide. For me, catching this match only halfway into it on a trashy illegal online stream around the same time that I had begun expanding my horizons to watch more independent and Japanese wrestling, the match still left an immediate impact. Between the roaring Houston crowd, those big emphatic finisher nearfalls, Taker and Michaels lean on the most obvious tropes to create an epic, but pretty much get away with it in the moment.

Sixteen years away from a match so widely beloved, it’s no shock that there’s been pushback against this match’s reputation. Even at the peaks of their respective popularities, Taker and Michaels are deeply divisive figures in online wrestling discourse. Both attract heavy criticism, especially in the circles I’m closest to, and that naturally directs negative intention towards this, one of their grander and more overblown epics.

With this match in particular too, it’s not hard to draw a direct throughline between this and some of the worst modern trends in pro wrestling. A combination of Michaels’ increased backstage prominence within the WWE and the critical influence this specific bout has means that we get a lot of attempts to replicate what’s accomplished here. Yes, that means a million NXT main events where a nearfall gets followed by the dumbest looking “shocked” face aimed right at the camera. You know the bit, hands in faces, bug eyes, the shot getting in real close to put over that a wrestler is deeply pondering just what it’s going to take to put their opponent away. Taker face leads to NXT face and so on.

That said, as has been the case with so much in pro wrestling, the cheap imitators just do not get close to what works in the original.

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For all the myriad reasons to be cynical about this match, sixteen years later and there’s still an undeniable charm to it.

While some of that comes from that old WrestleMania magic—big crowd, bright lights, and a healthy dose of mythologizing—there’s a lot in the actual in-ring work here to support the theatrics. The match is pretty neatly divided into two distinct sections. The first sees a solidly done match built around a pretty classic David vs. Goliath dynamic. This functions best when reading the match from the perspective of Shawn Michaels as a heel figure, not a hard stretch to make given some of his actions in the latter half. It never becomes overt but Michaels is forced to play a more canny role here, having to stick and move as a strategy to breach The Undertaker’s defenses. Michaels is also the first to initiate a more long term strategy by attacking Taker’s leg. To Taker’s credit, he’s always been a rather capable leg seller throughout his career and here he’s able to get over being a wounded monster in a way that feels sympathetic without ever denting his credibility as an imposing force.

In general, I don’t think Taker gets enough credit for how versatile he can really be at his best. Here we have him getting over the damage to his leg, something he remains fairly consistent with for much of the first half. His worked punches have a good swing behind them and even Michaels has always had a decent crunch behind his striking, and all these things make for a nicely escalating bout built around Michaels bumping for Taker’s more powerful offense and seeking out holes in Taker’s game to try and exploit.

Then, the whole match changes.

It comes as a result of two of the grossest WWE bumps possible happening consecutively. The first sees Shawn take what’s basically an unprotected moonsault right to the floor. No real good way to take that bump, and there’s the added bonus of Taker swiping him on the way down to add just a little visual oomph to the thing.

That this is directly followed by the infamous Jimmy Snuka Jr. Taker dive is just the cherry on top. Taker soars above the top rope and fucking crumples onto his head, oh god it’s so good. Look at the way that man’s body bends in on itself, the visible indent on the protective padding where his stupid head hit it, it fucking rocks so much! Every single time they replay it too, I cackle, one of those truly nutty bumps that can never lose its luster. All of that thanks to how spectacularly wrong it goes without actually causing any significant damage, the benefit of seeing some truly ugly physicality without the guilt of seeing someone get fucked up.

These back-to-back spots act as the demarcation point for the second half of the bout, what I jokingly referred to on stream as the “One True King’s Road.” The final half of the match sheds any real connection to all the narrative threads built up in the first. Gone is the leg work and the size difference doesn’t play quite as distinct a role. What’s left is these two working in and around a fairly limited pool of well-protected signature moves and finishers.

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What’s striking about this stretch on this watch is just how much mileage they’re able to get out of this in large part due to how well protected these movies were at this time. That’s not to say that finisher nearfalls were unheard of in the WWE at this point, but they were used more sparingly and often kick outs had direct logical reasons behind them (think someone taking too long to get into the cover, for example). Here, Michaels and Taker get the most out of their relative decades of patience and cashing in big. The first few Sweet Chin Musics are sudden enough to be believable as a lucky knock out shot, and the famous Taker face comes in response to a truly spectacular spot that sees Shawn fuck up skinning the cat, nearly hanging himself in the process if not for Taker dragging him off the ropes for the Tombstone. Spectacular stuff. Even the climactic spot which sees Shawn try for the moonsault again only to be caught in the Tombstone is awesome despite being a step down from the skin the cat one earlier in the match.

Is this string of finishers and counters repetitive? Yes and no.

It hurts these two that there’s very little going on between all the big finishers. It’s mostly laying down on the mat, taking their time to put over a more general fatigue than any localized selling. Unlike the much worse Bad Blood 04 Hell in a Cell, while the laying out on the mat is uninteresting, it’s not nearly so interminable and at least gets underscored by a wonderful Jim Ross commentary performance and a heated stadium crowd. There’s also no real midlevel offense that bridges the gaps between the superkicks and tombstones, making it feel like a procession of signature moves flirting dangerously with excess.

That said, for each time they deploy their big finishers in this, each counter feels fresh. This even adds some weight to something like Taker going up top for a big elbow drop. Every counter feels sensible, and it’s pretty easy to get caught up in those big two count kicks out even after all this time. There’s no masterclass selling here, sure, but patience and protection function best when you can make the most of it later on. They cash their check and it pays off big time.

It’s perhaps not the all-timer that it’s been painted as, but it’s still great by the slimmest margin. Ditch the angels and demons shit, and it’s a big spectacle where everything goes right—especially when they go wrong.

Rating: ***3/4