[NOTE: The WWE Network is currently offering a huge portion of its library for free, including every WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series, and NXT: Takeover.]
There's never been an easier time to get into pro wrestling. Not only are there two rival companies airing on TV for the first time since the early-2000s, but also the WWE Network offers a massive catalog of shows going back decades, spanning not just the WWE but also ECW, WCW, and the NWA. (Not to mention a healthy collection of documentaries and interview series.) But with all those options, it can be kind of hard to know where to start. We've got your back, brother.
Below, we've compiled the 10 best shows and moments to start with when diving into the gigantic library of the WWE Network.
WrestleMania III
If you need an introduction into the idea of pro wrestling as an Extra AF spectacle, look no further than WrestleMania III at the Pontiac Silverdome, which held the record for the largest indoor event of all time for 22 years until it was surpassed by the freaking Pope. (Vince McMahon would eventually get his revenge by literally defeating God<.) The event also just so happens to feature both ends of the spectrums when it comes to the ideal in-ring pro wrestling match. Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat vs. “Macho Man” Randy Savage is one of the greatest matches of all time and an athletic marathon, just 15 straight minutes of back-and-forth drama between two freaking workhorses in their prime. The main event slugfest between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant is...not that. "The Irresistible Force meeting the Immovable Object" is slow, plodding, and hampered by Andre’s deteriorating health. And in no way does any of that matter in the moment because woo boy this is the height of pro wrestling theatrics between two comic book characters come to life. Where else in the world could you see 93,173 people losing their freaking minds over a single bodyslam? --Vinnie Mancuso
ECW Heat Wave 1998
Before it got swallowed up by the WWE like every other wrestling promotion in the country, ECW made a name for itself by being completely shithouse insane. The production values were criminally low, every event was filmed in a tiny overcrowded theater thumbing its nose at every fire marshal in the state, and every wrestler on the roster looked like they might legitimately kill each other at any moment. Heat Wave 1998 is ECW at its peak counterculture glory. Shane Douglas gives weird, hilarious guest commentary the entire show, and it features arguably the greatest match in ECW’s brief but incredible history - a tag team match between Rob Van Dam & Sabu and Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki. It’s the only time Hayabusa wrestled at a major event in the United States, and holy shit you guys, this match is wild. If you want to see four utterly unique athletes flying through the air at each other with no regard for anyone’s safety, this deserves a permanent spot on your watchlist. The entire event is a fascinating artifact of independent wrestling in the late ‘90s. --Tom Reimann
King of the Ring 1998
The main event of King of the Ring 1998 was a First Blood match between Stone Cold Steve Austin and Kane, The Undertaker’s weird masked brother. (He previously wrestled as an evil dentist, Isaac Yankum D.D.S., because wrestling is incredible.) That match is fine, but the real reason to put this pay-per-view on is the Hell in a Cell match between Mankind and The Undertaker. It’s easily one of the most brutal matches in wrestling history, and it kicks off with Mankind getting thrown off of the steel cage and falling nearly 20 feet through the Spanish announcers’ table. Somehow he climbs back up the cage, only to get chokeslammed through it down into the ring. Footage from this match is also in the documentary Beyond the Mat, highlighting the fact that Mankind actually lost consciousness after falling through the cage, and one of his teeth got knocked out and wound up in his nostril. It’s arguably the most famous match of the past 20 years because of the huge bumps Mankind takes. I remember watching it live and absolutely losing my mind, and it still holds up. --Tom Reimann
WCW Great American Bash 1989
There's really no better example of that good old-fashioned tornado-style NWA-WCW wrastlin' than Great American Bash 1989, one of the wildest PPVs ever. It's only right that the headliner is Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk, two genuinely insane individuals who spent long, long careers going balls-to-the-wall seven nights a week. This match is no different, a bloody brawl that spans the entire arena; if you want to see two guys whip a crowd into an absolute frenzy with just chops and punches, here's your ticket. Flair vs. Funk being the craziest match on the card is even more impressive because it follows a freaking WarGames match, where two teams of five beat each other senseless inside a massive cage over two rings. Just pandemonium, start to finish. Elsewhere on the card, an absurdly popular Sting—before he started listening to Nine Inch Nails and hanging out in the rafters—takes on the deadly mist-spitting Great Muta, low-key the most talented person on this entire show. The '89 Bash is an absolute blast. --Vinnie Mancuso
WrestleMania 15
Without hyperbole, WrestleMania XV might be the greatest sporting event in human history. The main event features The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin battling for the WWE Championship for the first time. It’s an all-time great match and it’s hard to overstate its impact, but I’m going to, because there’s another match on this card that deserves your eternal attention, and that is the Brawl For All boxing match between Bart Gunn (not a boxer) and Butterbean (a champion professional exhibitionist boxer). Holy shit, you guys. I’m not even going to drop in a spoiler warning, because of course Bart Gunn loses, but my god the level at which he loses deserves to be recorded in a golden volume of text secured in a monastery in the French Alps. Butterbean punches Gunn so hard that his soul evacuates his body, and this happens in less than 40 seconds. I have watched this match no less than 100 times in my life, and it never gets less entertaining. Watch this pay-per-view right now, before you do anything else. I don’t care if you’re driving - pull over. This is your duty as a citizen of the world. --Tom Reimann
Monday Night Raw - January 4, 1999
The funny thing about this entry is that a solid 85% of this episode is comprised of some of the dirt-worst aspects of the WWF’s car-crash “Attitude Era” trashiness. We got miscarriages. We got homophobia. We got Dennis Knight just sort of chained up to a Saw trap in a basement somewhere. (Okay, I don’t hate that.) Skip all that, because the episode also just happens to end on arguably the greatest, most emotional televised professional wrestling moment of all time. The main event sees Mankind—a loveable loser who lives in boiler rooms and spent a good portion of his career being flung on to concrete and/or barbed wire—getting a shot at the title held by The Rock, a large Samoan adonis hand-picked by management to be the face of the company. It’s the type of underdog story non-scripted sports would kill for and the payoff is everything wrestling can be when pulled off perfectly. If you somehow don’t know exactly how things play out I won’t spoil it for ya here. Just know it involves Stone Cold Steve Austin and the loudest reaction by an arena full of people ever recorded by human instruments. --Vinnie Mancuso
Royal Rumble 1999
1999 was peak Attitude Era for WWE. We were in the middle of a wrestling renaissance (a wrestleassaince), The Rock had just exploded onto the scene with his new gimmick of referring to himself in the third person, and Stone Cold Steve Austin had quickly become the photo negative of Hulk Hogan - a superstar that didn’t believe in anything wholesome and drank and cussed and delivered skull-crushing Stone Cold Stunners to anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in his line of fire. At the height of the Austin-McMahon rivalry, Austin was entered into the Rumble at #1, and McMahon at #2. (Without spoiling the ending, Austin and McMahon end up being the only two competitors left in the ring.) Also, this Pay-Per-View is infamous for the I Quit match between The Rock and Mankind, in which The Rock repeatedly smashes Mankind in the head with a steel chair, as featured in the documentary Beyond the Mat. It’s one of the all-time greatest wrestling events, if not the greatest, so you owe it to yourself to watch it immediately. --Tom Reimann
WrestleMania 17
Considered by many fans to be the best WrestleMania ever, the main event has Stone Cold Steve Austin once again wrestling The Rock for the WWE Championship. Two of the most charismatic wrestlers of all time beating the shit out of each other for half an hour is a treat, but the match is almost more notable for Austin’s surprise heel turn at the end, when he joins forces with his longtime rival / bug-eyed lunatic Vince McMahon to beat The Rock. WrestleMania X-7 also features the Gimmick Battle Royale AKA the greatest contest of champions in American history. A bunch of glorious old wrestlers from the 80s and 90s, including Doink the Clown, Sgt. Slaughter, and the Iron Sheik, clumsily swat at each other like ogres for approximately 6 minutes. And classic commentary team Bobby the Brain Heenan and Mean Gene Okerlund return to call the match. It’s perfect. Arguably the highlight of the show is the Tables, Ladders & Chairs tag team match between the Dudley Boyz, Edge & Christian, and the Hardy Boyz. Three of the best tag teams ever whalloping the absolute christ out of each other with furniture is a total blast to watch from start to finish. This is an all-time great pay-per-view. --Tom Reimann
WrestleMania X8
WrestleMania 18, stylized X8 because the early-2000s were a wild time, is the easiest PPV to recommend to a wrestling newbie thanks to one match: Hulk Hogan vs. The Rock. Even before one became the biggest movie star in the world and the other destroyed a website because of a sex tape, you knew those names. They’re like Michael Jordan, or Derek Jeter, or Gritty. They transcend the sport. Their only one-on-one clash is also just a perfect example of what makes pro wrestling unlike any other art form. Hogan walked into the match the villainous leader of the dastardly New World Order, facing off against The Rock at the height of his fan-favorite era. But something in the air at the Skydome made the crowd full-throttle supporters of the Hulkster, and the two savvy professionals in the ring sensed the crowd reaction essentially swapped roles mid-match, resulting in one of the most unforgettable in-ring stories of all time. I love Chris Jericho as much as and possibly more than several family members, but his main event match against HHH should have never followed Rock/Hogan. Nothing should have.
As a bonus for anyone coming in because of the “Icon vs. Icon” match, there are a ton of gems in the undercard, too, including one of the best ever sells of the Stone Cold Stunner courtesy of Scott Hall. --Vinnie Mancuso
Money in the Bank 2011
Yes, pro wrestling is not "real", congratulations, but its most iconic moments are the ones where it inarguably feels real. The most authentic storyline of the last decade came to a close at Money in the Bank 2011. The brash, out-spoken CM Punk's WWE contract actually was set to expire as he headed to the ring in his vastly biased hometown to face John Cena—the neon-colored opposite of Punk in every way—for the WWE title, a token Vince McMahon desperately wanted to keep off the departing rebel. It's a perfect mesh of real-life and fantasy that combines into something so electric you don't care what's real or scripted.
Elsewhere on the show, you've got two fantastic ladder matches, Christian and Randy Orton continuing their deeply entertaining feud, and, to top it all off, legit possibly the weirdest PPV poster of all time. --Vinnie Mancuso
Honorable Mentions
Royal Rumble 2005: Just skip to the part when Vince tries to slide into the ring and absolutely detonates both of his quads in the process. He literally cannot stand and has to play out the scene sitting down in the ring, and everyone around him has to pretend like it’s not totally insane. This is an all-time moment. --Tom Reimann
NXT TakeOver: Respect / NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn 1: The two matches between Sasha Banks and Bayley at TakeOver: Respect and TakeOver: Brooklyn are so freaking good they pretty much singlehandedly changed the course of women's wrestling. The Brooklyn match is probably the better, more emotional of the two, but Sasha Banks made a small child cry at Respect so you really can't go wrong. --Vinnie Mancuso
WrestleMania 7: You haven’t truly experienced all that professional wrestling has to offer until you watch the Ultimate Warrior and the Macho Man Randy Savage wail on each other in WrestleMania 7. The Warrior was a genuine maniac, and he spends part of this contest speaking to his hands. Savage also dabbled in lip-wiggling lunacy, but he was a legitimately great performer, and he manages to get a genuinely good match out of the notoriously stiff Warrior. --Tom Reimann
WCW Clash of Champions 24: Just jump to "The Shockmaster makes his debut" and thank me later. --Vinnie Mancuso
King of the Ring 1996: This is the show where “Austin 3:16” was coined, launching both Stone Cold Steve Austin’s path to superstardom and WWE’s Attitude era. His match against Jake the Snake is pretty great, but the real highlight is Owen Hart doing guest commentary, in which he keeps inflating Jake’s age. “He’s 172 years old, he has no business being in that ring!” Man, I miss Owen. --Tom Reimann
NXT TakeOver: Dallas: Sami Zayn vs. a debuting Shinsuke Nakamura caused my soul to depart my body several times. 10/10 highly recommended. --Vinnie Mancuso