30 Week Journey: Wrestlemania XI (1995)

The Lapsed Fan enters the second decade of its 30-week, 30-Wrestlemania review this week with a trademark deep dive into Wrestlemania 11, an inauspicious installment that asked the WWF fan to accept Diesel and Lawrence Taylor as the new Hogan/Mr. T combination.

Hosts Jack Encarnacao and JP Sarro cover all bases on the 1995 Mains, which took place at a time of particular strain on the WWF’s balance sheets and on the precipice of great change in the industry with the jumps of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage to WCW and the impending debut of Nitro. Is this the worst WrestleMania? The co-chairman perform autopsy to find out.

Topics broached include:

- Salt n Peppa’s shadow presence in the WWE Network version of the show, save for a handsy scene with a shirtless Bret Hart
- The Stridex blimp
- Undertaker goes 4-0 over Bundy
- Backlund and Jonathan Taylor Thomas play chess as a launching point for a Backlund treatise on what’s wrong with the youth of America
- The false promise of Bam Bam Bigelow’s agreeing to do the honors to L.T. in the main event
- The Diesel as WWF champion experiment, complete with attempting to Hulk Up as Shawn Michaels bumped all over Hartford and thoroughly out-shined him
- Why the Bret v. Backlund I Quit match ended up as pure comedy, and Roddy Piper’s culpability in it all
- Pam Anderson and Jenny McCarthy break kayfabe over allegiances in the Diesel v. HBK match, if such a thing was even explained to them at all before they took center stage in one of the show’s key contests
- The worst Jacknife
- L.T. hits Bam Bam with forearm after forearm after forearm after forearm after forearm

That and another probing chat with Wrestling Observer editor Dave Meltzer on the behind-the-scenes dynamics at the play on the show, in the WWF, and in the wrestling industry writ large at the time.

Stay Lapsed, and leap into the second decades of WrestleManias by downloading the latest TLF!