WWE hit its peak at the beginning of 2001. The first three pay-per-views of the year are three of the best in company history with WrestleMania X-Seven taking the top spot in most people’s eyes.
After that show, however, the quality of WWE programming took a sharp dip. Steve Austin’s heel turn and the terrible Invasion angle ran off a lot of fans and is generally seen as the beginning of WWE’s decline in popularity.
This is still being felt 20 years later. However, there were still many great pay-per-view matches in 2001.
Some members of the roster were forced to take time off due to injury but others stepped up in a big way.
These are the eleven best WWE pay-per-view matches of 2001.
11. Kurt Angle vs. Shane McMahon – King of the Ring
Shane McMahon’s match with Kurt Angle at King of the Ring 2001 is probably the best match of his career. It is also the most brutal.
Angle and McMahon had a 26-minute Street Fight that not only had good wrestling, but some of the most sickening bumps in WWE history.
The ones that stick out in everyone’s minds are Angle’s attempts to throw Shane through the glass set. Unfortunately for Shane, the glass didn’t break. Shane hit the glass and dropped upside down, right on his head.
Brutal doesn’t even begin to cover it.
10. Chris Jericho vs. The Rock – No Mercy
WWE tends to ignore this match when they talk about Chris Jericho winning his first world title.
While he did win the Undisputed Championship at Vengeance 2001, his first world title win came two months earlier at No Mercy, beating The Rock to win the WCW Championship.
The title didn’t mean as much at the tail end of a terrible Invasion angle but at least Jericho won it in a great match. He and The Rock had great chemistry together and this match was a big moment for Jericho as a main event talent.
He also used the Breakdown here. His oft-forgotten finisher that would later become The Miz’s Skull-Crushing Finale. Just a neat tidbit really.
9. Kurt Angle vs. The Rock – No Way Out
Had Earl Hebner not ruined the finish of this match, this probably would have placed higher on this list.
The Rock and Kurt Angle were two of the biggest stars in the promotion in 2001 and the winner of this match would defend the WWE Championship in the main event of the biggest WrestleMania to date.
After a great back and forth match, The Rock had things won when Hebner stopped his count for no reason. He thought it wasn’t the finish and just stopped counting, taking much of the wind out of the match’s sails.
The Rock hit another Rock Bottom and got the win but talk about a wet fart of an ending.
8. Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit – WrestleMania X-Seven
Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit would continue to go back to each other for years after this match. Understandable as they had some of the best chemistry in wrestling at the time.
At WrestleMania X-Seven, many of the matches were so great because of how different they were. For those who wanted to see proper technical wrestling, it didn’t get better than this.
The two just went out there and wrestled. It should come as no surprise that it was great considering these were arguably the two best in-ring workers in WWE at the time.
It didn’t have to be flashy to be great and they pulled out one of the best matches on the best WrestleMania of all time.
7. Team WWF vs. Team Alliance – Survivor Series
While the Invasion had been a massive failure, at the very least it ended with a great match.
At Survivor Series 2001, we got the best traditional Survivor Series tag match to date as Team WWF took on The Alliance.
Yes, the Alliance team was made up of 60% WWF talent but if you ignore that the match was very enjoyable. There was a ton of star power in this match as it came across as something of an all-star game.
There were twists and turns as the eliminations racked up with members of both teams betraying the others. The Invasion is best forgotten but this is still one of the best Survivor Series matches ever.
6. The Royal Rumble Match
Similar to the last entry, this is one of the best Royal Rumble matches in history. The company was at its very hottest with its roster at its most stacked.
All the stars of the Attitude Era were present and accounted for with big performances out of Kane, The Rock, The Undertaker and Steve Austin.
It is genuinely hard to find a better Royal Rumble as this match is just fun from start to finish. Great surprises and comedy moments all capped off with Steve Austin winning his third Rumble to go to WrestleMania.
The 2001 Royal Rumble is one of WWE’s best pay-per-views ever and it ended with this classic match.
5. Steve Austin vs. Kurt Angle – SummerSlam
WWE has a bad habit of extending rivalries needlessly through the use of disqualification finishes. 99% of the time it ends up with an incredibly flat finish leaving fans disappointed and irritated.
In this match, however, the DQ finish helped the story rather than hurt it. Kurt Angle was wrestling as a tremendous babyface against heel Steve Austin. Heel Austin was a bad idea overall but at least he gave us this match.
Austin beat Angle to a bloody pulp but Angle started to fire back, beating Austin to within seconds of winning the WWE Championship. In an act of cowardice, Austin got himself DQed to retain the title.
The finish made sense in the context of the story and genuinely might be the best DQ finish in WWE history.
4. Chris Jericho vs. Chris Benoit – Royal Rumble
There had been a handful of great ladder matches before the Royal Rumble in 2001. There were the classic Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon matches but the business had evolved a lot in the six years after those matches.
By 2001, fast-paced action and stunts were all the rage. Guys like the Hardys, Dudleys and Edge and Christian made a name for themselves as the ladder match guys, doing death-defying stunts on a regular basis.
Here, Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit combined high-flying with expert psychology to create one of the best ladder matches of all time. Even today, this match holds up better than most.
Jericho and Benoit had a tremendous rivalry going at the time and the intensity bled through into this match. This is an all-time classic and another reason why the Royal Rumble 2001 is such a great pay-per-view.
3. Steve Austin vs. Triple H – No Way Out
I have always said that Triple H’s best matches come when he is able to work with a stipulation. For this theory, I present Exhibit A, this match with Steve Austin at No Way Out 2001.
Austin and Triple H had been feuding since it was revealed it was Triple H who put the hit on Austin that cost him a year of his career. Their rivalry had been very violent but it culminated with this excellent Three Stages of Hell match.
They had a regular wrestling match, followed by a Street Fight before finishing with a cage match. If this sounds like a lot of recent NXT matches that’s because it is, only better.
Two top stars at the height of the Attitude Era, the fans were white-hot for this match. Triple H beating Austin right before WrestleMania X-Seven still makes no sense but it’s Triple H. What can you expect?
2. Hardy Boyz vs. Dudley Boyz vs. Edge & Christian – WrestleMania X-Seven
The Dark Knight, Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather Part II, Toy Story 2, Terminator 2, Spider-Man 2, TLC II. All sequels that outperformed their predecessors.
At WrestleMania X-Seven, TLC II raised the bar for what could be done in a match involving ladders.
The Hardys, Dudleys and Edge and Christian had defined the WWF’s tag team division during the Attitude Era. It was only right that on the Attitude Era’s swan song event, those three teams battled in their most historic match ever.
The list of incredible spots in TLC II is a mile long with Edge’s spear on Jeff Hardy placing right at the top. If car-crash action is your thing, this match changed wrestling for you.
This match nearly took the top spot on this list, however it just couldn’t beat out…
1. Steve Austin vs. The Rock – WrestleMania X-Seven
The main event of the greatest WrestleMania in history. Maybe the best WrestleMania main event of all time.
Steve Austin, The Rock, and Vince McMahon were the three names that defined the WWF during the Attitude Era. All three were involved in this match, which effectively brought WWE’s hottest period to an end.
Austin and Rock had chemistry like few have ever had in WWE. It also helps that they were the company’s biggest stars as WWE managed to capture lightning in a bottle with not only their rivalry but their interactions with Vince McMahon as well.
This match is a masterpiece with hard-hitting action and a white-hot crowd. There really could be no other match to close out the best WrestleMania of all time than this one. It was the perfect storm of pro wrestling in every way imaginable.
Well, except for Steve Austin turning heel at the end. That was pretty dumb.
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