Book Review: My Favorite Match

In 2012, WWE released a book called My Favorite Match: WWE Superstars Tell The Stories of Their Most Memorable Matches by Jon Robinson who wrote Rumble Road: Untold Stories from Outside the Ring. I have read other books published by WWE Books and they were fun to read, but they didn't really reveal any information that I thought was very interesting. The books are "PG" and some of them are written in kayfabe. I expected this book to be similar, but I was able to rent it for free from my library so I decided to read it. The book ended up being a lot better than I expected. 26 WWE superstars and legends wrote about their favorite match that they were in and they were allowed to say whatever they wanted to. I expected them to talk in kayfabe, but they talked about the backstage stuff that happened before and after their matches. There were some stuff that I had never seen mentioned anywhere. I will review the most interesting stuff from this book...WARNING: THIS REVIEW HAS SPOILERS!

This book is like 26 biographies in one book. Guys like Triple H, The Miz, and Randy Orton have not written a book yet, but they wrote a chapter in this book so it was like getting a preview of what their book might look like if they ever write one. Everyone in this book were not censored. They could say whatever they wanted and didn't have to be in character or talk in kayfabe. They weren't saying stuff like, "This match is important to me because I was able to win the match and get revenge for that attack on RAW." They said stuff like, "This match happened because Vince didn't think the guy who was opposed to face me was going to convince people to buy the PPV." They said a lot of backstage stuff that we aren't supposed to know about. And if they wanted to swear, they could. No PG in this book. Orton dropped a couple f-bombs in his chapter and I think his autobiography would be a fun read if he ever wrote one.

I thought the matches the WWE stars picked were interesting. Most of the guys didn't pick their best matches. Some of these matches are terrible, but they were picked because it was at WrestleMania or it was for a WWE championship. I think John Cena was in two of the matches and both matches are matches that probably mean very little to Cena, but they mean a lot to his opponents. A lot of these matches are matches that the guy writing the chapter probably likes the match a lot more than his opponent. For his opponent, it was just another match, but for the guy writing the chapter, it's his favorite match. The book isn't one of the best books I have ever read and it's less than 200 pages, but I enjoyed reading the true and untold stories of some famous WWE matches. I have included some interesting quotes that were in the book.

Quotes are from the WWE superstar/legend whose name is above the quotes.

The Miz (The Miz vs. John Cena from WrestleMania 27)

• "The moment I liked the most throughout the [Rock-Cena-Miz] feud has to be when I came out dressed as The Rock...When I was told that I was going to imitate The Rock on RAW, at first I was excited, but then reality hit and I was like, "Nobody is going to believe this."...I didn't think I was going to pull this off, but Vince McMahon told me: 'The people want to believe that The Rock is here...so bad that they'll believe you're The Rock.'...I thought [the fans would] just react with silence because it was so stupid that this guy who looked nothing like The Rock was out there pretending to be him. So I heard the music...and the crowd erupted. I was like, 'Oh my God!'...I thought it would take them only about fifteen seconds to know that I wasn't actually The Rock, but the crowd was so enthralled thinking that it was really him that people were going nuts for me...It wasn't until I took off my wig [after entering the ring and giving Cena a Rock Bottom] that a lot of people first realized that it wasn't The Rock, it was me."
• "As for the match itself...I don't remember anything from my entrance and winking at my friends [sitting in the front row] on...I suffered a concussion during the match that wiped away my memory...I don't remember my match. I don't remember The Rock coming out. I don't remember winning...I know I was coherent during the match, but when I hit my head, I lost all memory of it. So it kind of sucks that my favorite match and my favorite moment is WrestleMania 27 where I go over, and I don't remember it happening."
• "[A lot of people] say that when...John Cena hit me with the AA, everyone thought it was over. When I kicked out, people said I was a made man right then. That was the moment they all remember about the match, even if I had to watch it on DVD to even know what they were talking about."
• "What's funny is that after the match, Chris Jericho actually texted me and said, 'You've been working on your selling, haven't you?' I was like, 'Dude, I was really knocked out.' And he texted back, 'Figures."

Shawn Michaels (Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker from WrestleMania 26)

• "Vince had a meeting with a few of us, including myself, 'Taker, and Hunter, and he told us how we needed to start building up these younger guys...He said, 'Hunter, you're going to work with Sheamus and start building him. Shawn, you're going to work with Miz and start building him. And 'Taker, you're going to work with Drew McIntyre and start building him.'...In about November, Vince called me in and said, 'Look, there's no way those guys are going to be ready...I want to go with a rematch between you and Undertaker.' Obviously, Sheamus turned out to be great, and he was ready for his moment at WrestleMania, but back then the other two just weren't quite there yet."
• Some people in the back were going back and forth about whether or not the rematch between me and 'Taker was the right choice for WrestleMania. So I told Vince that if I was winning the Slammy for Match of the Year with Undertaker for our match the year before, that's when I should go out and issue the challenge for the rematch. But Vince was really wavering about it at this point and wasn't sure. So I figured if I just went out there and made the challenge, then we had to do it, right? Somebody had to pull the trigger. So I told Vince that after I accepted my award, I was going to cut a promo on 'Taker. After I said that, Vince was like, 'All right, I guess we're going there now.' I told him, 'I won't do it if you don't want to, but if we're going to do this, we need to start now,' and he was on board. So I went out, got my award, and cut the promo that planted the seed for the match."
• "Originally, if I wanted, when I made the Hall of Fame, I was going to announce that I wanted to do a retirement tour, but I couldn't because of this match (the match stipulation was that Shawn had to retire if he lost to Undertaker). Then we were going to have Undertaker come out and he was going to acknowledge that I could do a retirement tour. We had planned to do that going into the match, so there was still that possibility of me wrestling a few more times. But after the match...Undertaker and Michael Hayes and I sat in a room, we toasted a shot of Jack Daniel's, and we sat there quiet for a number of minutes. Then Michael Hayes looked over at me and said, 'Hey, if you don't want to do that retirement tour, I'll understand, because I don't think anything will top what you guys just did.' I sat there for a minute, I looked at him and Mark, and I said, 'The retirement tour is out. I want this to be my last one.' We all just smiled and sat there for another two hours. We didn't say much. We just soaked it all in."

Cody Rhodes (Legacy vs. DX from SummerSlam 2009)

• "All of the production costs were sky high for DX's entrance. They had army tanks and a run-in from the Army National Guard, and DX glow sticks sitting in every seat, so the atmosphere was just huge for this match...The rules were that you couldn't have a vehicle in the building with that much gas if you were also going to have pyro...It's actually a law...When they rehearsed it, the tank only went about three feet and then puttered out. It ran out of gas...Everyone actually became quite concerned that when we went live, the tank wasn't going to go anywhere. The thing just puttered out so poorly, thank God they rehearsed it so they could work out whatever bugs it had before the show started."
• "What people might not realize is that I always wanted to get in the ring with Shawn Michaels. He is my favorite wrestler of all time, and the other favorites I have don't even come close to him...So when the match started, I was in the ring with Hunter, but then as a change of thought, I went over and bitch-smacked Shawn across the face. It was something that wouldn't hurt anybody, but it would certainly get your attention. Hunter then tagged Shawn...And I was so fired up that when Hunter tagged him, he turned to me and said, 'Do you want him?' And I was so fired up--and you could hear this on TV--but I said, 'Yeah, I want him. I've always fucking wanted him!' I don't know why I said that...but I meant every bit of it. Yeah, I fucking wanted him."
• "This feud against DX really opened my eyes to a lot of things about how things work both backstage and on the stage in WWE. Triple H is really just an entertainment master, and it's weird, but he reminds me so much of my dad (Dusty Rhodes). The people like him so much, but he's always willing to put himself in jeopardy in front of them, and they like him even more for that. He did so much to help us in this feud, and he didn't phone it in. But I also learned very quickly that while Shawn Michaels is my hero, he's kind of a jerk. That was fine with me. I learned that when it comes to the future in this business, guys whom I was a fan of or enjoyed or liked, I'm not going to ask them how their day is every five seconds if they don't want to talk to me. I think Shawn being a jerk to me backstage worked out because it made for a very real environment inside the ring...He's still my favorite, and I stand by that."

 Triple H (Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels from Summerslam 2002)

• "Shawn said: 'You know what, my kid is getting older and I would just love for him to see what I can do just one time. I can't do it full time, physically, I know that, and I'm not sure if I can even do it one time, but I know if I did, I could do it with you. You will protect me.' Shawn trusted me...This was only supposed to be a one-time thing. We were going to wrestle each other one time, that was it. He was going back into retirement. That was the plan, at least."
• "It was intense and really emotional going into it (Everyone was worried about Shawn getting hurt or injured during the match), and when we finally got inside the ring, I'll never forget, we just started fighting. We were only a minute or two into the match, and in my mind I was like, 'Jesus Christ, he has not lost a step. This guy is still as good as he was when I wrestled him six years ago.' There's a timing in our business, there's a rhythm to it, and when you haven't done it for even a brief period of time, they call it ring rust...But in this match, there was no ring rust. It was like Shawn had wrestled the day before and this was just another night."
• "We beat the shit out of each other and he didn't get hurt...That night set the table for him to be back, and his return lasted almost eight years."