This isn’t a full blown review (I wait a couple of years for the event to really set in. It’s easy to get too overly excited or overly down on something right away), just some thoughts about what turned out to be a pretty awesome Wrestlemania.
Good for Cesaro and Tyson Kidd to retain the tag belts. Hopefully with this whole “taking the secondary titles seriously” deal, they include the tag titles too. Kidd and Cesaro make a great team and hopefully they get a long reign. Match itself was messy but fun. It felt like one of those indy matches back in the early 2000s we all would have went nuts for. That’s not a negative either, sometimes that type of match just fits.
Big Show winning the battle royal was okay I guess. Nice tease with Cesaro picking up Big Show again. My pick, Ryback, made the final four but got taken out by Show. Mizdow turned on Miz at the end, but left himself with Big Show all alone as a result. He almost pulled off the miracle (with the 2004 Benoit finish) but Show tossed him. Will WWE go with Mizdow?
Something that I thought was awesome in the battle royal, Miz and Mizdow double teaming Alex Riley, and the announce team actually referring to Miz and Riley’s history. There needs to be more of that.
I’m not sure it’s just me, but I’m kinda over multi-man ladder matches. It was still fun and a good match, and the right man won with Daniel Bryan (as long as they do take the IC title seriously). Still, seeing Dean Ambrose take that powerbomb through the ladder is was cringeworthy. When I see guys like Edge talk about how TLC matches were probably the main reason his career ended early, and how guys all over the industry refer to TLC matches as arguably the most dangerous, I just don’t enjoy them as I once did.
The finish to Randy Orton and Seth Rollins was pretty incredible (Curb Stomp into RKO!). Match was good too. Where was a cool reversal sequence on the Orton rotation slam which I don’t remember ever being countered. Good stuff.
HHH was out to terminate Sting
Triple H vs. Sting is the match that you either hated and didn’t care about or loved every moment. I am in the latter category. On one hand it may have seemed off to have the nWo be on Sting’s side, but if I am buying the WWE vs. WCW narrative I assume Sting would side with them over the WWE. But having HHH with DX on one side against Sting and nWo on the other was nuts. Even if none of these guys are in their prime or even close to it, everyone did their part well. HHH winning doesn’t completely bother me either. I mean, who is going to be wrestling more matches in the future, HHH or Sting? Oh, and I loved both entrances, even if it seemed like WWE got Sting and The Great Muta confused for his.
All the legendary IC Champs congratulating Bryan is a nice touch. Bryan can potentially be so good that in a few months we might be regarding the IC Title as THE title. Factoring in booking though makes that quite unlikely. Still, hearing Bryan on Chris Jericho’s podcast made me think that yes, not everyone can be the Hulk Hogan or even Bret Hart of the company…it takes a special kind of combination of look, timing, ability and success in a pressure packed situation to pull that off. But everyone can be Terry Funk if they work hard at it. I think Daniel Bryan is the Terry Funk of his generation in terms of looking to put people over. And that’s ok.
I leveled myself for sure picking The Bellas to go over AJ and Paige. As much as I like AJ, it does seem that it is time to move past her in the Diva’s division. Those NXT women are ready.
Rusev rode a tank. It may be the most bad ass thing I’ve ever seen in wrestling honestly. We knew John Cena was winning, but I didn’t like how he won. Rusev needed more to go down there. Rusev also being frustrated with not being able to beat Cena made no sense since he beat him last month. I hope Rusev endures. He’s great. John Cena had a springboard stunner in there and in the ring, he’s still great. The character of John Cena though is just so damn boring at this point.
The Rock confronts the Authority, and to my shock Stephanie McMahon actually outduels Rock on the mic. The Rock brings in Ronda Rousey…who might be the 2nd most dangerous person in the ring overall (Brock) for the night. She armdrags HHH and almost breaks Stephanie’s arm. Rock and Rousey vs. HHH and Stephanie would be something next year.
Bray Wyatt’s entrance with the scarecrows was awesome. Also awesome was the fact there was nothing special about Undertaker’s entrance. I always took Taker having a spectacle of an entrance as him playing mind games with his opponent. But there’s no playing mind games with Wyatt. As big an Undertaker mark that I am, him winning here made little sense to me. There’s no more pressure of being the one to break the streak. So why did Undertaker go over? And now what happens to Wyatt? It should be noted that Undertaker looked like Wrestlemania XX Undertaker here, with leather pants instead of tights and his hair grown back. It was a throwback of what was a throwback to begin with. He looked MUCH better than he did last year. Match was fine, but closer to that 2004 Undertaker than what he was over the last decade. And that’s okay at this point. (Also, Wyatt apparently screwed up his ankle right before the match, so kudos to him).
Boy did the main event deliver. WWE stuck with the Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar plan and it paid off (and I’ll throw in a surprisingly). Reigns showed he can hang tough with Lesnar and they had a great match before the incredible finish. Lesnar destroyed Reigns. It was crazy. But kudos to Reigns. I’m back on your side.
So, I never thought Seth Rollins would win the World Title with his MITB after Lesnar won the title. I didn’t see Brock dropping the belt…well, to anyone really. I held with the underdog Bryan storyline as the best way to unseat Lesnar. Well, until I actually saw what WWE did. With Lesnar bloodied (when’s the last time THAT happened in WWE?) and Reigns out of it after a fourth F5, Seth Rollins cashed in the Money in the Bank DURING the match, making it a triple threat and pinned Reigns to win the title. Genius. Brock still hasn’t lost and remained a protected monster. Rollins got the title with strong challengers or Reigns AND Orton. Brilliant. Good show WWE. Good show. Please keep it up.