This was it. This was the reason that we’ll use to tell people why we watch wrestling. All the crap we sit through, all the mediocre stuff, all the political nonsense and boring people getting pushed, this makes it all worth it. Our guy main-evented WrestleMania and won the championship to close the show..,WrestleMania 29, this was not!
Also, you have to believe that CM Punk is pretty pissed off right about now.
Pre-Show Awesomeness
Swing into obscurity again Swagger!
For those of you who forgot, WrestleMania 30 had a pre-show and it featured a kind of awesome 4-way tag-team elimination match. We all knew that it was going to end up coming down the The Usos and The Real Americans, so changing this to an elimination match during the first hour of the pre-show was a smart ploy! And it gave us a chance to see The Real Americans look like absolute beasts by scoring the first 2 eliminations.
The Usos eventually won due to some “miscommunication” between Swagger and Cesaro. A double splash from both Usos to Cesaro led up to the best part of the pre-show for me…
That’s right! Cesaro is officially OUT of The Real Americans, and looks to be heading in a face-centric singles direction. I honestly believe that this is Cesaro’s year, and I see big things in his future. Later on in the actual show, I was kind of proven right! His personality is a bit on the boring side, but the man has so much pure raw talent and ability that he deserves it based on that alone!
14 Year Old Me Is Loving The Silverdome!
I’ll drink to this!
The opener to WrestleMania 30 (after the aforementioned awesome pre-show match) featured Hulk Hogan flubbing the name of the stadium they were in, only to be ribbed on it by Stone Cold and The Rock.
The ovations for both were thunderous and, regardless of how I feel about Hogan and Rock, the 14 year-old me marked out in the biggest possible way. I was literally off my seat when I heard Stone Cold’s music, since its been so long and I got super excited when all 3 men were interacting in the ring.
A true WrestleMania moment and a fantastic way to open the 30th anniversary of the show. Worth the price of admission already!
YESTlemania Begins!
He could make a mint on Cash4Gold
Let’s face facts here – a singles match with no gimmicks featuring Triple H isn’t going to win any “Match of the Year” awards. This was good for what it was – a way to get Daniel Bryan to the main-event and give him his revenge for all the suffering and double-crosses he’s suffered over the past 8 months. In that regard, it was a success. Bryan’s heavily taped shoulder added to his underdog status, which can only help him too.
Having said that, I had a few problems with the match:
- Why was Stephanie McMahon there if she didn’t interfere on her husband’s behalf? All she did was cackle
- When Bryan pinned H, did anyone else notice that H threw his shoulder up just after the 3? Seems to me like he was saying “He just about beat me”. Dat ego!
- The post-match beatdown. Yes, it was there to make it look less likely that Bryan would win, making it more when he did, but we saw the exact same beatdown on Raw a couple of weeks ago!
Other than that, it was all good. Triple H didn’t let his ego dictate the decision, and Bryan headed to the main-event later on in the night! YES! YES! YES!
The Shield Got Less Time Than The Divas
Blink and you’ll miss it….no really, you will!
The Shield are one of the biggest, baddest and best things in the WWE. They are main-event talent, regardless of their placement on the card as far as I’m concerned. But I was more than a little miffed when their entrance to the ring lasted longer than their actual WrestleMania match.
I get that they had to cut time from something that was coming later (more on that…), but why not the battle royal? Why not the Divas match, which was pretty terrible anyway? Seems unfair to the 3 guys who work their asses off all year. They deserve a big match on the card.
They opened WrestleMania last year against Sheamus, Randy Orton and Big Show, and it was a great match to start the show. More importantly, it lasted more than 5 minutes, which is more than can be said for this match.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that WWE.com reported that Billy Gunn injured himself, or maybe they just needed extra time for stuff later on, but either way, it was unnecessary and The Shield deserve better.
007: Cesaro Royal
The Cesaro era begins!
The Battle Royal was a weird one. I knew they didn’t have time to do a Royal Rumble-style event where people enter at certain intervals, but it looked so messy with all 30 men in the ring at the same time didn’t it? Either way, it was fun, and it gave people who would ordinarily never have a chance of being on WrestleMania to, as JR would say, “maximise their minutes”.
I think most of us knew it was going to come down to a select few, namely Big Show, Sheamus, Alberto Del Rio, Dolph Ziggler and Big E. But before the match started, there were 3 open spots that hadn’t been filled. I figured they would have some surprise entrants and my dream list was Sting, Ultimate Warrior and Chris Jericho. What we got was mostly underwhelming though:
- David Otunga
- Yoshi Tatsu
- Cesaro
Cesaro was a cool addition, but I don’t really see why the other 2 needed to be kept a secret. It’s not like the crowd were going to pop hard for Yoshi and Otunga!
The end result is what matters here because the match itself was a clutserf£$k of bodies flying everywhere. It ended up coming down to the usual suspects, with Kofi Kingston pulling a Kofi Kingston:
Cesaro was the MVP of this match though. From the Kofi spot, to his numerous eliminations, to his amazing bodyslam on Big Show to win the battle royal, which was clearly a recreation of Hogan/Andre at WrestleMania 3 – it just worked. If this isn’t the start of a strong sustained push for Cesaro, this was all for nothing!
The Times They Are A Chang…Oh Never Mind
Cena’s thinking: “Man, I have gotta start DDP Yoga!”
The Bray Wyatt and John Cena match has been the dark horse of WrestleMania for a few weeks now. It started off as “meh” and over time, with the build it was given, became gripping. Almost must-see TV to an extent. The one thing people kept saying over and over is that Wyatt needed to beat Cena to cement himself as a legitimate main-eventer going forward. I agreed with that, but again, to an extent.
Yes, a win would have been good for Wyatt, but let’s look at this rationally for a minute.
Wyatt got to face Cena in his WrestleMania debut. He’s had the upper-hand on Cena for weeks, gotten into his head and had him genuinely scared. Even though Cena won, he did it by the skin of his teeth, and this feud is destined to continue as we head to Extreme Rules, where I’m guessing that Wyatt will get his win, tying up the series. Wyatt is the future guys – whether he won at Mania or not!
Some Notes On The Hall Of Fame
A picture of Lita, just cause!
Because the Hall of Fame was on the WWE Network this year, I decided to give it a watch. It was 3 and a half hours long, and sometimes painful, so I won’t go into too much detail. Here’s a bullet-point list of my thoughts on the 2014 Hall of Fame!
- Lita still looks amazing, and so does Trish Stratus
- Lita spoke far too much about lucha-libre and getting into Mexican wrestling, and not enough about WWE
- She mentioned Team Xtreme, but not the guys in it (I’m guessing that wasn’t allowed)
- Jake the Snake’s speech genuinely made me tear up. It’s so well deserved. Jake’s done so well to come back from all his demons
- Mr T is far too attracted to his momma
- Razor Ramon, or Scott Hall if you’re normal, got no time to talk really
- Carlito is a dick who holds a grudge…awesome hair though
- Why couldn’t The Undertaker just go out of character for once? Out of respect at least!
- Kane is a great public speaker and has the future in politics that he wants!
- Ultimate Warrior went from humble to angry about 65 times in his far, far, FAR too long speech!
Eat, Sleep, Defeat The Streak: Not Just A T-Shirt Anymore
New gimmick: Goth Cowboy
So, let’s not dwell on this too much since we’re all probably still in shock about this one. I have never seen a crowd so shocked about something as long as I’ve been a wrestling fan. There were some amazing reactions from the crowd that say a lot more than my silly words ever could:
Its still real to him, damn it.
And another:
Its also real to him
This was a GENUINE shock. I went through a whole spectrum of emotions when it happened. I was shocked, sad and angry. I went into denial, and thought I was just too drunk and that I’d imagined it. For a few minutes, I thought (and I checked with Twitter to try and confirm it) that it was a mistake. That Taker just didn’t kick out in time and they had to roll with it. It would certainly explain the reactions of Brock and Paul Heyman, but Heyman’s just a fantastic “reaction guy”, so it was hard to know for sure.
I’ve had the minimum amount of sleep and some time to digest it now, and I think this makes complete sense – IF we’re headed for Sting vs Undertaker at Wrestlemania 31. Think about it. With the Streak gone, it makes Sting a complete wild card now. If it were still intact, then there would be less uncertainty about it. This way, it’s just two legends battling it out and either man can win. They can also make it a retirement match for both men, which would work really well.
Do I think that Brock was the right guy? No! Do I think it should have been an up and comer or a guy on the cusp of greatness? Yes!
Do I think that this has a little, if not everything, to do with CM Punk leaving after the Royal Rumble? Hard to say, but it’d make a certain amount of sense, wouldn’t it? Punk didn’t get to end the Streak last year, and it would have been great for him – as a full-time guy – trying to cement his legacy. Hearing that Brock, a part-time guy who wrestles 3 times a year, was going to do it, probably was the straw that broke the straight-edge camel’s back.
AJ Lee Versus The World!
Mob Mentality!
Well, at least this one worked out right, eh? No-one thought that AJ would retain here, mostly because the deck was so ridiculously stacked against her by Vickie Guerrero.
Quick side note. Apparently, this was Vickie’s last appearance for WWE as she’s decided to pursue her own business venture. I can’t say I blame her really. She was only brought in because of Eddie and she’s been the butt of far too many jokes. Best of luck Vickie. I always liked you as a person, and hated you as a character.
Anyway, this mess of a match came down to the usual suspects, with most of the Total Divas getting close to, but not quite, winning. The end came with AJ making Naomi tap out with the Black Widow, which is how it should have ended.
Long live AJ and congrats to her on her reported engagement to Punk. Big week for her!
Oh, and one last thing. Cole said this is the FIRST time the Divas championship has been defended at WrestleMania. That can’t be right, can it?
YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!
Now THIS is a Wrestlemania moment!
Guys, I am so freaking happy right now, I can barely describe it.
This is the reason that we all watch wrestling – to see the guy that everybody (casual and smark fans alike) wanted to see win. Not the guy that was picked backstage, but the guy that we chose.
Daniel Bryan got his WrestleMania moment, and cemented his legacy (word of the night) as a main-event player. No B+, no crap, just a clean, tap-out victory (kudos to Dave Batista for doing the tap-out too!) that sets up Randy Orton’s “I was never pinned” rematch at Extreme Rules quite nicely.
The match itself was awesome. They did everything they possibly could to keep Bryan down.
Triple H and Stephanie came down to the ring with the “crooked” referee Scott Armstrong (he of Night of Champions fast-count fame), tried to screw Bryan and it didn’t work. Triple H tried to bring a sledgehammer into the ring and it backfired. Then Batista and Randy Orton teamed up to pull off the biggest spot of the night:
And that didn’t work either. Bryan was literally being brought out on a stretcher and he got up, came back and won the match. It was just great storytelling and a perfect way to cap off an 8-month long journey for Daniel Bryan.
You can’t destroy the movement. You just can’t, and that was never truer than tonight when 70,000+ were chanting YES! while Daniel Bryan held both titles high above his head.
I thought it was a little strange that someone (who I assume was his sister) came into the ring to celebrate with him, but Brie Bella didn’t? But they had a lovely moment backstage after the show:
Enjoy this moment guys. We earned it. Daniel Bryan earned it. And Triple H and Vince let us have it, so they deserve at least a part of the credit. As much as we bash Triple H, he let Daniel Bryan go over him – and both of his former Evolution buddies – to give him a true WrestleMania moment that neither us or Bryan will ever forget:
That’s it for my WrestleMania Revisited. I hope you all enjoyed the show as much as I did. I’m gonna try and get some sleep now, so I can be ready for the post-Mania Raw which is sure to be….interesting. Tune in Wednesday at 6pm for the triumphant return of Raw Revisited!
Peace!
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