Wrestlemania eh? For someone who writes about wrestling, this was the PPV that just kept giving. From Hogan’s “Silverdome” to Cena winning, there’s plenty to moan about in there.
But…there’s one thing the whole world is talking about.
I’ve seen some major sporting shocks in my time – Tyson being knocked out, Manchester City winning the league with the last kick of the ball, Man Utd winning the Champions League with two goals in injury time, even Barry Horowitz beating Skip, but nothing – and I mean absolutely nothing – can compare to that jaw-dropping moment we all had during WrestleMania.
The whole crowd reacted in the same way as I’m sure every single person watching at home did. It was truly one of those occasions people will tell their kids about. I’m talking, of course, about Stephanie’s shorts. What was she thinking??
Well, she DID look ridiculous, but I am, indeed, talking about the end of the Streak.
Like everyone else who watches wrestling, and is over twelve years old, I am pretty cynical about it all. And I am smart. I know pretty much how everything will end up. For every PPV over the last ten or so years, I would reckon I probably have about a 98% record at predicting the winners.
Even looking at this year’s Mania, if you take out the Andre the Giant Battle Royal, which was booked with pretty much no build up, making it fairly impossible to predict, I predicted every winner. Except the one.
I’m guessing that in the SLTD Predictions League – which has been updated – no-one got every result correct. I’d hazard a guess that the percentage who got that one particular result wrong would be close to 100. And I am guessing that a fair few bookmakers up and down the country are rubbing their hands in glee.
The last I saw, Taker was 1/30 to win. Stick on 30 of your pounds, and you get 31 back – you win a pound. And still I was telling people to mortgage the house and get on it. A bet of ninety thousand means you end up three thousand to the good, and it’s easy money, with no risk involved. Except it actually meant you’d have ended up homeless.
Now of course, the fall-out will begin. Is Taker done? Was he possibly injured? Or did Vince just decide prove to the world of the wrestling fan that, once again, anything can happen in WWE? Or the best yet, did Brock go off script?
Only the most cynical of fans would even hint at the suggestion buyrates were way down, and Vinny Mac quite fancied some of the 9/1 on offer for Brock, turning all of those 10s of dollars from the Network into 90s, but I don’t believe that for a second. (According to my lawyers)…
The real question should be, why are we so shocked? This is an event where the winner is determined in advance by the WWE, and we all know, because we all watch Raw every week, that sometimes, WWE just make decisions that don’t make sense.
Take Daniel Bryan for example. He turned heel at the end of 2013, then back again two weeks later. Batista returns to a feud with Del Rio, and gets booed out of the building. The Outlaws winning the tag belts. HHH burying half the roster in a promo. It happens all the time.
Yet…when it happens to Taker, when the Streak ends, everyone was stunned.
Personally, if they were going to end it, I would have had him lose to Punk last year – a Punk that was still champion. They could’ve created a new megastar out of Punk. That could have pushed CM Punk to a level that very few have ever got themselves to – a level way above Cena. WWE could have had a new Stone Cold right there.
To instead have the Streak end at the hands of a (reportedly) part-time wrestler must’ve made sense to somebody, and to do it clean as well…
The only reason I can think of is to get more buys of either the repeat or the Network. All the jaded, cynical fans who never watched now know they HAVE to see this show, because the streak was broken. History was made.
Here’s the thing though. It was wrong to do it. Nobody wanted it. Nobody expected it. And it made the show. Not made it better, but made it.
Look at the rest of the card:
- Bryan was always going to end up champion, despite the commentators telling us nobody expected it
- Cena was never going to lose, because his ‘legacy’ was on the line. Even when the bookmakers made Bray a heavy favourite, we all knew Cena had it in the bag
- The Shield losing to Kane and the Outlaws was never on the cards. The only slight shock was that they won the match so quickly
- The Battle Royal was just filler really, and the Divas match was a chance for refreshments before the main-event
There’s no way the crowd can be on a high for the whole night. They have to hit some lows, or there’s no point to the high. Quite honestly, I thought Cena’s win was the low point for everyone. And then WWE took us even lower…
They picked a match where we all knew what would happen. We were all talking about Taker vs Sting next year. Brock winning was as likely as Hogan winning the Bret vs Yokozuna main-event…oh hang on…as likely as David Arqu…(wait. This isn’t as easy as it looks)…as likely as something that’s completely unlikely happening on a day where nothing unlikely’s likely to happen.
They took that one certainty, showed us how certain it was, then laughed as nobody even thought twice about it. They couldn’t have done it with any other match on that card, and they did it to perfection.
We all knew Taker would kick out from the third F5. We all watched him and in our minds, we all saw him kick out. But he didn’t.
Then the look on Brock’s face, Heyman’s face, and most importantly, the faces of everyone inside the Silverdome (brrrotherrr!) told the world that the biggest shock in wrestling had just taken place.
It’s not often that wrestling surprises me, but on this occasion, they got me hook, line and sinker. I was like Marky Mark, with a marker pen, at Marks and Spencer, which is the starting point for the 100 meters, just when the guy says “on your marks”.
I was sitting alone, and looking from side-to-side for an explanation from people who weren’t there. I was completely gobsmacked. I even thought about rewinding a bit, just in case I’d somehow missed Taker kicking out.
It is the one topic of conversation among wrestling fans.
Without the end of the Streak, we’d all be moaning about Cena beating Bray clean, and escaping relatively unharmed. Or Cena and his battle in his own head that ultimately decided the match. Realistically, Cena should have lost, then been brainwashed by the Wyatts, then had that inner struggle over the next few months before finally exorcising the demons.
Or the Shield. Why were they only given about five minutes? We all wanted to see more of them, and they deserved more than they got.
These are discussions that are not really going on, because WWE gave us a moment that was so unexpected, and so spectacularly well done, that it’s become the only thing worth talking about.
Was it the best WrestleMania of all-time? I doubt it. Will it be the most talked about for a very long time? Pretty much.
And that’s why the decision was brilliant. I know it also gives Taker a chance to go out on the biggest stage of all, in front of 70,000 fans, but the most important thing for me was that it gives WWE a bit of credibility. If we can no longer predict what’s going to happen, then we really need to watch these shows. And that’s a big deal.
And now, WrestleMania’s gone for another year. No more articles to write about the Showcase of the Immortals.
The last four weeks have been fun, annoying, and brilliant. We’ve had a lot of fantasy booking, a lot of looking backwards and forwards, and from a personal viewpoint, I managed to get a dig in at Hogan in every article, so all in all, not a bad month.
I’m now looking forward to reading almost as many articles again, picking the bones of Mania from people who know a lot more about wrestling than me, right here, on the all new SLTDWrestling.com. I can’t wait to hear the MFX take on those leather shorts too, although I think they may actually mention wrestling in the first hour this week as well.
As always, comments are welcome below, and you can catch me on my as-yet-unchanged Twitter account – @GrantCookDFC – where I’ll occasionally tweet about wrestling and football.
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