Wrestlemania 29 Thoughts

[CaptCabana]

Watching WWE events (for me, at least) are an interesting social event these days.

 

Every year, I watch the Rumble and Mania with my best friend, who was big into wrestling in the late 90s boom era but doesn't watch at all these days. I judge my reactions against his and it's always a fairly comical and interesting deal.

 

1. Shield vs Orton/Sheamus/Big Show

 

--I am consistently impressed with Ambrose and Rollins, while Reigns is growing on me. Action was decent, but fairly pointless. (Another Big Show heel turn? Yawn.) Rollins had a death wish on that tope.

 

2. Ryback vs Henry

 

--My buddy on seeing Ryback..."They should just call him Ry-berg, it would save time and our intelligence." Fair enough. Afraid I'm in the camp that didn't care for this, especially the postmatch. What was the point of having him not able to hit the Shellshock when he clearly can 1 minute later, even after he's been weakened by having the large man fall on him. NO POINT. BULLSHIT PARITY BOOKING.

 

3. Hell No vs. Fans of AJ Lee

 

--My buddy on Daniel Bryan..."I remember him, that's the guy who lost in 10 seconds last year." Cut to me, shaking my head. Anyways, this was fine for what it was. Forgettable, but perfectly presentable. I hate that Ziggler is clearly just another guy at this point, dude has all the potential in the world.

Loved the ending with the crowd going YES crazy.

 

4. Fandango vs. Jericho

 

-- "Dude, if I wanted to watch Dancing with the Stars....I wouldn't." I have no argument against that. Also, if Fandango's gimmick is a world-class dancer, someone needs to start teaching Curtis a WHOLE lot better. I hate that the Alabama Jam wasn't the finish....not only do you kill the guy's finish right out of the gate, but I miss the days the Beautiful Bobby days when that move was instant death. Finish was botched, but I chalk it up to nerves. If you're pushing Fandango, he needed a stronger finish then a fluke rollup.

 

5. Del Rio vs. Swagger

 

--Swagger has never done it for me and I doubt that will ever change. Yet another match that was fine, but a few hours later, I barely remember anything about it. SO wanted the cash-in here just for a change of pace, but no such luck.

 

6. Punk vs. Taker

 

--MOTN, and it's not even close. Fantastic storytelling. I hated that Living Colour kind of rushed through Cult, but in retrospect, I guess it was necessary. Taker's entrance with the Evil Dead hands reaching for him...so cool. (Had to get my Evil Dead mention in....GO SEE IT.) This was the first match to really grab my buddy's attention as well, even though he can't stand Punk. Table no-selling for them had to SUCK. Obviously, the result was never in doubt, but I thought Punk and Heyman especially did the best they could to try to get you to bite. First time all night I really felt like I was watching a WrestleMania.

 

7. HHH vs. Lesnar

 

--I felt myself age during this match. Not literally, of course, but yeesh...this went forever. Lesnar destroying people is always enjoyable, but man, his selling is fairly putrid...not that there was much to be found in this match. Count me in the group that just doesn't need to see HHH in the ring anymore. It's kind of painful. Shawn ATE Brock's elbow something fierce, poor bastard. HHH's attempts at a kimura were laughable, and to have to put common knowledge aside and pretend that Brock could not immediately counter those with kidney punches just pulled me out (a small thing, I know). For what it's worth, my buddy liked this match pretty well, so I suppose they got the casual fans.

 

8. Rock vs Cena

 

--OVERKILL. OVERKILL. OVERKILL. I saw someone earlier post that this was like watching two guys play a video game with the Counter sliders turned all the way up, and that's an apt description as any. Kick out of 3 Rock Bottoms?? SURE. Two AAs? WHY NOT? I was BEGGING them to try another move, ANY other move. Bust out that huracanrana you proved you can't do, Johnny. Something, man, c'mon. Also, I consider myself fairly easy to please and fairly willing to look the other way at smarky stuff, but if I notice that you're calling 75% of the spots VISIBLY and LOUDLY....you need to do better. Bottom line.

 

Ending is what it is, I'm not happy with it and I'm not unhappy with it. I'm glad the title is off of Rock. He's not a wrestler anymore, he's an actor; and the fact that Vince still lets him come in act like the big kid on the playground is more indicative of the state of the business than any aspersions of what he actually can do in the ring anymore. For Cena....same old, same old. SuperCena has his cape back, the world is safe again.

 

WWE is in such dire need of a shakeup and I just don't see one coming anytime soon. This show rarely felt like the big deal that WrestleMania should be, and it's fallen to my second favorite show after the Rumble. I don't know that I'll ever NOT watch WrestleMania...but I also don't know that I'll ever be as excited about it as I feel I'm owed the right to be.

 

Thanks for listening to me rant!

 

The Captain

[Strummer]

This was the first mania I didn't order since WM 2. I feel kind of guilty but that seems to be wearing away already.

 

 

Rock and Cena will probably rematch at Extreme Rules but I don't know where Cena goes from there for his summer program. Punk needs a hiatus and hopefully they don't go to a Show or Orton again.

 

Henry would be a prime option as it's fresh

 

This reminds me of the early mania years where they knew they were going to get some mainstream attention and played every finish safe

[Johnny Sorrow]

Not watching the show, but I thought this was funny.

 

They did a video of a bunch of people from all over the world saying "I am one of the millions." Lots of cute kids, good looking adults, trying to change the image of what wrestling fans are. Smart to do it, but I'd rather this was on Raw as opposed to here.

Do they think they can be more friendly to advertisers if their audience is seen as more attractive? I didn't see the video, so I'm curious if the takeaway from everyone here was the same as Dave's takeaway.

 

"One of the Millions" was mainly meant as a Rock promo. As in "THE MILLIONS...."

[Johnny Sorrow]

Without wanting to be dramatic and go 'OMG I quit!! Had enough of this shit!!", I think unless these last three matches deliver I'm going to stop watching WWE again for a long time. Everything has just been so underwhelming, so filled with the sense of 'seen it all before'. Getting cable again a while back made me watch it by default, and coincided with Money In The Bank 2011 which was fantastic. Since then it has been diminishing returns, and I have watched Raw more and more sporadically.

 

It isn't a protest at anything in particular, just that everything gets on my nerves now. The constant time wasting with adverts and videos. The constant shilling of how popular they are on Twitter. The commentary that consists of nothing but WWE buzzwords and trademarks. The sameness of the style of wrestlers and match. How far behind popular culture they are. The lack of any compelling storylines. Occasionally something like The Shield will pique my interest but it still doesn't make up for the 80% of the show that is tedious. Raw going three hours kind of killed it for me. There is no sense of 'anything can happen', no excitement, no feeling I will miss anything if I don't tune in.

 

Bit of a pointless post I know but thought I'd get it off my chest...

Don't let the door hit ya on yer ass.

 

Edit. Motherfucker. I just typed up a long spectacular post about Mania, and then Firefox crashed. I'm way to tired and I need to go to bed right now, so I can't try to rewrite it until tomorrow.

 

But it DID start with

 

"Hey Matt. Blow me."

[Matt D]

Your computer sides with me. Just call it "Shaska"

[flyonthewall2983]

One thing I really liked on this show was the pre and post show with JR, Dusty, Kofi Kingston and Scott Stanford. Best thing Kofi's ever done and it's always good to hear Dusty commentary.

Kofi's an announcer now?

[rovert]

Had no real issue with the first half of the show but the second half the business end was so badly paced having the best to worst of the three kick out fests in that order and back to back.

 

The retirement stip didn't seem to play into the Brock match at all or added any drama. Must a great day to be CM Punk given how well the match came off relative to the rest of the card. Rock looked somewhere between massively conformable and only doing it for the money. WWE should finally give up the ghost and all the hand wringing on Cena fully embraced by the entire fanbase.

[Dylan Waco]

Retirement stip didn't add any drama because HHH is a horrid face. I don't think he's any good as a heel either, but there are at least things he can do as a heel that will add to a match. As a face he's complete dogshit

[rovert]

I wonder what WWE will learn from the top three matches? A new match structure for these shows or just go back to having a main event opener liked Edge and Del Rio had?

[anarchistxx]

Don't let the door hit ya on yer ass.

Oh, no need to hold the door for me - I am quitting WWE not the board. I still need somewhere to gush when I see a Kota Ibushi spotfest or self consciously epic NJ main event.

[rovert]

Snowden wrote an interesting column in light of last night:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1596725...to-the-finisher

[El-P]

So, this is my yearly WWE watch post.

 

Loved the set.

 

I thought the opener was all fine, although I couldn't care less about Orton, but I enjoyed the match. Some of these Shield guys are fun (no idea who is who).

 

Henry vs Ryback : Ryback is a worthless Goldie clone. I don't care about Goldie 14 years ago so that should tell you all about what I think about this guy. But hey, the match was actually fun for a while and I give full credit to Mark Henry for making this watchable.

 

I really enjoyed the tag-match despite Kane being involved and despite this Ziggler guy basically being an overbumping Billy Gunn. Yes, I thought it was really good all around. AJ still looks hot as hell, but wasn't she supposed to become a major star last year ? Anyway, probably the best match of the show to me.

 

Fandango vs Jericho was nice as a good Thunder match, complete with Jericho totally overshootng his Lionsault. Fandango is a dumbshit gimmick, and the guy who does it apparently can't dance worth a shit, which doesn't help. Totally brings me back to Prince Iaukea doing the Prince gimmick. And he seems to be as good as a worker too. Worthless debut, the guy will be dead in no time. Jericho's jacket is glorious, his hairstyle isn't.

 

Del Rio vs Swagger put me to complete sleep.

 

CM Punk vs Taker I thought was really quite good for the 3/4 of the match, with Punk being just great at times. But when it went time for the self-conscious epic WWE formula of "countering your finish / countering my finish / kicking out of you finish / kicking out of mine / more counters" until the final pin which is always dramatically obvious to me, the match felt apart for me. I just can't stand this fake epic style that is so tedious and predictable to me. I guessed *every* spot and counters they did. The annoucing was rotten as always and made it even more obvious, if need be, that all the nar falls would be just that. Nut as a whole, and stylistic distate aside, this was a very good match and much better than anything Taker did in years (and probably even better than the first Shawn match that I dond't think was great either, but I'd have to watch it back to be sure, which I won't do).

 

Seeing Bruno here was surreal.

 

HHH vs Lesnar : OH MY GOOD ! HHH KILLED THIS SHOW DEAD ! Hilarious failed epic (or epic fail) by HHH, and major ego stroking. The best part was the lack of heat and Lesnar's grin at times. The worst part was the match. Godawful stuff. Felt like 2002 again. HHH is a horrid big match worker and a putrid babyface. Go away.

 

Rock vs Cena : now now now, why didn't John Cena get the fancy ass entrance this year ? Color me disapointed. It seems like HHH vs Lesnar did kill the show because this match felt flat to me, not like a big deal at all. Really felt like rehased stuff. Too long, awkwardly worked and with audible calls all over the place. But I loved every time Cena was heeling it up. Man, turn this baby yesterday !!! Way too many counters/kick outs at the end, despite some fun ideas like Cena faking the people's elbow, but they (meaning, the WWE) just don't know how to plan a big match without doing a billion stupid übercounters, which is too bad. Felt kinda flat overall, and really Taker vs CM Punk needed to go on last.

 

P.Diddy or whatever his name is still sucks like it's the mid 90's. And Living Colour still rule like it's the late 80's.

 

Well, I thought it was a pretty damn flat show, nothing really felt like it was that big of a deal to be honest.

 

So there. Until next year WWE.

[El-P]

Two quick points:

 

1. I finally got to see wrestlemania live in person.

 

2. Zzzzzzz.......

Oh man, I fell bad for you. Seriously. Seems like the HHH match really killed the crowd and that Rock vs Cena had a hard time getting the back, at least that's what it appeared like to me on TV.

[Marty]

On top of a ho-hum show, WWE's online streams were apparently fucking up last night. Like ROH-level bad.

[KrisZ]

Wrestlemania has always been like the Super Bowl in that the biggest spectacle doesn't always mean the best show. 29 Mania's and most of them as a whole weren't great.

 

As long as they pimp the streak then Taker should be main eventing every WM. The last time he main evented was against Edge in Orlando IIRC.

[Death From Above]

Wrestlemania is sort of a reverse Superbowl this year. Usually it's the first half of the Superbowl that sucks thanks to the extra week off of idiots in the media asking running backs what their favourite colour is, then the game builds to an ok finish. This was alright until the last two matches, then fell apart.

 

Also I echo that lack of a big "Mania moment". This is never really a great wrestling show except 2, maybe 3 times? If that. No one really expects Mania to be one of the best wrestling shows of the year because it's really never built in a way where that's going to happen. But you can let it slide if you get "the moment" out of the main event. Didn't happen this year.

[Matt D]

Wrestlemania has always been like the Super Bowl in that the biggest spectacle doesn't always mean the best show. 29 Mania's and most of them as a whole weren't great.

 

As long as they pimp the streak then Taker should be main eventing every WM. The last time he main evented was against Edge in Orlando IIRC.

The problem this year is that it didn't feel like that much of a spectacle either. A couple of entrances (way down from usual), UT/Punk, and the crowd reaction to Daniel Bryan post match.

[Bix]

Wrestlemania has always been like the Super Bowl in that the biggest spectacle doesn't always mean the best show. 29 Mania's and most of them as a whole weren't great.

 

As long as they pimp the streak then Taker should be main eventing every WM. The last time he main evented was against Edge in Orlando IIRC.

The second Michaels match was pushed as the main event and went on last.

[S.L.L.]

Weird. Weird, weird, weird.

 

So the short of it is that I thought that may have been the worst WrestleMania I've ever watched in full, but that doesn't really tell the whole story, because how it got to be that bad really caught me off-guard. Namely, it was a terrible show despite the fact that, while most of the matches were bad, none of them struck me as audaciously bad. HHH/Lesnar came the closest to doing that, but even then, I never wanted to claw my eyes out the way I did during HHH/Taker last year. Basically, I just kept flashing back to Phil's Workrate Report of the first Russo/Bischoff Nitro, where the big takeaway was that one of the best ways to fuck up a show is to have every segment be exactly the same. Reading through this thread, it's weird to see things like people praising Taker/Punk and bashing HHH/Lesnar, not because it's wrong to see either of those matches as good or bad, but because they really weren't distinct enough to warrant thinking one was meaningfully better than the other. They were basically the same match, as was pretty every other match on the show from Jericho/Fandango onwards...which is to say that they were basically all HHH matches. Meaningless opening stuff, and then straight into nine billion finishers that get kicked out of to create the illusion of an all-time classic without the hard work and effort of actually having an all-time classic. This was probably Davey Richards' favorite Mania ever.

 

First half of the show wasn't great, either, though it wasn't terrible. Miz/Barrett was a passable match with a neat finish. Shield match was the least of the Shield matches and felt like a waste of the Show, but was basically fine. Ryback/Henry was the wrong match for those two to have. Finish was neat, but I don't see what putting Henry over accomplishes if he's just gonna get Shellshocked right afterwords anyway. Tag match felt like the best thing on the show, in that it was the one match I have no real complaints about. As a guy who's been following his career since '01, the visual of Bryan leading a Mania crowd in Yes/No chants was very nice to see, especially in light of how badly they fucked him over last year. If anything saves this from actually being the worst Mania I've ever seen, that match was probably it.

 

Then Fandango had this awesome entrance...and it was all downhill from there. It's really weird that anarchistxx is complaining about them not protecting Jericho here, because he was dominating this match in a way you don't normally see in high-profile debut matches. Those are usually booked to put the focus on the new guy and all the stuff he brings to the table, but Jericho took pretty much the whole match until Finisherpalooza Part 1 kicked in. I guess some people really do just judge how protected a guy is based on wins and losses. Honestly, if I had never seen a Johnny Curtis match before, I'd have thought the only move he had besides his finishers was a rear chinlock. Then again, when the first thing you do after getting eaten alive by Jericho all match is to sink in a resthold, maybe I shouldn't be complaining that you're not getting enough opportunities to show off your offense. Also, if you're gonna give someone a dancer gimmick, you should probably make sure they can dance first. Again, nice entrance where he was surrounded by other better dancers, but looked awkward as hell when left on his own. I really wanted to like Fandango, because Curtis always struck me as a very competent worker who didn't have a ton of innate charisma and would've benefited from this kind of gimmick, but they might have to go back to the drawing board on this one.

 

I liked Del Rio stomping Zeb's hand. Zeb's reaction to Swagger losing was great, too. Otherwise, the match was memorable only in that it was the exact same match I had just seen and would see again three more times before the night was over.

 

I guess Taker/Punk was the best version of the one match that was playing on an endless loop all night, but that's about all I can say for it. Taker eating the GTS and then bouncing off of the ropes and hitting the Tombstone on the way back looked like something someone would make an animated gif of and that we'd all laugh at if it happened in an ROH main event.

 

If I'm comparing this show to the first Russo/Bischoff Nitro, then HHH/Lesnar would be Tank Abbott ripping off Mark Madden's shirt, in that it was the most glaring and obvious "fuck you" to anyone who was actually watching the show. But beyond that, I can't really say that something that's essentially the same as everything surrounding it is appreciably worse than everything surrounding it.

 

Rock/Cena probably wasn't the best or worst version of the one match they ran fifty times last night, but it was the most egregious case of it. You could have taken all the individual spots in that match, rearranged them in random order, and replayed it for me, and I doubt I would've been able to tell you the difference.

 

Like I said, there was nothing as painful as Taker/HHH last year, but in some ways, this is worse. Because watching that, I felt like I was seeing HHH's vision of what wrestling should be applied to one match. This felt like HHH's vision of what wrestling should be applied to the whole card. And as the Vince years wind down and HHH prepares to take over, if this is what the future holds, I want no part of it.

[El-P]

Taker eating the GTS and then bouncing off of the ropes and hitting the Tombstone on the way back looked like something someone would make an animated gif of and that we'd all laugh at if it happened in an ROH main event.

Bingo.

[tim]

Meaningless opening stuff, and then straight into nine billion finishers that get kicked out of to create the illusion of an all-time classic without the hard work and effort of actually having an all-time classic.

to be fair, i thought the very first minute, minute and a half or so of punk/taker was good stuff. better than the recent taker mania matches where it's basically "we have no idea what to do until we kick out of finishers." although the middle portion of the match definitely fit that bill.

[Kostka]

Taker eating the GTS and then bouncing off of the ropes and hitting the Tombstone on the way back looked like something someone would make an animated gif of and that we'd all laugh at if it happened in an ROH main event.

Bingo.

 

I understand the criticism but I think there's a big difference between Undertaker doing one or two super hero no selling spots down the stretch of a WM main event (where he's basically a super hero), in his once a year epic, at the right time in the match, vs Davey Richards doing it for every spot in every match in every spot on every card.

 

I think Taker/ Punk was well paced.

[Matt D]

Also, and I said this earlier. To me, it didn't look like Taker ate the G2S. it looked like Punk couldn't hit it right and Taker either blocked it or took it on the chest/stomach. Then bounced off the ropes. It was visually distinct and significant and that's why it didn't hurt the match for me. I've seen the spot 3-4 times now and I still take that away from it.

[Loss]

I watched the 1991 Yearbook last night. Chono/Hashimoto and Atlantis/Blue Panther were my matches of the night.

[Matt D]

I watched the 1991 Yearbook last night. Chono/Hashimoto and Atlantis/Blue Panther were my matches of the night.

Someone compare and contrast WMVII with this Mania.