PSA: I think WWE and AEW continuing to put their wrestlers and the general public at risk by holding tapings against the governments advice is both selfish and indefensible. I gave WWE a pass as they were leading up to their biggest show of the year but if they go ahead with a scheduled round of taping this weekend at the performance centre despite their being a stay at home order in the state of Florida I will be throwing the towel in on them for the time being.
Being Scottish I am naturally thick skinned and it is almost impossible to offend me, but I refuse to write about and therefore generate interest in a product that is completely disregarding public safety. AEW last taped over a week ago and have footage to do them multiple weeks. If they attempt to tape again while a lockdown is in place I will also be washing my hands of them. This isn’t a forever thing, but like I say I don’t believe in giving people the oxygen they so desperately want when they can’t take the lives of others into consideration.
So. WrestleMania XXXVI, or since Vince doesn’t have faith his fan base can go that high in roman numerals; WrestleMania 36 is in the books. As expected it was a very unique event that was unlike anything we had seen before. I have read numerous reviews and opinions on the two shows over the last few days ranging from it being the greatest thing ever, to the worst piece of shit imaginable with precious few falling between those two goal posts.
Personally I thought as a whole WrestleMania over delivered. That’s not to say I thought it was great; in fact I thought it was far from it. It’s more that my expectations were so low going in that really the only outcome was to be pleasantly surprised. Empty arena matches just don’t work for me. I need a good atmosphere to really connect with what’s going on in the ring and I had really hoped WWE would have done something to simulate this. Screens all around ringside with select fans reactions being live streamed. Wrestlers around ringside making a noise like in AEW. Hell, even pipe fake crowd noise in if you have to.
Instead we got a lot of matches that I thought fell flat on their arse. Here in Scotland the event started at midnight and I decided to watch the start of the show live. After enduring, and I do mean enduring, the women’s tag match, Corbin v Elias and the mega disappointing Becky v Shayna match I decided to call it a night. The first two were sloppy and outright boring and while the RAW women’s title match did have some hard hitting moments it just abruptly ended with what was in my opinion the wrong woman going over Even worse was that it ended at a shorter run time than Corbin/Elias. That’s unforgivable.
So I woke up the next morning dreading the rest of the show., however it did improve. Zayn/Bryan was well worked minus the stalling, the ladder match had a lot of effort put into it and Rollins/Owens in another setting could have been great. Despite the obvious jump in quality from the first three matches though I struggled to get into any of it. Between no crowd and half the matches being inexplicably called by JBL it just felt like I was watching the rehearsals earlier in the day with no narrator.
Next Goldberg and Strowman had a match that you could literally convert into a GIF. I couldn’t even pick who I wanted to see walk out with the belt. Goldberg is done and shouldn’t have been champion in the first place while seeing Braun rewarded for being a cunt to those less fortunate than him on Twitter didn’t sit well either. Some will say we got the better of two bad choices. Perhaps. But I’ll be here to remind them of that stance when we get ANOTHER four month Strowman v Reigns feud… because it’s coming.
Following Strowman’s title win this was fixing to be the world WrestleMania I had ever seen. I knew I would be in the minority with that statement because I can see many having really enjoyed the Bryan, Morrison and Owens matches but it was all just flat to me. Then came the Boneyard match. Expectations were super low. Taker hasn’t looked good in about seven years and the build had been atrocious. But with a full deck stacked against it, it delivered.
What we ended up getting was a cinematic match in the vein of Matt Hardy’s total deletion, except less stupid. It was almost shot like a B movie fight scene that lasted fifteen minutes. With all the editing and clever camera work the Undertaker looked like a monster again. It felt like he was ten years younger. I can totally understand some people not liking the match, but given what had came before it, I really liked it. As it was shot on location it even managed to avoid the pitfalls of having no live crowd. My one reservation with the match was the worry that WWE would realise they had created something great and do what they are so famous for; not know when to stop and beat the idea to death. More on that later.
Going in to night two I now had hope that the Firefly Funhouse match may actually deliver. I mean let’s face it, John Cena v The Fiend in a straight up wrestling match would be the absolute shits. So it can only be an improvement. The show started off with a pretty good NXT women’s title match. Unfortunately it was marred by going too long and what I would have said at the time was the wrong woman going over. However if reports of Rhea’s visa running out are true perhaps they didn’t have a choice.
Aleister Black went over Lashley in a way that furthered storylines so while it wasn’t great, I think it helped both wrestlers characters. Otis v Ziggler was a match that was really well done, but suffered badly from the circumstances. With an arena full of fans I have no doubt Mandy coming out at the end would have popped the crowd big, but in the empty performance centre it felt a little awkward. I really felt for all the stars involved as despite going off the rails a few times this did actually feel like one of the few storylines that peaked just in time for the big show.
Next up was a rather polarising match. I know many who really enjoyed it and I respect everyone’s opinion, but man I fucking HATED Randy Orton v Edge. Just a boring, kick-punch affair for 37 minutes. The second longest WrestleMania match IN HISTORY behind Bret Hart v Shawn Michaels back in 1995 where the whole concept of that match was that it had to go an hour. Before watching this I hadn’t seen a Randy Orton match in a few years because the guy bores me to tears so much, but a friend messaged me saying I had to see this to believe it. As you can imagine this ex-friend will be lucky to have an in-tact window in his house by the end of the week.
After finishing the Orton match I was about ready to swear off wrestling altogether. I didn’t have the ability to keep going so I shelved the rest of the show for two full days while I recovered from the horror. The whole time all I saw on social media was praise for the Firefly Funhouse match. So when I finally put the show back on I skipped the RAW tag title match and the women’s five-way, opting to jump straight into the Funhouse match. I could see why it was being talked about so much. I did enjoy it myself, but at the same time I think the euphoria around it is a little much. Part of the reason for this is that while it was advertised as a match, it wasn’t. It was a skit. Had the same thing aired on SmackDown I think I would have preferred it, but given the circumstances I understand putting it on WrestleMania.
The show finished with Drew beating Brock is a carbon copy of the Goldberg match from the night before. To say it was underwhelming would be far too kind. As short as the match was it was wrestled much more competently than the title match the night before, but managed to come off worse for happening after it. Drew McIntyre deserved so much more for his first world title win and I was absolutely gutted for him. What was portrayed as the culmination of life long dream just felt emphasised everything that WrestleMania wasn’t able to be this year.
It’s easy to say this in hindsight, but looking back at it now if you condensed the amount of matches into one show and laid it out as follows;
Charlotte v Rhea Ripley (5 minutes shorter)
Sami Zayn v Daniel Bryan (Less house show stalling at the beginning)
SmackDown tag title ladder match (no changes)
Fiend v Cena (no changes)
Seth Rollins v Kevin Owens (no changes)
Goldberg v Strowman (no changes)
Randy Orton v Edge (Cut the existing footage down to a tight 12 minutes of good action)
Otis v Ziggler (no changes)
Becky Lynch v Shayna Baszler (A few minutes longer with Shayna going over)
Undertaker v AJ Styles (in anywhere but a cemetery)
Brock v Drew (Give them just under ten minutes, same outcome)
If you presented that show with atmosphere added through one of the methods I mentioned earlier, even with no fans it would probably be one of the best WrestleMania shows in the last several years.
I usually don’t discuss AEW or NXT much on here as they are both generally excellent shows, but this week NXT put on an hour long Gargano v Ciampa match and it ties into the Fiend, Undertaker and Orton match due to the cinematic nature and length. My one worry when I watched the boneyard match was that Vince would realise he had created something special and not be able to stop himself ripping the arse out of it for the next few months until no-one wants to see it done again.
Now as everything we have seen over the last week was taped around the same time I am giving them a pass, but I really worry this is going to continue. I didn’t enjoy the Orton or Gargano match, so it’s been a 50-50 hit and miss for me so far. I really hope Vince is smart enough to pull back on this and do it once or twice a year. Once you open the box it’s really hard to close and if WWE start doing a lot of these type of matches it will make it difficult to sell people on standard wrestling. When live crowds return they won’t watch matches on the titan-tron and you’ll end up with a pretty big fucking problem.
That’ll do it for this rather long Wrestling with Mediocrity entry. Hope you have enjoyed reading my ramblings on this years WrestleMania. Until next time.
Peace ✌️
-VDZE