Last Updated on: 22nd September 2014, 11:17 am
I realize I’ve chosen to live my life in Ontario, a province with some insanely stupid weather patterns, but this snow in April business can take a 1-way trip to hell and spend eternity eating broken glass with a hook covered in tetanus. Yesterday was so nice and the weather people had been so wrong about the snow that was supposed to have been dooming us for the last couple of weeks that I laughed them off when I heard it mentioned again yesterday. But now I am not laughing. Oh no. The excitement I had about managing to see Wrestlemania live for free and for the opening night of the Blue Jays’ newest run towards not making the playoffs is all but gone, replaced by utter contempt for the knob who is controlling the weather knob. But let us not dwell on this anymore. If I do, I think I’ll probably start crying. Screw you, life!
So yeah, Wrestlemania. I didn’t end up caving and ordering the show, but I did get to see it. I might have ordered it if anybody was interested in buying in, but when my best candidate didn’t even know that Mania was yesterday, that pretty well settled that. But thanks to the wonders of technology particularly streaming video of dubious legality, I caught the show and while it wasn’t a bad night by any means, I’m glad I didn’t spend money on it. Here are a few quick thoughts on what I saw.
They ended up pulling the tag title unification match off of the main show and using it as a dark match, meaning only people in the building got to see it. Gay. It might not have been many, but I’m sure there were people who bought the show looking forward to that match and they couldn’t have been happy. Hell, I didn’t care much and I wasn’t happy, especially when I figured out that they had been bumped to make room for Kid Rock. by the way,I’d like to thank the stream for dropping out during his set. It came back in time for part of All Summer Long, but I know it tried its best to spare me some misery.
The show started off with the Money in the Bank match. If you define a good ladder match by how crazy it is and by how many near death experiences there are this one might not be for you, but I enjoyed it. Kofi Kingston in particular had a really good night and came out looking like a star. I’m sure this will mean nothing in the long run because WWE Creative has a tendency to not know what it’s doing, but for one night at least he was the man. Shelton Benjamin did his yearly killing himself spot, nearly landing on his head doing a dive into a bunch of guys from the top of one of the giant ladders on the outside. I’m not sure about Punk winning again. They’ll have a lot of work to do if they want to top the way he cashed in the title shot last year, but if he does win the belt again it wont’ take much to top the title run he had. I was picking MVP to win because it made the most sense given the losing streak to champion again storyline they were doing, but I’ll wait and see where things go before I get upset.
I didn’t care much about the Miss Wrestlemania Battle Royal as you could probably tell from myinsightful commentary on itlast week, but it was worse than I could have imagined. for starters, none of the girls got an entrance, rendering the concept of bringing back people from previous years and making a big deal out of it pointless because you only saw people when they were thrown out. Everybody just kind of ran to the ring during Kid Rock’s performance and then the match was over and done with in just a couple of minutes. They even managed to take a humorous idea and make it lame. If you weren’t being paid to laugh but still found the Santina thing amusing, I need you to explain it to me because I’m not gettin’ it. The whole segment was so horrible that I honestly feel bad for everyone involved.
Speaking of feeling bad for people, I love Roddy Piper and Jimmy Snuka, but their best days are clearly behind them. I could listen to Piper talk forever, but watching him in the ring for a few seconds was more than enough. Once it got down to Jericho and Ricky Steamboat things got fun. For a 56-year-old man who suffered a career ending injury 15 years ago and hasn’t wrestled since, Steamboat looked great. Jericho winning in the end was fine, but not what I was hoping for. And on the subject of not what I was hoping for, that punch that Mickey Rourke laid on Jericho after the match…ug. If you didn’t know wrestling was a work before, you do now.
the Hardy vs. Hardy match was good, especially if you like crazy spots. I still don’t feel the emotion in this angle, but if we get more matches like this I suppose that’s ok. Matt won which I predicted so I expect that the feud will continue for at least another month. How they get to the next match I’m not sure, but hopefully it doesn’t involve a whole lot of promo work. neither of these guys are very good talkers and whoever is writing their material isn’t very good either, and to me their interviews do more to hurt than help.
JBL lost to Rey Mysterio in 21 seconds. Not much more to it than that. JBL said he quit after the match which could be true. Not sure that’s the way I’d want to end my wrestling days, but that’s just me. Mysterio winning was the right call, but an actual match would have been nice. I know there are a lot of Rey fans and they can’t have been pleased with what they got for their $55 or much more if they attended the show live.
Wow. That’s all I can say about the Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels match. Best match I’ve seen in quite a while. It went a little over half an hour and didn’t drag for one second of it. If you get to see just one thing from this show, make sure it’s this match. As time went on and especially after it ended I couldn’t help but wonder why it didn’t close the show. No matter how good the last couple of matches were, there was almost no chance that they could follow this. They didn’t. The crowd wasn’t spent when this match was over,but other than Steve Austin being Steve Austin during the Hall of Fame introductions they didn’t react the same way for anything else after this point. the streak lives by the way, which is exactly what should have happened.
The Triple Threat title match was ok. It felt like I was watching a slightly longer Smackdown main event which is never good when you’re talking about a pay-per-view match especially on the biggest and priciest show of the year, but I’m not sure if that had more to do with what I’d just seen or because of the lack of good build to a so so match. I think it was a combination of those things. John Cena is freaky strong. Getting Big Show and Edge up on his shoulders at the same time at the finish is just…wow. Cena won, so I did pretty decent with my picks tonight. Not sure where things go from here, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to get a few miles out of a Cena wins so he now has the title and Vickie’s love thing. There could also be an Edge and Big show feud on the horizon. NO disrespect intended to either guy, but that’s not selling any shows.
It was fun watching Stone Cold ride around and drink beer during the Hall of Fame segment. for some reason they were pushing hard on commentary that it would be the last time we would ever see something like this. Why, is Austin going to die? I’m sure I’m reading too much into it, but it sure sounded that way in spite of all the happiness going on.
The happiness came to a grinding halt with the arrival of the main event, which was the main event in placement only. HHH and Randy Orton had a slow, not so great match that the crowd was pretty well dead for. Can’t say as I blame them. I nearly fell asleep a time or 2 and only kept myself awake by talking to our good friend Matt on MSN. For the record, he didn’t order the show either but came closer to doing so than I did. Triple H won the match and kept the belt, surprise surprise. I should have known better than to pick Orton. He needed the win, so of course he was going to lose. Almost everybody who needs a win when Triple H is involved doesn’t get it. You’d think I’d have figured this out by now. The finish to this one fucking honked. Triple H, the babyface, couldn’t get disqualified or he’d lose the title. I’m totally down with this. Theoretical hero fighting to beat the odds makes sense. But how do you suppose he won? If you guessed nailing Orton in the skull with his fake sledgehammer of doom while the ref was knocked down and getting a cheap pin when he came to, you’re absolutely right. Hell of a babyface he turned out to be, and what a crappy ending to Wrestlemania we ended up with. I’m sure that on Raw we’ll get some stupid Trips gets stripped of the title for cheating crap and the feud will continue. I can’t wait.
So that’s the show. Not bad, but not worth $55 and not something worthy of being called the biggest night of the year. Taker and Michaels definitely upped the value of things, but I’m still glad to have saved the money.
That’s all for now. I’m off to have some breakfast and resume being angry at the snow. Talk soon.