Wrestling Opinons from A Sleazy Guy 4 18 17 – Wrestlemania 33 Overview

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Wrestling Opinions from A Sleazy Guy 4 18 17

Wrestlemania Thoughts/Experiences

By Sebastian Howard

Been out of the game for a while, busy with a combination of real life stuff, laziness and a general feeling that everyone’s been analyzing the shows leading up to Mania so much that there’s not a lot I can add. I always get iffy around Mania season because EVERYONE is writing about wrestling and there’s not a lot of original things to say. Also, since it was Mania season I was mostly around friends who were into wrestling and didn’t have the time to do a write up.

I ended up going to Wrestlemania in Orlando, got there late, at around 9ish when the mixed tag match was happening. I watched everything before that on my Grandma’s cellphone while I was on the Greyhound Bus taking me to Orlando. There was this old school black guy on the bus who would NOT STOP TALKING TO ME! He kept on trying to tell me about how he used to play Football and how he was in prison, I mostly just nodded and tried to focus on Wrestlemania. Guy was decent enough though, if a bit out there. Gave me the rest of his little Vodka bottle so I had a bit of a pregame going into the show.

I was pretty pissed that I missed Styles/Shane and Jericho/Owens, as those were probably two of the matches I was looking forward to the most and DAMMIT I wanted to see Styles live! Its whatever though, public transportation in Palm Beach County fucking sucks, I was lucky to even get on the train when I did despite the fact that I got to the train station twenty minutes early. Bitch at the counter made me pay another 20 bucks for the ticket.. but I’m getting sidetracked.

Styles/Shane was great, I really don’t get why its suprsing to the IWC when Shane has a good match. He almost ALWAYS has good matches and can do a garbage brawl with the best of them. This was a bit of a combination of Shane trying to keep up with Styles in the ring and after the ref bump it devolved into the garbage brawl it really should have been booked as the whole time. Still a good match and the right person went over, pleasantly surprised to see them turn Styles face on Smackdown.

KO/Jericho was good because of course it was but I felt like Jericho should have gone over here. He needed a high profile win and they’ve already booked Jericho/Owens for Payback so why not have Jericho go over here to give him some credibility and add some suspense to the Payback match instead of just burying Jericho at Mania.. again. (I know he won last year but Jericho’s track record at Mania isn’t exactly amazing.)

Women’s fatal four way was okay, they really should have just done Charlotte/Bayley though as that’s what happened in the match anyway. The women’s division wrestling is at its highest peak right now but the story lines are so fucking lazy that they couldn’t think of anything to do but a four way. Lame. Surprised Bayley went over Charlotte even though I voted for her in the roundtable, when Charlotte had that huge entrance something just clicked in my head and I figured she was going to win. Y’know if she was going to lose anyway, WHY DID THEY HAVE HER LOSE HER PPV STREAK AT FASTLANE!??? Fucking retarded yo. I feel like they probably would have given the title to Charlotte here but they probably had it down that she was going to Smackdown so she had to do the job, which is very similar to what happened to Bliss later in the night.

Hardys came back… whatever, that’s cool I guess. I don’t like the Hardys that much but the tag division is stale as all fuck right now and the Hardys are over so I’m okay with it. Matt Hardy’s personality has been completely deleted though due to the lawsuit with TNA which SUCKS because people would be buying those Delete shirts right and left.

Anyway, around this time was when I got off the train in Orlando, I didn’t know how to get to the Citrus Bowl so I paid a black guy to bike me over there and picked up a dub of weed. It is a surreal experience being driven around by a black guy in the middle of the hood (right outside the Citrus Bowl is a ghetto ass area) on his handlebars. Oh nothing to see here, just a white boy in a jean jacket, wrestling t shirt and jeans on the handlebars of a black guy I just met riding through the hood while other black guys are blasting Biggie out of their boom boxes and pyros shooting out of the Wrestlemania arena.

The reason I had my Grandma’s phone (I don’t have my own cell phone and don’t want one) is because the tickets for the show were E-Tickets which had me really nervous. What if they didn’t work, what if the scanner was fucked up, what if the phone died? etc… Nothing happened though, the ticket worked fine and I was FINALLY in the fucking arena.

The first thing I saw when I found my seat was the end of Cena/Bella vs Miz/Marayse. Cena put Miz away and proposed to Nikki and the whole crowd was chanting no. This was too much, I needed a cigarette break. I went out to smoke and ended up meeting some guys and their girlfriends dressed like wrestlers. This one dude looked EXACTLY like KO and was banging this chick who was dressed up like Becky Lynch but was hotter than her. Seriously, where do these people find hot chicks who are into wrestling? I don’t understand… Anyway they were telling me that the Rock N Roll Express was over by the concession booth/smoking area earlier and were just chilling and talking to people. Thought that was pretty cool, kind of disappointed I missed a chance to see if the Express is as ugly as everyone says they are.

Best match on the card was Trips/Rollins. Loved Trips entrance, Stephanie looked really hot. The crowd might sound kind of dead for most of the match but they really weren’t, its more that the crowd was split between Trips or Rollins. I was in a weird position of cheering for Trips while there because, c’mon ITS TRIPLE FUCKING H!!! but actually wanting Seth to win. I honestly wasn’t sure who was going to win this or that it was going to be as good as it was. I wasn’t sure if Seth was still injured or what the deal was, hell I was half expecting Balor or Joe to get involved in the match. Instead the match ended up being EXTREMELY good and exactly what you would want out of a no dq match between Trips and Rollins. The only thing about the match that bothers me is how stupid Seth is as a character, he has an injured leg so he constantly does jumpy shit that involves his leg and then sells it too. Fucking retarded. Anyway best match on the show, dug the ending and the entire crowd EXPLODED into yes chants when Stephanie got put through the table. I feel kind of bad for Seth though, he’s really not going to be able to do shit on Raw with Roman there except job to Lesnar. The only thing that irked me about this match is that the build up could have been a lot cooler and better, they should have just said that they were having a fucking NO DQ match instead of this hold harmless bullshit. Should have been a couple brutal fights between Trips and Seth beforehand too. But as a wise man once said, you don’t always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need.

Randy Orton/Bray Wyatt, yeah the crowd was definitely dead for this. I mean REALLY dead, you could hear a fucking pin drop. The weird/gross images they used in this match it was well… interesting. Just file this under failed experiments and move on really, it sucks too because the booking of Smackdown Live has been so good, especially when it came to this feud and it definitely deserved a better Mania match. As for Orton winning, I’m fine with it. Bray probably should have won here but they wanted to move Bray to Raw for whatever reason and Orton needed some repayment for letting Lesnar punch the fuck out of him. Smackdown still has momentum right now and is still interesting, Orton seems more motivated then he has in a while so I’m okay with it, though I do feel bad for Bray somewhat. I’m pretty curious to see what the House of Horrors match is going to be…. I don’t think it could compare to the Chamber of Horrors match of course.

Goldberg/Lesnar, this match the crowd was HOT for! When Goldberg no sold those Germans and started doing his signatures I almost had a heart attack but Lesnar came back and put Goldberg down. Decent match, best match they’ve had but hey, that’s not saying much, just glad the title is off fucking Goldberg as the way they were booking him was atrocious. Unfortunately we’re basically back to 2014 post Bryan time period where Lesnar’s the champ but never shows up, I actually stopped watching in that time period for a while because nothing felt important. I don’t know how I feel about this time, I guess it depends on how much Raw will engage my interet but right now I definitely find myself looking forward more to Smackdown than Raw.

Women’s six pack challenge was lame, was expecting Askua but she never came. Alexa Bliss and Mickie James are both super hot in person. Don’t care about Naomi…. would bang the shit out of Cah-Mella.

Roman Reigns and the Undertaker….. y’know I don’t know what it is with Florida and Wrestlemania but this is the second time they’ve done a main event that I don’t care about. Well okay, I did care about this match because it had a certain element of new eating the old to it and its Taker at Mania but I wasn’t as excited for this as Trips/Rollins or Styles/Shane. Last time I went to WM, in Miami, the main event was Cena/Rock (Once in a lifetime my ass) and I didn’t care less about it.

With this match I didn’t really want to cheer Taker because I knew he was going to lose but I also didn’t want to cheer Reigns because y’know, its Roman Reigns. I ended up halfheartedly cheering for Reigns but mostly just watching the match and making noises at the big spots. This was a decent match, not amazing or anything but probably the best possible version of this match considering Taker’s so broken down he can’t even do a proper last ride and Reigns has an extremely limited moveset. I liked the hardcore tv 14 aspect of it, the throwback to Shawn/Taker 2, Reigns just being a brutal badass heel that is forced as a face works a lot better than douchey smiling Reigns that’s still being forced down your throat. I think the match accomplished what it needed to, passing the torch to Reigns who Vince is fucking FIXATED on and giving Taker a big time last match. Thank you Taker for all you’ve done, been watching wresting since 2006 and the first Wrestlemania I bought was in 2008 and the main event was Edge/Taker for the title. When I was first getting into wrestling I watched Smackdown all the time and loved the Batista/Taker and Taker/Edge feuds in that time period. Taker’s gone through a lot of changes in his career but he’s still managed to be one of the most over people in WWE and he just plays the Deadman persona so well. Gonna miss you Mark, thanks for all the fish.

The trip back was a pain in the ass, outside people crying about Taker losing, got to my hotel eventually, got high as shit in the hotel room and then went to go buy something out of the snack machine and got incredibly freaked out because the hotel had me thinking of the hotel from Silent Hill 2 (CH Punk will get it). Anyway, pretty cool going to Mania, would definitely do it again. As far as this Mania goes…. I think this was one of the better Mania’s in a while but it didn’t have that one match that really took it to the next level. What’s weird about this Mania is this probably the first Mania in forever that I’ve actually been interested in just about every single match on the card and most of them delivered. Great card all around but it was missing that special match that really would have put it over the top. I also think they should shorten WM, the crowd is just fucking dead by the time the main events are on because they’ve sat through so much shit.

Alright, I gotta go do a Raw write up. Have a good one and act funky like a monkey.

I'm generally a pretty crazy guy, and try to have as much fun as possible. My tastes are very peculiar, and I've probably done far too many drugs for how old I am. I've been homeless before, lived in Washington and Florida. I'm generally a pretty peaceful guy, but do have a temper, and some bad depression and OCD, which I have to fight regularly, and am constantly getting new pharmaceutical drugs for these problems. So if I'm a bit edgy, and switch to mellow, its probably because of the drugs.