I figured since I started this whole 10 Thoughts thing, I should at least get to take the 10 Thoughts on the biggest event of the year.
1) I do hope that Vince still listens to crowd reactions at huge events like Wrestlemania. It seems like Christian’s years in exile didn’t do anything to numb the WWE Universe’s love of him. The crowd not only popped absurdly huge for Christian’s awesome ladder spot, but booed CM Punk for stopping his win. I hope this gets Christian drafted to whatever show Triple H isn’t on after next week’s draft special.
2) Who decided that it was a good idea to shuffle out the tag title unification match and instead put a 20-minute Kid Rock concert on the main show? Whoever you are — you’re an idiot. As a wrestling fan, it was insulting and stupid. Kid Rock hasn’t been relevant in years and he opened the stupid mini-concert with a song that’s TEN YEARS OLD now. For God’s sake — did anyone prefer seeing that over the tag title match? What a waste of my time and their money.
3) And, as an addendum to the above. I realize that there was no way to let all 25 Divas enter individually, but we couldn’t give Sunny a 15-second entrance? I mean, she’s the original Diva and the masturbatory force for an entire generation of wrestling fans. She was also legitimately the only reason to watch Raw for more than a year. She helped invent the mainstream downloading of almost porn. We can’t hit her music? We spent 20 minutes supposedly respecting Roddy Piper and Jimmy Snuka — who can barely move — and a woman who had 100x more influence on turning the product in to what it is today isn’t even mentioned? Disappointing and crappy. Excellent job by all involved that we didn’t even know Torrie Wilson was in the event until after she was eliminated. Such crap. Like, even more crap than it should have been.
4) Jimmy Snuka and Roddy Piper both need to just stop. It’s not flattering, it’s not respectful, it’s embarassing. Snuka looks like he has barely any concept of where he is and his body has reached the melting phase. Piper’s almost reached Iron Sheik level of gut. If they insisted on doing Jericho vs. a legend, it should have just been Jericho/Steamboat. If anything, Steamboat proved that wrestlers don’t really have to turn in to broken men by 50 if they don’t spend their 40s continuing to kill their bodies. Great work by Ricky and a gigantic BOO to the usually spot-on WWE production crew for missing Steamboat skinning the cat. The crowd freaked out for it and JR was selling it as the greatest thing he’d ever seen until he got the update from the truck to shut up about it because they missed it. Steamboat was the only highlight of this segment as the two old guys were embarrassing and Rourke seemed like there were 100 places he’d rather be.
5) I will admit to being surprised about the squashy-ness of the JBL/Mysterio match. I’ll guess this wasn’t always the plan until Taz walked out of Smackdown last week. I guess JBL’s return to the Smackdown booth is imminent. I look forward to seeing how much better he is without the gaping wasteland of suck that’s Michael Cole. For the record, the discussion came up that Michael Cole might actually be the worst announcer in wrestling history — including Nitro-Schill-Mode Tony Schiavone.
6) There aren’t enough good things to say about Undertaker/Michaels. Everything was done amazingly well from the entrances right through to the finish. I’m going to go ahead and assume that this is the last Wrestlemania where we’ll see the Undertaker try and pull out the tope con hilo as he nearly died doing it last night. As I’m sure it was not intended for Undertaker to almost die and need time to recover — props to Shawn’s improvised heel-turn by dragging the referee in the ring and demanding he put the 10-count on the Undertaker’s corpse. This match was pretty much the only good thing on the card.
7) Speaking of gaping wastelands of suck — the World Title match should have been Cena/Edge. I don’t understand Vince’s dogged insistence that these Wrestlemania title matches be pointless three-ways with two guys who might win and a third wheel. I’m fine with Cena winning but I do blame the two dozen Cenas for me losing my over/under prop bet on the number of druids involved in the Undertaker’s entrance. We set it at 22.5 and I took the over. Stupid Cenas.
8) The Austin send-off was cool. The only depressing moment I had was the sad realization that wrestling is probably never going to be as good as it was in that five-year stretch between when the nWo started until Austin’s heel turn in 2001. That five-year stretch of Nitro’s prime and Austin’s Attitude Era was it. It was better than Hulkamania in the 80s and it was probably the best thing we’re ever going to see. We have at least a decade of WWHHHE to look forward to before something like that even has a chance of happening again.
9) And speaking of — the main event was a joke. When Triple H moved to Smackdown, I joked about how I looked forward to watching him crush the entire roster. Unfortunately, he’s actually doing it. The only valid thing to do with Triple H at this point is to turn himself in to the douchey, heel owner/wrestler who does everything he can to keep the title. Unfortunately, because he actually IS a douchey owner/wrestler who wants to keep the title and be loved, he won’t do this. He seems like the type of guy who will watch the dead crowd and the zero reaction to him winning and put the blame on Orton and not realize that no one cares about watching a guy who owns the book win. No one cared about Jarrett when he did it, no one cared about Nash when he was doing it, no one cared about the Gagnes when they were doing it, and no one cares now. On top of that, they spent a year building up Orton as a monster heel and crushed him dead in 15 minutes. Well played, guys. I don’t understand why they put him on Smackdown if he was just going to continue being on both shows. Just unify the titles on yourself and be on both shows for the next decade. That’s what you want. Just do it.
10) It’s in the Top Five Worst Wrestlemanias of all time. It’s on the short list with 7, 8, 9, 13, and WM2k. The Kid Rock Segment was an embarrassment. The triple threat match was terrible. The main event was a joke. The Diva Battle Royal was even worse than it should have been. The old guys were terrible. And the Hardys failed to deliver. The only things worth watching were a good Money In The Bank match and the excellent Undertaker/Michaels match. Hugely disappointing Wrestlemania.
