Good morning, and welcome to InsidePulse!
My name is Kyle Sparks, and I generally cover ROH here at the Pulse, but after having watched WWE’s biggest show of the year, I found that I had a litany of thoughts regarding the show, my responses to it, and the like. As a result, our own Pulse Glazer encouraged me to post my very own (and first WWE version) of 10 Thoughts! So, without further ado…
(1) Pathetic, bumping the US Title match for no discernible reason. Not only bumping it, but turning it into a lumberjack match due to copious interference (apparently) and then into a Battle Royal? Really? With your US Champion being a guy who you’re giving a renewed push to and just a year ago was in high profile feuds over the WWE Title and with Triple H? You’re telling me you couldn’t find 10 minutes in that bloated cavalcade of nonsense? Ouch.
(2) The first half of the show in general was fairly solid, despite the egregious harm of putting the WHT match on first. The RR win technically grants him the “Main Event” of WrestleMania. Ugh. As far as ratings, I (like Mr. Ziegler) had Edge/Del Rio, Rey/Cody and Punk/Orton all somewhere around 3 to 3.75 or around that neighborhood. The only dud was the ridiculous 8-man. More on that later.
(3) Positives: Cody, plus Rey’s WHOMP ASS~! (tm, Scott Keith) Captain America themed ring gear. Struggling to find others. I guess Punk/Orton getting 15 minutes and putting on a strong match was nice to see, but otherwise, a lot of weird decisions were made tonight.
(4) Why on earth did “Team: Thrown Together Comedy” obliterate The Corre in under 5 minutes?! It’s not like The Corre has your Tag Team and IC Champions…oh, wait. And don’t give me the “it’s WrestleMania, the faces have to win everything. Some of these, the heels simply need to win. This was one of them.
(5) Lawler/Cole tried too hard to be a real match for a significant portion in the middle and it just completely decimated the crowd. Hart/Vince worked somewhat for what it was because it was ridiculously overbooked tripe. This looked like it was trying to get there, but didn’t have the courage to go full-on crazy.
(6) The Dusty Finish was the biggest load of crap I could have possibly imagined. That is the exact opposite of the kind of overbooking this match needed, and is the kind of thing that continues a feud.
(6a) I’m reiterating that last sentence. The kind of thing that CONTINUES A FEUD. Continues a feud between ANNOUNCERS. Ugh.
(7) HHH/Taker was good for what it was, but dragged for me, and watching Taker be hurt for nearly 10 minutes afterwards was just too much. If he’s legit hurt, find something else to cut to and don’t stick a camera in the poor guy’s face. If not, you just wasted a lot of time that could have been given to someone else (*cough*DanielBryan*cough*)
(8) Why bother have the men there for the mixed tag match at all? Morrison’s only real involvement was to hit one spot, decent though it was. Remember when John Morrison was the #1 Contender for the WWE Title? Apparently WWE doesn’t.
(9) I’m not sure they could have possibly booked Miz/Cena any worse than they actually did. The double countout, the awful (and predictable) restart, Rock utterly burying both guys in the ring (keep in mind, a guy who hasn’t been in the ring in over 7 years), etc. If Rock doesn’t come back and wrestle again after this, they’ve just completely bitten their collective nose to spite their face.
(10) I’m not overly concerned with Miz leaving with the title, being a heel. Last year, Jericho left with the World Heavyweight Title as a heel. At WM 24, Orton left with the WWE Title, etc. By this point, a heel walking with one of the big belts is almost to be expected. I’m actually pleasantly surprised by that part, as I have been absolutely loving what Miz has been doing. I hate to reiterate Thought 9 here, but my biggest problem comes with The Rock making him look like a chump.
BONUS THOUGHTS!
(11) Earlier I mentioned how it’s common knowledge that the faces are generally supposed to go over at WrestleMania. This definitely proved true tonight, as technically only 3 heels (of 8) walked out with “wins.” To call Cole’s “a win” is a stretch, but still technically true. Still, this felt like a WrestleMania that started or continued more than it ended, because the heels that walked out winners did so in 3 of the more meticulously built matches of the night (Cody, Miz & Cole). Unfortunately, it made for a WrestleMania that didn’t feel particularly big or memorable.
(12) From the match order apparently leaked to the Atlanta paper (reported elsewhere) to Edge going over, despite gobs of reports to the contrary, to a number of things, this show just felt like a giant middle finger to fans, saying “Oh, you think you know what’s happening? Well watch THIS!” While I sincerely doubt that was the case, I can’t deny that’s how it felt to me watching as a fan, which seemed rather petty.
(13) All in all, not the worst WrestleMania, as many knee-jerk IWC type fans want to say. Half the matches were over 3 stars, which for a WWE pay-per-view is pretty darn good match quality. But absolutely nothing was blow-away, a lot of the pageantry fell short, and some of what we thought would deliver either fell flat (the WWE Title match) or got bumped for no real reason (the US Title match).
(14) From match times I’ve seen, around 1 hr. 42 minutes of wrestling on a 4 hour PPV is just bad. Especially when the point is to RESOLVE THE FEUDS IN THE RING. Compare this to ROH’s Friday night show, with a run time of around 3 hours, 30 minutes (including intermission), which featured just over 2 hours of wrestling (2:01:09). That’s good for 57.6%. ROH had a show with a shorter run time, only one more match, and still offered nearly 20 more minutes of wrestling, for . Sorry, Vince, you’re a wrestling company still, no matter how much you might hate it. You should gun for AT LEAST 50%. You got 42.5%.
(15) Final Grades: I’d probably call it a C+ kind of show. I don’t imagine this one being looked back on fondly or even being particularly memorable in a few years.
As a final (unofficial) thought, I’d like to attempt to defuse any potential comments that since I cover ROH, I am unfairly hating on WWE’s product. Trust me, I really wanted to like this show, and there were things I really did enjoy. I liked Edge/Del Rio but it felt like a SmackDown main event, not a WrestleMania showdown. I liked Punk/Orton, but it being on the undercard, it can only do so much. I liked Rey/Cody, and I liked HHH/Taker. If you legitimately feel like I gave this show the short shrift on purpose, that’s you’re right, but I don’t believe that’s the case.
Thanks for reading, thanks for supporting and checking out InsidePulse, and I hope you enjoyed the thoughts.
