Growing up I was a big wrestling fan, with periods where it wasn’t the utmost important but since university it has been a bigger part of my life with a number of new friends who loved it. I enjoy watching wrestling and it for the first WrestleMania as apart of the WWE & Netflix deal this should have had all the stops pulled out. It had it’s moments but ultimately flopped and flopped hard with fans around the world. Lackluster builds and awful performances led to big night in Vegas falling very short of expectations including a big name not showing up at all.
Night 1 was highlighted by a great main event match that ended with a predictable ending that didn’t have the intended effect WWE was hoping for with Paul Heyman stuck between his best friend CM Punk and his “tribal chief” Roman Reigns in the triple threat match where Heyman would seemingly side with Punk before turning on him, and then turning on Reigns as well to help Rollins win.
While the main event was a great match the rest of the night 1 card was lackluster in their performances, with no swerves and lackluster entrances and “special” attire for the big show. While Jacob Fatu and LA Knights US title match was alright the only other match that was alright was the El Grande Americano taking on Rey Fénix (injury substitute for Rey Mysterio), and El Grande Americano’s entrance was the only one outside of Punk’s or maybe Tiffany Stratton to be near WrestleMania standards.
The major Night 1 issue was the company all but destroying Guenther’s character. Guenther is a throwback old school style wrestler who is the best heel in all of wrestling and puts on classic matches. Classic is not what I would call the opening match, which saw Jey Uso, while popular isn’t that great of a solo talent, better with his brother as a tag team wrestler go over on the night in a below quality match and the finish was even worse. The build was centered around Jey’s unpopular win at the Royal Rumble and choosing to take on Guenther over Cody. To Guenther’s credit he lived up to the promise he made Jey if he were to challenge him for his championship and made Jey’s life awful. Despite the new intense and focused Jey, he came out through the crowd “yeeting” and partying and would submit Guenther with his own move. Now where is the problem with the finish is that Guenther tapped rather than just went out cold, destroying his character. This marks 2 years straight Guenther would lose his titles to lesser opponents. It doesn’t help that in the post show press conference he was viably intoxicated, and not the first time he has done this, which didn’t go over well last time and might sour his name amongst the higher ups who are still in damage control over the Vince issues and lawsuits.
Night 2 saw some better in ring action notably in the women’s triple threat match which did feature 3 of the best in the company who managed to work extremely well together as well as the fatal four way match for the Intercontinental championship. The night saw strong performances from Drew McIntyre and a nice surprise in the open challenge Randy Orton had thrown out, answered by viral wrestler and TNA World Champion Joe Hendry.
The biggest flop of the night was the match for the Undisputed WWE Championship between champion Cody Rhodes and John Cena. Cena, now a heel, was in pursuit of the record setting 17th world championship. This match’s build despite 2 of the biggest names in wrestling today would be lackluster and awful, which following Elimination Chamber implied Travis Scott (the rapper) and The Rock would be involved. It proved that only would be half true with Travis Scott coming out at an awkward time and slowly and I mean slowly made his way down the ramp to the aid Cena, who was in control at the time. NO Rock in sight but more on that in a bit. The match, even with Cena’s dimensioned in ring ability, he is 47 and hasn’t been full time in a few years after Hollywood started calling, should have been so much better than watch we got and the anticlimactic finish just made things worse, especially as this was the historic 17th world title.
The Rock, who is now on the board of TKO Entertainment (who owns WWE and UFC) was built into the storyline continuing from last WrestleMania season with Cody Rhodes taking on the Bloodline in his quest to finish “his story.” This saw the Rock and Cody on opposite sides and The Rock offered Cody to join his side and be given everything. Post Elimination Chamber Cody would turn down the offer seeing Cena at long last make his heel turn attacking Cody and siding with his once rival The Rock. Despite all this The Rock was seemingly rarely ever mentioned, we never found out why Cena aligned with him and even more confusing NO Rock at Mania. The lack of The Rock is more weird considering he denied a report that his filming schedule was preventing an appearance in Vegas at the big 2 night event. This was a major disappointment that may never get answered given his random appearances and flip-flopping on if he is a heel or face (bad guy or good guy).
Overall WWE needs to learn from these failures for next Mania season especially given how much their ticket prices, not just for Mania or larger events, but normal Raw and SmackDown shows are costing fans these days not to drive off the paying customers.
– Everett
