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10:59 - So, that was a somewhat unexpected ending to WrestleMania. I enjoyed the fake out with the double countout, because it gave them an excuse for Miz to still look strong even if he eventually lost the title (after all, he could say he actually retained the title, but that the was restarted). I wasn't shocked to see Cena get Rock Bottomed, but I was a bit surprised to see Miz retain.
I know a lot of people bust on Cena for always winning, but I think his matches don't completely work when he loses. Cena's spiel is that he gets dominated most of the match, then makes a spirited comeback and wins. If he doesn't win, he just looks a bit weak. As such, this match was losing a bit of its emotional luster.
But, yeah, was this the only WrestleMania where a single title didn't change hands? Then again, weren't the two World Titles the only ones defended?
10:53 - Rock, you've got 7 minutes. Be more succinct than you were at the beginning of the show.
10:51 - Rock must've been very uncomfortable wearing that sopping wet shirt all day.
10:49 - Wow, cool for Miz, kicking out of the AA.
10:32 - All of my predictions may not have been right tonight, but my proudest correct prediction is guessing that Cena would debut a new t-shirt color scheme -- red and blue -- without any prior knowledge whatsoever.
10:29 - Is there any question of which title match they view as more important?
10:26 - That was, quite fittingly, a really awesome video montage for The Miz. Very well done and completely legitimized his position in the main event of the biggest show of the year.
10:19 - Okay, I am pretty shocked that Snooki hit a pretty great looking springboard moonsault. Not shocked by the winners, though. I wish Morrison and Ziggler would have had a moment to shine, though.
10:12 - When Edge and Dolph Ziggler were feuding at the beginning of the year, would you have correctly predicted which would be fighting in the opening match of WrestleMania, and which would fight in the second to last match?
10:02 - I really do have to applaud Undertaker and Triple H. It wasn't a flawless match. But it was incredibly intense. These two absolutely brought it, and a lot of people were worried that one or neither of them would be in any condition to put on a great match. I went into this match believing there was no way in hell that Undertaker's streak would end. By the end, I honestly thought it was a good possibility. And I most certainly didn't expect Triple H to tap in the end. With that in mind, I also applaud Triple H. The guy not only kicked out of Triple H's finisher, like, three times. But he also kicked out of his own finisher, and countless chairshots. And then Triple H tapped clean. Yeah, the H came out of it looking incredibly strong, but still.
And there was some legitimate tension there with whether Triple H would reach the sledgehammer while in the submission hold. Bravo.
9:54 - It's funny, this is the reverse of last year. Taker was yelling at Shawn to stay down, but Shawn wouldn't give up fighting. Now it's Triple H who's yelling at Taker to stay down, but Taker won't give up.
9:53 - I have to admit, they do have me believing that Triple H could win this.
9:38 - Undertaker's yearly plancha over the top rope is one of the most remarkable things I see all year. And he's incredibly smart to only do it once a year.
9:36 - They're being wise with this match. They'll never be able to match the greatness of the HBK/Undertaker Match, so they're making it up by being extra intense and violent.
9:24 - Every year I wonder how they convince Triple H to wear those ridiculous "king" entrance outfits.
9:14 - Now c'mon, what did Josh Matthews do to deserve that??? Not a great night for anybody associated with Tough Enough, as Booker and Matthews both ate Stunners. Quite unnecessarily, by the way! I'm guessing this was just done to get Lawler and JR to call the last few matches together, alone.
9:07 - Austin's reaction to that great Lawler dropkick was awesome.
9:04 - Also, I wouldn't have predicted Cole had so many tattoos.
9:03 - Even the announcers seem unprepared on how to call this match. Quite a few awkward silences. Thank God JR is there.
8:53 - Great to see Lawler back to his classic music. Like his entrance attire, too. It's just a pet peeve of mine when he doesn't actually wear his crown. And was Austin drunk when he drove that ATV?
8:50 - It's shocking that this match doesn't have a stipulation that the loser is off of the announce team. but that does beg the question - where do they go from here? Do they continue the Cole Mine thing? And man, Cole is almost as pale as Sheamus.
8:47 - Good to have JR on commentary. Booker T I'm not sold on. Josh Matthews is the best regular guy they've got.
8:34 - Looks like Kyle hit the nail right on the head. Orton gets his ass kicked for the entirety of the match, only to hit an RKO out of nowhere to win the match. Which is especially tragic since Punk showed in this match why he's miles ahead of virtually everybody else on the roster. His behavior, presence, and moves are unlike anybody else. This guy should easily be one of the World Champions.
8:18 - Looks like I was wrong about Punk -- standard looking pair of trunks. Still wouldn't be surprised to see Tarver return -- or another surprise person (Skip Sheffield?) -- as Nexus' newest member.
8:08 - Wow, that match was just plain sad. Did anybody other than Slater enter the ring as a legal man? Has any match been as long as the opening segment (America the Beautiful, Rock intro, Rock promo, and then opening video)? I'm just baffled.
8:06 - Based on his excitement, you can tell Kofi Kingston is doing the most with this WrestleMania appearance. I do think Corre should win this, since there's a lot more upside on the heel end than the face end here. Especially with a face World Champion on that brand.
8:03 - Lord knows we needed a Snoop Dogg skit that has Hornswoggle rapping instead of a United States title match.
7:58 - That was a really fun, exciting match. I enjoyed the psychology of it, with Rey trying to remove Cody's protective mask, while Cody tried to remove Rey's knee brace. In the end, they each succeeded and then used their opponent's gear against them. The right person won, as well.
7:44 - HEY! My second guess was right!! He's dressed as Captain America!!
7:40 - A fine enough match that played it safe, but that's okay. Not all booking has to be shocking, which at times can be illogical. I'm glad we didn't see Christian turn on Edge, because I think there's still money in their reunion. The camera work during the Rolls Royce attack was odd, though. They kept going to Del Rio's reactions, but in doing so they would miss shots of Edge destroying the car. It seemed like everybody was too far apart, or something.
7:25 - Okay, according to Joey Styles on Twitter, Edge IS wearing orange and black. So credit to you, sir. Do you think there's anything to this match appearing so early?
7:23 - I remember thinking to myself, "Well, at least Christian is involved in a main event match." Of course, if he did have an actual match, it turns out he would have appeared higher up on the card. And regarding my prediction -- Edge did rock the trench, and it looked new. No sunglasses, and it doesn't look like there's much of a beard either. The color scheme looks like his usual one, unless that's orange instead of red.
7:17 - I have to admit that I'm slightly disappointed with that beginning. Reports seem to confirm that Bryan/Sheamus has been bumped, and instead we get a 20 minute promo from the Rock? One that didn't particularly build anything up. It just took up a lot of time. And now we're starting with the World Heavyweight Title match? That's surprising.
7:01 - Certain online reports are indicating that Sheamus/Bryan took place as a dark match and won't be happening on the main show. For what it's worth, the preshow did mention this as a match (which I'm sure isn't live, though). And WWE.com has a video of Bryan talking about his first WrestleMania match. I guess we'll see.
If they were going to bump a match, I woulda gone with the thrown together eight man tag.
2 comments:
I went into great detail elsewhere and don't want to kill the comments here, so just a couple quick things.
Thrilled Miz walked out with the title.
WWE made two huge, glaring, obvious mistakes that cost them in two of their top matches (in terms of how they were built up). Lawler VS Cole was pretty much a disaster. How do you screw that up? You overbook it like crazy and have Lawler kicking Cole's ass. Instead it was essentially a basic wrestling match with Cole in control for most of it. Huge, huge mistake. And then they make it worse by declaring Cole the winner at the end. If Cole doesn't turn out to be the mystery GM with someone in the back helping him out by sending e-mails, that means either this feud continues (mistake, it was very well built up but it needed to end here, it will wear out its welcome almost immediately) or the actual culmination of the feud was Cole wins (even bigger mistake).
Mistake #2 on the night: The Rock should have been at ringside right off the bat for Miz/Cena. He should have entered before both of them and hovered at ringside the entire time. The crowd spent the whole match KNOWING Rock would be out, so they sat on their hands waiting for him. Had he been at ringside they could have teased his involvement throughout and gotten heat on Miz and Cena for threatening Rock. Just a huge mistake there.
Also hate that Bryan/Sheamus was cut, especially considering some of the stupid stuff they did have.
Overall I thought the PPV was okay. Nothing special but it had a couple good matches, a strong Undertaker/HHH match (not sure how well it will hold up when you know the winner, a lot was based on HHH's near falls on Taker, like the brilliantly done callup to last year with Taker playing the part of Shawn...Taker stumbling and begging HHH to hit him with HHH shaking his head and brushing off the chokeslam before hitting the Tombstone...I completely bought that based on last year. Brilliant there. But knowing the winner, not sure if it holds up quite as well, there was a LOT of stalling. Still very good though. And I'm thrilled Miz won, huge reaction at the party I had when Miz kicked out of the AA and then retained the title (all Miz fans here). But a lot of mistakes were made and a lot of the matches were meh.
Oh yeah, so glad we had JR for Undertaker/HHH and for Miz/Cena. For the first, nobody, NOBODY in the business does epic matches like JR does. And for the second, I absolutely loved that JR commented on how resilient Miz is when he kicked out of the AA. A lesser announcer wouldn't have talked up Miz there since he's the "bad guy", and Cole would have been too over the top and not sold it. JR's comment helped sell Miz as someone who is actually belonging in this match, not just that guy who gets lucky. Also thought Cena made him look very good here. My complaint has never been that Cena makes people look bad (although I wish he'd usually sell the after effects of the match better...selling during a match is fine, but look at HHH and Taker to see a great example of selling AFTER the match and making it look like your opponent took you to the limit), but that he's booked in a way that makes his opponents look like they don't really belong in the ring with him. By kicking out of the AA and getting a lot of the offense even before the cheating started, Miz looked like he belonged in the ring with Cena.
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