Ugh. I didn't think 27 was going to be good, but now I'm really not looking forward to watching it

When I say yabba, you say dabba.

Cody Rhodes vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. was good, but yeah it's a weak show. With a shamefully cold Atlanta crowd.

ugh. That Rock return from Valentine's Day in 2011 is so hot though. One of my favorite moments in wrestling.

WRESTLEMANIA XXVII

The Biggest Wrestlemania Ever

Umm... why was this the biggest Wrestlemania ever? Im pretty sure there were bigger ones, like oh i dont know, III. But whatever, it certainly isnt the last time WWE will just go all WWE during this show. And with that, lets move on to the show.


SHOW NOTES and THOUGHTS

- We are in Atlanta for tonight's card, and by looking at the timeline on the network, it looks like we will have 8 matches and one of them is a quick squash. Well at least I wont hate all 8 matches.

- Someone called Keri Hilson sang America the Beautiful. I really need to brush up on my pop culture because this is the 14th WM in a row where I had no idea who the singer was. Im just going to assume she was from American Idol.

- And by the looks of it, The Rock is our host tonight. At this point of the show I have no idea what the job of the host is, other than a promo tpo open the show, and some quick segments in between matches. Not to spoil it, but I learned by the end that the job description was expanded a whole bunch.

- An early shot by The Rock aimed at Cena. I know ntheir promos got personal during the builds to the next two shows, I just didnt know it had started already. And what the hell is Yabba Dabba mean. I know its in regards to the Flintstones, but i need context on this.

- Oh I see the opening match is for the WHC. Here is the next example of the WWE, WWEing all over themselves. At least the challenger, ALberto Del Rio came out first.

- Why is Michael Cole in a glass case, and how has someone not hot boxed him already? But at least he is heel play by play guys, because that is what we have been lacking, dueling play by play guys in a 3 man booth

- At least the opening match was good. I thought both guys did a solid job in this match

- ANd it was at this point in the show where I learned that Michael Cole was wrestling. At a Wrestlemania. Against Jerry Lawler. Im purely guessing that McMahon was done in the ring at this point but tried to use Cole as his proxy for the annual McMahon gets his match. Jesus ****ing Christ, I really think I would prefer watching Coach in a pillow fight

- I really didnt understand the whole Flash/ Captain America hybrid Mysterio was going for, but I guess it kept his Wrestlemania Superhero gimmick alive. The match was really good too. How did this Cody Rhodes thast put on really good matches become a buried Stardust?

- I love me some Snoop Dogg, but that American Idol skit was the rizzling ****s. I really hate celebrities at Wrestlemania.

- I guess I should have waited before claiming that I wouldnt hate the squash match. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to have Santino, Big Show, Kane, and Kofi on one team? WHat a terrible match. At least it was short.

- There was one spot i liked. An unnamed and unrecognizable member of The Corre came of the top rope and Kane caught him with what looked like a really stiff punch to the face.

- I know that the WWE is really good at doing the video packages showing you the build to a match, but Orton vs Punk looked like it had a really good build leading up to this match. Unfortunately it turned out to be the same old Randy Orton match. Also was this CM Punk's first singles match at WM?

- 2011 had a really good HoF class. Road Warriors, Abdullah the Butcher, and HBK were all time greats in one way or another. Another celebrity thing that needs to go away is the HoF induction. Drew Carey? Really?

- I was thinking while watching this show, you know what this show needs? Booker T on commentary. And just as I was done think that, out he came. Sometimes I just get really lucky. At least we also get JR for this match

- It is amazing that Austin hasnt seriously hurt someone or himself driving that ATV out to the ring. The guy is a giddamn menace on that thing.

- Lawler vs Cole with Austin as the ref was just terrible. When I finally finish these shows, I will hopefully be able to do some posts where I rank some things from all of the shows. If I decide to do a top 10 awful matches at WM, this show will no doubt be on it.

- Im also going to take a shot in the dark and say that would only do the match if he and JR got to do the final three matches on commentary together. There really was no other reason to have Austin stun all of the current commentators after the match.

- I see this is the beginning of HHH's try to hard Wrestlemania's entrances.

- Color me surprised that HHH and Taker had a really good match. Of course in HHH fashion he took forever to tap to Hell's Gate. Maybe I was projecting, but i felt like i could feel Taker saying to himself "OK Hunter its time to tap" about 40 times until he did.

- Laycool? That might be the ****tiest name ever for a tag team. ANd what the ever loving **** is Snooki doing on my television? I wanted to throw my remote through the TV during this abortion of a match.

- Just a quick note. We didnt have the US Title, IC Title, or Tag Team titles defended on this show. Im also pretty sure they werent even in the show at all unless i missed them mixed in one of the tag matches. Very odd.

- Miz out first, because WWE just has to WWE all over themselves. ANd not to be outdone, Cena tries to one up HHH for silliest entrance of the year. What was with the whole choir/DMX thing? Head scratching.

- I dont know what to say about the main event. The crowd seemed to be really into it until the bell rang and then they were dead as hell. ANd then Miz and Cena couldnt click. It was very disjointed from start to double countout finish.

- So as Im sitting there trying to make sense of a double countout finish to a Wrestlemania main event, The Rock's music hits. Apparently being the host also gives you commissoner duties as well. So someone explain to me the kayfabe reason for Rock to restart the match, make it no DQ, and then 20 seconds in interfere so Miz can win. WHy not just keep the finish as is, and then kick Cena's ass? And then he attacks Miz after the fact.I guess they had to give The Rock the rub from Miz and Cena. Jus completely asinine. Ruined the whole show for me.


AWARDS TIME

Match of the Night

I think this one goes easily to HHH/Taker. It was a very good match from start to finish. Sure HHH took a little too long to tap, but they told a really good story throughout.

Worst Match of the Night

There were a few contenders for this, but Im going to give the nod to Cole vs Lawler. Holy hell this match sucked ass.

HBK Award for MVP

I think Im going to give it to JR, because its probably the last time we will see him at a Wrestlemania, and his commentary blew away Mathews and Cole.

LVP

I dont know. Pick someone in that match before the main event. Lets go with John Morrison, just because.

SHOW RANKINGS

Up until the main event, this show was actually doing pretty damn well, and I would have had no problem putting it into the top half with even a semi decent match. But that **** show at the end caused this show to plummet almost into the bottom 5


X-SEVEN
VIII
III
XIV
XIX
23
X
XX
22
VI
VII
XXVI
X8
V
XXV
XXIV
21
1
13
XII
XXVII
IV
XI
IX
2
XV


Well its on to Wrestlemania 28. I know its the first of two Rock/Cena matches at WM, and the second of two HHH/Taker matches. So fingers crossed, hopefully we get a good show.


AJ

Go watch The Rock on RAW from 2/14/11 (on YT). One of the biggest pops ever and a great promo that follows. The Rock hadn't been on WWE tv since 04 and was thought to have been gone forever.

Also gives the context for Yabba Dabba.

WRESTLEMANIA XXVIII

Once In A Lifetime

Once in a lifetime, huh? Ok, I see we are in for a lot of false promises in this show. By the looks of the timeline on the WWE Network, it looks like we are in store for a few matches that have some length to them. Hopefully that means they are good. Anyway, onward and upward.

SHOW NOTES AND THOUGHTS

- Lillian Garcia with America the Beautiful, and the streak of me not knowing who the singer is finally ends. She also belts out the lesser heard 2nd verse.

- And we are opening with the WHC title match again. Someone please tell me why, kayfabe speaking, would anyone who won the Rumble choose to wrestle for this title as opposed to the WWE title? It is the red headed stepchild of titles.

- Im pretty sure this is Daniel Bryan's WM debut and he is a heel. I never knew Bryan had ever been a heel in WWE.

- And what the hell was that? The match lasts 20 seconds? How does anyone benefit from that?

- Oh good, Kane vs Randy Orton. And its the same Randy Orton match we get every single time. I just dont get the whole Randy Prton thing. Im not saying he is bad, he is just bleh. The same thing every match.

- Holy ****! We have an actual IC title match on Wrestlemania. I wasnt even sure that the title was an actual thing at this time in the WWE, we never get to see it.

- And the match involves Big Show. Greaaaaaaaaaaat. And on top of that they show a Mania retrospective of him leading up to the match and they make him out to be a clown. Thanks for taking it seriously. Yeah he beats Cody, fantastic. Then Cole of course has to ruin it by claiming this is his Wrestlemania moment. You cant maufacture a Wrestlemania moment. They just happen and are never planned. What the hell

- I hope you guys realize by now that I am totally anti- celebrity at Wrestlemania. Yeah, you can forget all of that because Maria Menounos cancells all of that out. Big fan of Maria. Always have been. And she got the pin so I was happy.

- I have to give to Michael Cole, he hit it on the head when he said that Joe Robbie/Blockbuster/Sun Life Stadium and the set look really good after the sun went down. Quality set this year.

- Someone please enlighten me as to what era actually ended after the Taker/HHH match? They both kept wrestling after this match. Just another waste of words by WWE.

- Taker cut his hair for this year's show. Ooh and the Cell has its own theme music. This show keeps getting better. This was a good match though, but I will have more on this a little later.

- The HoF class was really good this year, but I know I already stated this somewhere before, but Edge is easily the worst headliner in the history of the Hall. I get why they did it, but man is that weak. Every other inductee that year had a better career. Id almost say Tyson can go in that category too, because of the role he played in making the WWF the company that won the war, but I wont go there.

- So The Miz goes from headlining and winning the main event at the prior year's Mania, to being on Team Johnny in the Raw vs Smackdown match. Im shocked that the brand split is still a thing here. Other than this match there is no other indication of it being a thing.

- I will say that this year is probably the best for female "talent". Really top notch, and I love Maria Menounos.

- So after the match we get the annual "Look how great we are" feature showing all of the wonderful things they did during Wrestlemania weekend. Usually I zone out for this, but Im glad I actually paid attention this time. They had a Reading Challenge contest where the winners, according to the feature, would get front row tickets for Mania. Nice. Then they show the winners live at the show, and there clearly are people sitting in front of them, so they didnt get front row seats. I just chalk it up to a mistake in the video, but then Cole reiterates they have front row seats. No, *******, they dont. I can see people sitting in front of them. I dont know why this bothered me so much, but it did.

- I was very happy to see CM Punk vs Jericho and was hoping for a great match. It didnt quite reach the great level, but I did enjoy it very much.

- It looked like Punk took a couple bad bumps during the match. There was a spot here Jericho was on the apron and suplexed Punk from the ring on to the floor. He landed with a bad sounding thud. Then a little later he was on the middle or top rope facing away from Jericho and Jericho pulled him to the mat by his trunks, and Punk's head bounced off the mat. Looked terrible. I did like seeing the old school Lion Tamer though.

- There was a spot early on where Jericho was yelling at Punk about his father and sister, and I get it was part of the build, but I really did not like how they used actual talking to help tell the story. That isnt wrestling. Its lazy booking. They did it even more during the Taker/HHH match, and it really brought my opinion of that match down a little too. If you cant tell a story without using words, then tell a different story. I get trash talking or shouting out a catch phrase during a match, but please no scripted lines. Its not a good pattern to get into.

- ANd now I get Puff Daddy on my television to introduce a band or something. All i was able to uderstand was a bunch of random letters. he literally said "And now coming out QRJDKLKJK......... LKJ. I was half expecting to see the DeNiro as VIto Corleone avatar come out and start singing. Unfortunately we got some skinny guy with bad tattoos rapping very poorly. Then he started talking and I realized this was the begining of the Cena entrance.

- Then they did the same thing with The Rock, except this time at least I knew who Flo Rida is. All in all these two entrances were just overproduced, bloated messes that added 15 extra minute on to this already vewry long show.

- As for the Rock/Cena match, it was very good. Alot better than what I expected. There was a spot near the end that really took me out of the moment. Cena had Rock in the STF for a while and Rock was starting to fade. After what seemed like 5 minutes but was probably only 1, he passed out. Then after being out for about 10 seconds, Mike Chioda decides to check his arm. Instead of just doing the lift three times and then having Rock catch as it almost hits the match for the third time, Chioda makes this giant production after each time he drops the arm.

Lets look at all the ways this just sucked ass. First if we are being consistant, as soon as he passed out, precident tells us the match is ove, and Cena should have won. I get they were going for more drama, so thats fine that they went to the arm. But the match was great up to that point, we didnt need the ridiculous over the top screaming by Chioda counting each time he dropped the arm. Everyone in the place knew ROck was going to regain his strength on the third one, there was no need for the overly dramatic moment. It really knocked the match rating down for me.

- Luckily the finish was really well done. I loved how Cena thought about going for the 5 Knuckle Shuffle again, but decided to try and mock The Rock with The People's Elbow, but The Rock caught him and hit Rock Bottom and got the clean win. Really well done and it made up for the spot i talked about earlier.

- I love Maria Menounos

AWARDS TIME

Match of the Night

There were three really good matches on this card, but I think Ill give it to Rock/Cena. Just a really good match, and delivered a lot more than I expected

Worst Match of the Night

Sheamus vs Daniel Bryan. 20 seconds? Really? Someone thought this was a good idea?

MVP

CM Punk. He wrestled a really good match against Jericho despite taqking a couple really bad looking bumps.

LVP

Whoever booked the WHC match. Probably Vince, so well give it to him.

SHOW RANKINGS

This show started off slow, but the last half really picked it up. I would put this in the top 10. Plus... Maria Menounos


X-SEVEN
VIII
III
XIV
XIX
23
X
XX
XXVIII
22
VI
VII
XXVI
X8
V
XXV
XXIV
21
1
13
XII
XXVII
IV
XI
IX
2
XV


Im getting close to finishing this. Ill hopefully start watching 29 in the next couple days and get another wroteup done in a wekk or so.. I do wish I took notes while watching 32 earlier this year, because im in no way whatsoever looking forward to rewatching that. Oh and I was on the fence about whether or not to watch the preshow matches along with show, but I have decided that I will not do that, and will just base my opinions on the main show.

A.J.

Daniel Bryan was a tremendous heel. He won MITB as a face, vowed that he was going to wait to use it to main event WrestleMania, and then cashed in on unconscious babyface Big Show to win it, starting a slow heel turn from there. The "yes" stuff was originally him trolling the audience. It organically transitioned into a babyface chant later. That insta-job to Sheamus did a lot to create the backlash that led to his face turn. The fans hijacked Raw with chants for him the next night. Totally by accident, but I do think Bryan got helped by that whole thing.

On the following PPV those two had a great 2-of-3 falls match.

Thank you for the back story and context. I'm glad that they were actually able to turn that match into a positive, and also illustrates one of the bigger negative points of doing this. It also further legitimizes The Lapsed Fan's 14 hour podcasts they do for each show. There is a lot of context to hash out for each match.

In a completely unrelated topic, I was browsing through my notes for some of the older shows looking for the first time "The Streak" was used on a broadcast, and I realized something. In my rankings, I have a couple of the shoes out of order. I have been using a similar 10 pt. rating system for each show similar to what True North does, but I've been keeping that to myself. I think on the next write up I'm going to correct it and also add in the score I have for each show, that way it doesn't happen anymore. It's not a big deal, it's just my OCD acting up once again

Pretty much exactly how I remember it, except I had a much lower opinion of Rock/Cena at the time. It was probably spoiled for me by having sat through the build, with Rock cutting some of the absolute worst promos of his career. I'll have to give this one another look.

I really can't remember enjoying any of the post-comeback Rock matches.

Unfortunately I'm failing to find that promo where Cena strolled out, owned the **** out of Rock on the mic, and seemed to legitimately piss Rock off so badly that Rock's brain broke and he just said the same thing a bunch of times in a row while trying to find his way to the end of a promo.

Finally did find it.

I can definitely see how more of the Rock wrestling after this show would not be good thing, but for this night, his first night back in the ring, I thought it was good

Can't watch it at the moment, is that the "continue trending" promo? Great work by Cena.

It is. Rock was so legitimately shook after Cena got done.

Wow he said absolutely nothing for 90 seconds and then finished it with a "If you smell what The Rock is cookin'". Subpar, Dwayne, subpar.

Well he didn't exactly say nothing. He said, "It's the same man. It's the same man. It's the same -- it's the same man." And a bit of "John. You're back there listening. You're back there listening. John."

I don't get the hate for the Edge HOF headline. Dude busted his ass and moved up from low card to Midcard to upper card and was an entertaining character the whole way

I loved Edge, he had a great career and was a worthy HOFer even if WWE had adhered to a nice high standard for their Hall instead of what they've done, but he's certainly on the low end of the list of headliners.

I know he talked, but he said nothing. I guess I should have been a little clearer with that statement

I agree with all of that, but in a class that includes Ron Simmons, Mil Mascaras, Yokozuna, and The Four Horsemen, Edge is probably the worst out of all of them.

There is no doubt he had a HoF career, I just think from a talent standpoint having him headline this year was a bad call. If they held off a couple years and had him go in during a lesser year, then it might have been OK.

I was kidding. I knew what you meant.

Ok good. And you were right, he was shook up or shocked, or pissed off at that Cena promo. There was no hiding it in his face.

Quick question, did someone earlier get busted for having crib notes written on a hand for a promo? I'm curious what Cena was referencing with that remark

Fair enough.

Holy ****, I was looking up to see if Vader had been inducted to the hall yet, and found this.

Due to years of alcohol abuse and travel, White's wife left him in 2007.[48] Following this, White quit drinking and curtailed his travel schedule before undergoing double knee replacement surgery.[49] However, his surgical wounds became infected, and he was bedridden for six months.[49] Soon after recovering, White passed out during a plane trip to Japan for an autograph session.[49] He was in a coma for 33 days, during which he lost 112 pounds.[49]

Damn