Also



Bahahahaha

Vader started his career late. He made his debut in 85, at the age of 30.

Rock had crib notes on his wrist during that very promo. I cued up the video to Cena's interruption because you don't want to sit through the AIDS that came before it, but it was visible. Clear that he didn't expect to be called out on it. That's when his body language showed a clear change of stance.

Yeah. Wow, it was right at that moment his whole demeanor changed. Now I'm really looking forward to listening to TLF on this show. Id like to see if they have anything to add about this match. I'm still currently on 27 but I have already listened to the Meltzer interview so I can skip the rest

WRESTLEMANIA NY/NJ

Greatness vs Redemption

Probably one of the weaker tag lines for a Mania, but whatever. This also marks the first Mania since the first one not to have the number at the end. This obviously will be an ongoing thing with the big ones being the exception. Being an east coast guy, it's nice to see a Mania back there, I just wish they would consider putting one back in Philly. XV can't be the lasting legacy of Mania in Philly. But I digress, let's get started.

SHOW THOUGHTS

- The show starts with a video of Chris Christie paying tribute to the people affected by Hurricane Sandy. It took me a while to connect all of the dots, but it was a decent package

- Then Michael Cole does a quick opening then they cut right into another package. This time it's just a generic "This is Wrestlemania" video. At least they give us an idea of the upcoming matches.

- Just a random thought I had during this video. Do you think Vince is bothered that his number one creation is called Wrestlemania? I know it's not possible, but do you think if he could get away with it, he would rename it "Sports Entertainmentmania"? Or something like that

- And we are starting with a six man match this year. The Shield vs Sheamus, Randy Orton, and The Big Show. Ok.

- Say what you will about The Big Show, but I have zero interest in being on the business end of one of his open hand chops. Those look like they would stop your heart. And while I'm on the topic, Sheamus, clubbing forearms don't look pleasant either.

- Rollins took a nasty head first bump into a guardrail after a suicide dive. Glad to see he never changed.

- But all in all,this was a good opening match. Seems like a while since I made that statement.

- Our second match is Ryback vs Mark Henry. Excluding gimmick matches, at first look, this match has the potential to be one of the worst matches in Mania history. And yeah it came close to achieving that distinction.

- I'm always excited for a 2 vs 2 match for the Tag Team titles. Dolph Ziggler and Big E vs Team Hell No. Should be interesting to say the least.

- It was a very fun match to watch. I did cringe a little watching Daniel Bryan executing a diving head butt from the top rope, but even so it was entertaining.

- I see everything I had heard in the past was true. They actually did try making Fandango a thing. But was his original gimmick a bad dancer? He was awful coming to and in the ring before the match. At least it seems he got some lessons since then. He isn't a great dancer now, but holy ****, he was terrible here.

- I had heard about this Jericho/Fandango match before, and I could have sworn it was going to be a quick match. I guess I was wrong because it went almost ten minutes. It was also not a good match by any stretch, so maybe it was wishful thinking on my part.

- I am glad to see they broke with tradition here and promoted the main event all during the show. This is much better than just the same old package right before the match they do with every other one

- Just what I always wanted!!!! Puff Daddy performing a song at Wrestlemania. Fabulous. Watching this makes me miss Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit

- I see they went hard with the whole xenophobic angle in the build up to this Del Rio vs Swagger match. I think I saw Trump in the audience, so I wonder if this is where he got his inspiration.

- I really have nothing else on this match, so I guess we will go on to the triple main event. Which brings me toa giant gripe I have with WWE. Not everything is the biggest and greatest thing ever, and you can't have a triple main event. By definition a main event is one match. If they are claiming a triple then that means that they either know that: A) They aren't putting the best match on last. Or B) The match they have on last is going to suck. I'll render my verdict after I'm done watching

- It seemed like a really well done build to this match. Perhaps a tad insensitive with regards to Paul Bearer, but very good

- I guess I'll deal with a crappy PuffDaddy performance if it means I get a live Living Color song too. Loved it. I will say that Heyman's pony tail was starting to look really sad though. I'm glad he decided to do away with it

- I just loved to psychology of this match all the way through. So well done. Especially the slaps early on, and having Punk walk the ropes to mock Undertaker. So good

- The botched table spot did look horrific and it appeared to hurt both guys. But even that couldn't take away the fact that this was just a great match. Definitely in Taker's top 5 Mania matches.

- Hey would you look at that! It's another if HHH loses he retires match. Great. Normally I would just assume HHH wins since he continues to wrestle, but I don't think anyone doubts they would just come up with some bull crap to put hi, back in the ring at a later date.

- Wow! Leonard looks HUGE here. I guess he can pull it off since WWE doesn't test part timers and at this point he was nowhere near a UFC ring

- I really like Lesnar's pure monster character. He plays it up so well. Whatever he is today is a far cry from this. I will say his work is better today, because he was a bit clunky here

- All in all this was a very good match. Perhaps a bit unbelievable with regards to HHH being in the Kimora for what seemed like ten minutes, but still good. I'm also glad they didn't have Lesnar tap to HHH. That would have put a damper on this match

- I almost forgot about the HoF. They usually do it somewhere in the middle of the show. I'm glad we did get it though because this was such a great class. Awesome idea to have Sammartino, Backlund, and Foley all go in at MSG. Foley was the third best inductee. That tells you all you needed to know

- Here we go with Rock/Cena II. The crowd seems really drained after the last two matches.

- I popped hard when Cena missed the shoulder tackled and just flew in the air and came up empty. Of course he ruined that good will when he applied the saddest and laziest looking STF ever.

- It looked like they were going to with the opposite of last year's finish with having Cena hit his AA after Rock went for the FiveKnuckle Shuffle. I'm glad they didn't

- Another really good match . The last three were all very good and not many Manias can boast that. And I'm pretty positive they knew that Taker/Punk was going to be the best by far. That was why they had a "Triple" main event.

AWARDS TIME

Match of the Night

Taker vs Punk. This was the winner by a large margin. Usually that is because everything else sucked. That was not the case this time as there were other matches on this card that would win on other shows. Great, great match.

Worst Match of the Night

Henry vs Ryback. The drizzling ****s!

MVP

CM Punk. Just spectacular in his match with Taker. He just came to play and put on a clinic. Fantastic

LVP

Puff Daddy. Get the hell off of my TV.

SHOW RANKINGS

This show was a very good show. XVIII was atop ten show and I think this easily surpassed it. The last three matches were all very good and there were a couple other decent ones early on. I do however think it just comes short of the top 5.



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

And now its on to XXX. There are a couple giant things that happen here that I am looking forward to actually seeing. And I just want to state again that I am innocent way looking forward to watching 32 again but I will get this done before WM 33 happens

Glad you stuck with it. I don't envy you the slog of getting through the next three shows in three months, though.

30 was really good and 31 was decent. 32 though....27 minute HHH/Roman match lolz

I've never seen 30, and I liked 31 so they won't be that bad at all. It's 32 that I am dreading. I know for a fact I won't be watching the pre show matches.

I actually purchased the Network the night before 30 so I could watch the HoF. I didn't watch a raw or a PPV until Summer Slam later that year

I agree 30 was good, but they're all just so long now. Last year's was nearly 5 hours just for the main show.

30 has to be a top-five Mania.

Personally, I don't mind Wrestlemanias, or any big supershow of any promotion, going long 4-5 hour shows. The problem with long shows is that the companies seems to want something to kill time and have meaningless filler during the shows (like segments of people/celebrities that the audience (TV and Live) doesn't really care for) rather than use that time to make something mean more and enhance the show. Heck, ChachiArcola mentioned it in the WM 29 review. Puff Daddy performing a song during WM served no purpose (I'll take Lemmy, may he RIP, slurring the words to The Game any day) at all except to get WWE thinking "We're still relevant, dammit." while Living Colour performing a song live had much more purpose since that was CM Punk's theme song.

Take NJPW's WrestleKingdom 9 for instance. The first three matches were multi-man tag matches, but even those seemed to have purpose that adds to the show with the exception of like one match I think. The rest of the show onwards for like 3 hours was all killer, no filler, and had matches that was different from each other.

I don't mind a long show either if it's good. XX was over 4 1/2 hours and I enjoyed that very much. 32 was about the same length but was awful because of a number of factors. A big one was the filler you mentioned. And isn't even counting the last hour of the pre show where there were two matches.

WM 20 did have some filler though (the two tag team titles in multi-team matches, Evening Gown match, Jesse Ventura interviewing Trump I think, that Crusierweight title match clusterf***).

The highs did make it up for it well (The World Title matches more than delivered, Trish turning heel, Cena being so damn over in a smark city, Rock's last match for over 7 years, the return of the Undertaker (even if the match did suck), the crowd crapping all over Lesnar/Goldberg).

I guess we have different definitions of filler, not that it's a bad thing, because I would never think a tag title match no matter how bad or I'll conceived is filler. Filler to me are the things that aren't promoted, don't draw anymore eyeballs, and really contribute nothing to the show. I have no idea if Puff Daddy was advertised or not, but even if he was, I seriously doubt that there was even one person changed their mind and decided to order the show because of him.

When I think filler I think of things like video package they seem to do every year about Wrestlemania week. Or 99% of the celebrity crap they do. Did anyone really care that Snooki or Kim Kardashian was at WM? I get why they did it in the early years of the show, but there really is no need for it anymore. Not to mention the excessively long video packages the precede each match rehashing the build for each match. They show the same exact package during the pre show, so I don't really think a replay is in order before each match.

I just don't know if it is even possible to put on a show of 4 hours or longer in the current WWE climate with out a decent amount of filler. I do know that I think I may have found my inspiration for watching 32 now. Maybe I'll time the amount of filler to see where they could have shaved some time off a show they knew was going to be sub par

WRESTLEMANIA XXX

Some French Crap

So this is it. This is the last Mania that I hadn't seen prior. Full disclosure: I first bought the Network the day before this show to see the HoF with Jake, Hall, and Warrior. I didn't bother watching this the next day because I had no idea who anyone was, or the storylines. And by the time I decided to watch, I had already started this project, so I figured I would wait until I got to it. With that said, let's get on to the show

SHOW THOUGHTS

- Eventhough every instinct I have says I should have severely disliked it, I really enjoyed the opening segment with Hogan, Austin, and Rock. They had really good chemistry together. My favorite part was the instant Hogan realized he had been saying "Silverdome". The look on his face was awesome. I also enjoyed the subsequent ball breaking that Rock and Austin gave him about it. This was very well done.

- One other quick note about this opening. When Rock came out, JBL said something almost as a throwaway about the Mt. Rushmore of wrestling being in the ring. Well since there are four faces on Mt. Rushmore, who would be the fourth face? Flair? HBK? HHH? Bret Hart? Feel free to discuss.

- Color me shocked that HHH would ever put himself in the opening match at a Wrestlemania. It does not shock me that his match got the most time however. One of the things I'm going to do after I finish this, is go back and check how many times his matches were the longest in a given Wrestlemania. Right now with out looking, I'm going to guess it's somewhere around 6 or 7.

- Despite that small rant, this was still a very good match that told the perfect story it needed to. Just a great way to start this show off.

- I didn't try to look it up, but I could have sworn two of the masked women accompanying HHH to the ring were Charlotte and Sasha. Anyone know if this is accurate?

- The next match was an odd one considering the participants and the outcome. The Shield vs Kane and the New Age Outlaws. Since I don't have any info on the backstory here almost everything about this match makes no sense. It was a squash match against three legends which makes no sense since the Shield was already way over at this point and they would be broken up just a couple months later. Who knows.

- The next match was the inaugural Andre the Giant Battle Royal. Nothing shows that the crowd for this show was hot more than how into this match they were. When I first started watching wrestling back in the early 80's, the yearly battle royal was something I looked forward to. That is the main reason I still love then today. However I'm not dumb and I realize that the vast majority of current day fans have little to no interest in them, but on this night, the crowd loved it. They popped hard doing the Fandango and when Cesaro powered Big Show over the top to win. Really enjoyed this too.

- lolcenawins

- Did they really need Cena to go over the whole Wyatt family here? And if they did, why not have one of the other guys eat the pin? Definitely a low point in this show for me.

- The Lesnar/Taker match while not a classic by any stretch, was not as bad as I was expecting. One of the things I was looking for while watching was the moment Taker got the concussion. I thought it would have been a big spot where he caught a boot to the head or fell funny, but I didn't see that. He took a slightly awkward bump on the outside at one point, but it didn't look all that bad.

- The streak is no more. It amazes me how shocked everyone was in the crowd when Lesnar got the pin. Maybe I'm looking back with hindsight, and it's totally possible that I would have had the same reaction in the moment.

- And another garbage Divas match designed to be nothing but a cool down before the main event. As far as that goes I guess it did its job.

- The only thing worse that Randy Orion's theme music is a live performance of Randy's theme music. At least they didn't give the band a credit after the song. They barely seemed to acknowledge it actually. Very strange.

- As I have stated multiple times before, I am not a fan of three way or four way matches unless there is an organic reason for it through story telling. That appears to not be the reason for it here, but even so, this was a really good match. I find myself saying that a lot with regards to Mania three ways, so maybe I'll change my stance on that. Or maybe not.

- I think the injured shoulder story was a bit overdone and took a little away for me, but not enough for me to not enjoy this.

- The confetti after the match was only comparible to the confetti after Roman Reigns won the title at Survivor Series 15. I'm curious as to how much money that confetti storm cost.

AWARDS TIME

Match of the Night

Bryan vs HHH. This was an excellent match that really did its job in story telling and setting up the main event later in the night.

Worst Match of the Night

Leaving the Divas out of this, there really wasn't a "bad" match on this card. There were more curious decisions though, so I'll give this to Cena/Wyatt. Like I said it wasn't a bad match,but the decision to put Super Cena over here seemed to serve no purpose.

MVP

Hard to not give it to the best pure wrestler on the card, Especially when he was in two very good matches. So Daniel Bryan, please accept this award.

LVP

This will be an odd decision. I'm giving it to Tyson Kidd. I know you are thinking, "What?" Well my thought process is that when I hear old school wrestlers in interviews, and they are asked about being in battle royals, they usually all say the same thing. They usually say they hated being in them because you can't se everyone all the time and it's easy to get hurt. They also claim that there is an idiot involved who tries to do a move that is super dangerous. That is what Kidd did here. For whatever reason he felt the right thing to do was to climb the turnbuckle when the bell rang a do a front flip dive in a group of guys in the ring. At least half the guys weren't even looking and I'm surprised no one caught a boot in the face or cluncked heads. You really need to go back and watch that.

SHOW RANKINGS

This was an excellent show without a low light. Even the Divas match, while not good, did what it was supposed to do. This is probably the best show since the GOAT, X-Seven. I have this ranked third all time just edging out III. Great, great show.

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

Two more to go. I should hopefully have this done in plenty of time for WM 33. I am looking forward to rewatching 31, and am dreading 32, but I will get this done

Haven't finished yet but have to reply to this. Go back to the WM XXX thread. It was universally (no pun intended) liked. It was truly an epic moment. One I've watched probably more than 15 times and the last time being within the last 3 weeks. The "Silverdome" stuff was icing on the cake. I still LOL at Austin poking fun at him.

I'd put Flair. HBK probably 5th. HBK is just too work rated beloved and couldn't carry the company when they needed him to. Flair is the total package (not Luger!) wrt character and ring work. Flair was able to carry the company against the rising WWF and then owned Vince into keeping his name and getting the belt 5 months after the announcement of Flair coming to WWF.

I'm shocked you didn't mention the promo video of Bryan/HHH. One of the greatest.

This is true. The third is Alexa Bliss.

This is the spot where he said he got it.

Again, refer to the thread. Incredible moment.

When i said that every instinct I have should have had me hate this, I was talking more about just an in ring promo at a PPV or to start off a RAW like they do every week. I didn't hate it, and actually loved it, because it was that damn good. I almost dare to say that if someone claims they didn't like it, they just need to be a contrarian.

Taker losing will never be matched in terms of a stunning wrestling moment.

It was weird...I didn't care about Taker or the streak, but when the ref's hand struck three, it felt like a stomach-punch the likes you get when your team receives the death blow in a big game. Like, I actually had a physical reaction as if the damn universe just shifted unexpectedly or something. It was absolutely crazy. I really don't see any chance that I'll ever have that particular reaction to anything in wrestling ever again.

As far as Mt. Rushmore goes, seems clear that the fourth would be Flair, but he's such a huge drop from the big three that he would have been far out of place if he had been included in that segment as well.

By the way, Mt. Rushmore itself? Kind of an underwhelming tourist attraction. The way the viewing area is set up, it's crazy how small it is. And you stand there and go, "Oh...so that's it?" But it's near Badlands National Park, which is amazing.

I would have loved it for the LOL if Flair was in old man Flair mode and being drunk and all screaming WOOO and shout all sorts of nonsense and see Rock, Austin, and Hogan play off of that.

That stated, in terms of mainstream culture, Flair would be out of place. Non-wrestling viewers has a high chance of knowing Rock, Austin, and Hogan, but I don't think they know Flair on that level whereas every wrestling fan knows Flair.

I was half paying attention to it on a second monitor. I could not care less throughout the match. And then I heard the bell ring, heard "the streak ... is over", and put it back on my main monitor with a huge what the **** reaction. Rewound it. Watched the end sequence. Then just sat there stunned for a few minutes watching others be stunned.

Don't think I'll ever have a wrestling reaction like that again

Mid-match, as everyone was crapping on how bad it was.

There's a wonderful image I can't find thats an overhead view of the ring, taker sprawled out, and 21-1 on the screen over the ring and you can see every single person standing. I think its my favorite wrestling photo ever

As much as I **** on Taker, that's gotta be my favorite moment in wrestling, ever. Jaw dropping.

This one? First result on google search btw:

That's an elite picture.