Roman REALLY looks surprised by that kickout! He is reacting as a real competitor in an athletic contest would!

Shrug. Good result. That's all.

Fast count?

Probably the best Roman wins it feels like.

Agree in general about the kickouts, but I don't believe a single spear or F5 should do the job in this match. These guys have large life bars.

So I understand that counters happen in wrestling. But Brock putting him in a Kimura there after the spear isn't a counter.

It's just Brock completely no selling Romans finisher and then putting him in a Kimura.

Doesn't make much sense to me. Especially when one more single spear ended the match.

Two in one post. Pin it!

Wow, consecutive doubles, actually.

I can vibe with this

Night 1 >>>>>>>>>> Night 2.

But you could argue for more arrows.

That was about as 'by the book' a Roman/Brock match could have been.

Just the laziest match booking imaginable that any of us could have mapped out.

Terrible disappointment

What a plain bagel of a main event

Since they're such beasts, shouldn't the same logic mean that they should have the hardest finishers to kick out of?

Like...I agree that it would be weird to suddenly start fixing the broken booking model in that match for the first time, where "nobody's finisher works at WrestleMania" magically goes away right in that moment since whenever it was that the booking model became completely broken (it started at Rock/Austin WM X-7, but I think it took time before the whole company was just in a perpetual state of brokenness). But this opinion is being informed by accepting this harsh reality that WWE has decided to adopt.

It's all The Undertaker's fault. Mother****er extended his career by like a decade by working nothing but spammed finisher kickout matches. And then this garbage flowed everywhere.

But again, shoutout to the Dallas crowd for chanting almost nothing all weekend.

The word "hero" should not be thrown about lightly, but everyone in that crowd is a hero.

I don't think the excess of finisher kickouts was the problem in this match. It's that that was all the match was.

There was no substance at all to it otherwise. (Unless you consider a low blow and a belt shot to the skull substance).

I know that's basically all Brocks matches have been the last X years, but man, I was really expecting something special for a match being billed as the biggest in wwe history or whatever.

Shame on me I guess

They chanted "you still got it" when Vince was sticking out his arm for Pat McAfee to run into.

Vince hasn't "had it" in a good 16 years, and you'd could argue has never had it

I do agree with that. Obviously, even in the finisher kickout era, there have been some great matches, so I don't mean to make it sound like those awful kickouts are some absolute bar to a great ring achievement.

Daniel Bryan vs. HHH at XXX was a great match that had the usual ****ing kickouts in it. This was just a pile of nothing. But it's also what I've come to expect from these Lesnar matches. Lesnar is an all-time talent, but we've gotten a fairly endless string of these matches from him by now, even if his match with Roman at XXXI was excellent.

I actually took a charitable view of that chant, like it was a comedy chant. I thought they meant it sarcastically. Obviously some of the crowd likely consisted of mindless Pavlovian dogs who just joined the chant without thinking because "yay, chants," but I kind of tend to believe that the people who started it were kidding.

It's possible I'm being too generous with that interpretation.

Agree re: Vince.

An actual shame that that stunner spot happened though, as that's all that will be talked about from his performance at Mania, which was pretty damn entertaining.

This is Texas we're talking about - 100% they'd chant it for Road Dogg, too

I didn’t watch any of this bullshit I did see highlights of the best oversell on a stunner ever immediately followed by podcast punter doing whatever the **** that was with a stunner

I don’t really have any stereotypes to slap on Texas crowds, I can remember only a few shows in Texas and the crowds weren’t notable either way, but in any case the Mania crowd seems to consist of a lot of travelers anymore.

Admittedly I have no idea what city gave Road Dogg that ridiculous Rumble chant, perhaps it was in TX, but this still seemed like a different situation. That entire Vince-Pat segment was itself comedy. Obviously I’ll never ever be able to prove my theory right or wrong as to crowd intentions though.

that's weird I thought McAfees stunner sell was amazing. Just made for an awesome visual with the beer splat

Oh lol me that was Vince