Greetings and salutations friends. This week’s blog is wrestling-centric. Be warned.
Before I start, let me just say how happy I am to be posting today’s blog post. On Saturday it looked like I might not be able to. My internet connection was down and it didn’t look like it would be coming back any time soon. I called my internet provider on Sunday and to my surprise they were able to send a technician that same day to come fix things. And fix things he did too! He even was able to reset my modem to a higher download rate. Awesome!
Okay, so Wrestlemania weekend has come and gone. Saturday night was the Hall of Fame ceremony and while the speeches overall were entertaining, I can’t help but feel the whole thing was a little bloated. They forecast a 3 hour ceremony but by the end of the first hour it was clear that there was no way they were going to fit everyone into the time they had. Too many inductees. They went an hour over and that was with the headliners being told to cut things down. As nice as Rikishi and the Bushwhackers are, I think their inclusion dilutes the Hall of Fame’s prestige. And Alundra Blayze? Her speech went on WAY too long. If you’re going to include lower tier inductees, you need to put them on a tighter leash. I was much more interested in what Lanny Poffo and Kevin Nash had to say and yet they had the least amount of time to speak. Connor Michalek’s induction was the most touching thing ever. The video package was shown a LOT during the past week, but dang if it didn’t get to me again on Saturday.
As for the big show (not the Big Show) itself, I’m left ambivalent. The matches were good with some solid work put in by all the participants. I can’t say I’m a big fan of certain match conclusions. I’ll start with what didn’t work for me and then go with what I think was great.
Bray Wyatt and Rusev needed to win their matches. While it’s true a wrestler can sometimes progress as much by losing a match as they can by winning, I just don’t think this was one of those times. Undertaker is on the tail end of his career and pinning Bray didn’t make Bray look that much better. If anything, it just reinforces that he’s mostly just talk. He can take a beating sure, but he simply cannot win.
Rusev lost to John Cena and while he didn’t crumble, he did stumble. After a year-long undefeated streak, he was defeated by the one guy in the company who least needs wins to cement his credibility.
Sting vs HHH had tremendous pageantry but the rest was just terrible. From the beginning, HHH has been pushing this as a revival of the Monday Night Wars, something that Sting himself said was ridiculous. Sting said he wasn’t trying to represent WCW. He thought there was a guy, HHH, who needed to be knocked down a peg or two and he thought he was the man to do it. Sting’s argument makes so much more sense because the Monday Night Wars ended over a decade ago. Why in the world would he be trying to revive them now? The match starts and Degeneration X interferes. Odd but okay. They’re HHH’s friends and he always stacks the deck for himself. But then the NWO comes out to back Sting, despite being made up of HHH’s best friends in the whole wide world. Yes, they worked for WCW during the Wars, but their faction was supposedly dedicated to taking over WCW for WWE. On top of that, for most of the NWO storyling, Sting was the man opposing them! It made no sense that they would come out to back Sting. If Sting had at least made it seem like he was the one who asked for their help, it would have been something. In the end, what should have been all about Sting ended up being about anything BUT Sting. I’m not even a Sting fan, I just felt it was the wrong choice to make.
Okay, that’s it for the negatives. What about the positives?
Nobody really phoned it in. Every wrestler on the card put their all into the matches they were put in. I feel for the tag-teams that had to settle for being on the pre-show, but they put on an excellent match and I’m happy that Cesaro and Kidd kept their titles.
The main event match was booked very smartly. Brock Lesnar was on his way out the door. It made sense that he was going to lose to Roman Reigns. But then, he signed a new contract and now he’s going to be there for three more years. You need to keep his value up. But Roman Reigns is being groomed for bigger things, you can’t have him look weak either. The answer? Have them really knock the stuffing out of each other and then send in Seth Rollins to cash in his Money in the Bank contract and pin Reigns. Brock is protected, and Reigns can chase Rollins for interfering in his big moment. I think to build Rollins’ credibility that he should have won his earlier match against Randy Orton, but by having Orton pin him, it gives Rollins another guy to work against in his run at the top.
I’m mostly positive when it comes to the ladder match for the Intercontinental championship. I think it was the right move to have Daniel Bryan win and the participants in the ladder match worked their butts off to put on an exciting match. But there are certain things you have to accept to enjoy a ladder match. First off, to build drama, you have to have people come close to winning and then have someone stop them just in the nick of time. That means the guy climbing the ladder needs to move slower than he’s able to to give somebody else, who was previously knocked loopy enough to give the climber the notion that he has enough time to win in the first place, time to recover and do what builds up to the next stunt. That’s one thing and it’s pretty bad. What’s worse though is that the guy climbing the ladder also has to forget he has a brain. Oh! This ladder is clearly too short or nowhere near enough for me to be able to reach the belt. Let me climb up anyway, just to see. Or hmm…I clearly need to climb to the next rung to reach the belt but I think I’ll just keep trying to stretch up and reach it from here. If you can accept these flaws, then you can enjoy a ladder match. Mostly I can so mostly I do. But there’s also part of that can’t so part of me that doesn’t. However, I think my major disconnect with the ladder match is the excessive risk-taking. Dean Ambrose took a bump that I think he’s lucky to be walking away from. I know the guys want to entertain us, but I can be entertained without them risking their lives in trying to top some crazy stunt that most likely will be forgotten in a month’s time.
The worst thing about Wrestlemania though? It was on Sunday night and I had to work the next day. I’m feeling super tired as a result. That’s why I think I’m going to end this week’s post now. Have a good seven and we’ll do it all again next time! Carja V.