WWE WRESTLEMANIA

METLIFE STADIUM

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ

WWE NETWORK

Meet our reviewers:

Kelly Harrass: It’s time for the Iron Man match of wrestling shows. Yes, it’s WrestleMania time. As always, Kelly Harrass is here and he’s even going to watch the preshow because apparently he hates his free time. Make sure to follow Kelly over on Twitter @comicgeekelly. He does this for all of you. Even you, Harry. Even you.

Lee Malone:  Apparently one WWE produced show wasn’t enough for me this weekend and I am here for WrestleMania baby. If Charlotte wins, Ireland riots. Follow me on Twitter @Malone_713.

(Preshow) WWE Cruiserweight Championship: Tony Nese def.  Buddy Murphy (c)

Kelly: These two power juniors went out to hype this crowd up for the rest of the night. It was a hot opener for the (pre)show. Murphy got busted open over the eye in the match, giving Mania its first bit of juice. Nese has never been a guy that’s done a lot for me, but I thought he did very well here. As always, 205 Live went out to impress on the preshow. Hopefully they don’t get cut off the DVD this year! ***¾

Lee: I can’t pretend that I watch 205Live regularly because I don’t but god damn these guys went out in front of a half full stadium and put on of the best openers in WrestleMania history. Despite being put in a position to fail the Cruiserweight’s put on the first (hopefully not last) notebook match of the night. I didn’t expect Nese to be the guy to end Murphy’s reign but if he can continue to deliver like tonight there is no reason he can’t have a run as good as Buddy as champion ****

(Preshow) WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal — Winner: Carmella

Kelly: This was a very basic and completely serviceable battle royal. I have no takes. No hot. No cold. No takes. ***

Lee: I guess somebody absolutely loved the finish of the Honor Rumble yesterday because this had the very same finish. It was fine as a match and I guess Carmella could use this for some storyline purpose **¾

(Preshow) WWE Raw Tag Team Championship: The Revival (Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson) (c) vs. Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder

Kelly: Shouts out to bare knuckle boxing champion Dash Wilder! For as much as I was hoping to enjoy this match, the first two thirds of it were incredibly boring. Once it picked up, things got pretty good. The suplex to the floor spot was nuts and looked like it hurt a whole bunch, so that definitely got me back into things. Outside of that though, this was a pretty forgettable match. Cool to see Hawkins and Ryder win, but for a show that is all about the moments, they sure didn’t give them much time on the broadcast to enjoy their win. **¾

Lee: I was not paying any attention to this match until the suplex to the outside involving Wilder and Ryder. Dawson hit a hell of a brainbuster on the outside to Hawkins before Hawkins got the small package to end the losing streak. Three babyface wins in a row to start the show **1/2

(Preshow) Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal — Winner: Braun Strowman

Kelly: Between Braun, Ali, Andrade, the Hardy’s, Harper, and so many others, this should really be called the Wasted Potential Memorial Battle Royal. This was all terrible. *¼

Lee: This match built to Braun Strowman vs two people I don’t know. This sucked *

Kelly again: Don’t worry, Lee, it’s not just because you’re Irish that you didn’t know who those two were. I’m American and I didn’t know them either.

WWE Universal Championship: Seth Rollins def. Brock Lesnar (c)

Kelly: Now this is a hot opener (look, the two hours before this weren’t a real show)! It was a chaotic, brutal Brock match. Lesnar destroyed Rollins for the first three quarters of the match, bruising and cutting up Rollins’ back in the process. Rollins came back with a kick to the balls, which I actually have no problem with because Brock had attacked Seth before the bell, so it’s fair play as far as I’m concerned. Three curb stomps later, we’ve got a new champ. I absolutely loved this sprint. Both men played their roles to perfection and gave us exactly what this match needed to be in this spot. ****

Lee: Brock Lesnar tossing Seth Rollins around and destroying the ringside area was good. Face Seth Rollins using a low blow and three Curb Stomps to beat Lesnar was not good. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t expecting such a definitive victory in such a short match but this was very disappointing for me **¾

AJ Styles def. Randy Orton

Kelly: Truth be told, I barely paid attention to this one. Amazon delivered one of the new Power Rangers Beast Morphers toys so I had to pop that open and play with it. The transformation for the Cruise Beastbot isn’t the easiest to do, but once you turn him into the motorcycle he looks great. On the downside, this was the first figure of the line to be delivered, so I just have a bike and no Rangers. Oh well, the rest should be delivered tomorrow. Hey Lee, how was the match? NR

Lee: It is crazy to think that this was AJ’s fourth WrestleMania and I think it could very well have been his best performance on the Grandest Stage of Them All. Randy had his working boots on and seemed determined to prove something tonight. I loved the finish of AJ learning from his mistake on Smackdown last week of jumping into an RKO and countering the counter to land the Phenomenal Forearm ***¾

Fatal Four-Way for the WWE SmackDown Tag Team Championship: The Usos (Jey Uso & Jimmy Uso) © def. Ricochet & Aleister Black, The Bar (Cesaro & Sheamus), and Shinsuke Nakamura & Rusev

Kelly: Well that was a lot of fun, huh? This was just a crazy scramble match. It was exactly what it needed to be. With the talent involved, it was going to be a good match at minimum. While it never crossed over into being a great match, I still really enjoyed it. ***½

Lee: This was suitably chaotic and it totally over delivered. Kelly just stole my line of saying that this was exactly what it needed to be so I will just add that all four teams come out of the match in a better place than when they entered. I am interested to see where the Uso’s go from here as champions as they have faced and defeated every team on Smackdown. ***½ 

[Editor’s Note: It seems we lost Lee here. At this point we’re pushing midnight in Ireland, so hopefully Lee has sweet dreams.]

Falls Count Anywhere: Shane McMahon def. The Miz

Kelly: This was incredibly stupid, but I really liked it. Shane was going to fall off of something for WrestleMania, might as well make it a Falls Count Anywhere match to make it more organic. Miz was shockingly awesome as a firey babyface here, beating the hell out of Shane all across the arena. While I initially didn’t like that Miz lost, it actually makes sense. Miz went too far and tried to win with Shane’s own reckless strategy. It only makes sense that this would backfire and cost him the match, but I will say that if this is the end of the story, it’s a bad choice. Logic says that Miz will eventually win the feud, but who knows with this company. ***½

Fatal Four-Way for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship: The IIconics (Billie Kay and Peyton Royce) def. The Boss ‘n’ Hug Connection (Bayley & Sasha Banks) ©, Beth Phoenix & Natalya and Nia Jax & Tamina

Kelly: There are few things in WWE that bother me as much as when Natalya goes for the double sharpshooter and the commentary team acts like she’s never done this before. It’s not the amazing spot that they seem to think it is. At least Michael Cole wasn’t screaming “SPECIAL MOMENT” like a maniac. This match was aggressively fine. Nia and Tamina were an anchor dragging things down for sure, but no one else felt like they were stepping up either. **

 

WWE Championship: Kofi Kingston def. Daniel Bryan (c)

Kelly: They talk so often about WrestleMania moments and how that’s what this show is about. You get “moments” like the one we had earlier with the racist hot dog man being summoned and the matches get pushed to the wayside. Then you have this. You have a real moment with real emotion and a tremendous match that preceded it. Kofi vs. Bryan is everything that WWE chases after every year. For every 30 “SPECIAL MOMENTS!!!” you get, there is one of these actual moments that will stick with you.

Years down the road, I’ll look back on this match and remember the fantastic heel performance that Daniel Bryan put in, being the perfect adversary for the ultimate underdog. Kofi was never supposed to be in this spot, but here he was and here he succeeded. Kingston really felt like he was fighting with everything he had. The feeling that this was the most important match of his career oozed off him. I’m so happy that WWE actually made the right decision here and didn’t either have Kofi lose or have the rest of the New Day turn on him. This was a home run. Congratulations Kofi! ****½

WWE United States Championship: Samoa Joe © def. Rey Mysterio

Kelly: This match came and went as I was writing the previous review. I suppose that this is what the match needed to be with Rey’s ankle injury. This was too quick for me to throw any stars at it. NR

Roman Reigns def. Drew McIntyre

Kelly: Hoping that this could be the sleeper great match on the show, I found myself very disappointed. The pace of this match was terrible, almost like a sleepy RAW main event. This is quite possibly the worst place on the card to put a match like this too. If you’re almost falling asleep on the couch, you don’t want a snooze fest. I don’t know if it’s a case of these two having bad chemistry or if Roman still has some ring rust, but it just didn’t work. **

The Return of Thuganomics

Kelly: If we could always have this Cena just so we can have this version of his entrance music, I would really appreciate that. *****

No Holds Barred Match, If Triple H loses, he must retire from in-ring competition
Triple H def. Batista

Kelly: This whole segment went about ten minutes less than I was expecting. I predicted a fifty minute Triple H wankfest and we only got about forty minutes. Hunter may be getting better at not taking as much time, but he’ll still take any opportunity to go over one of his friends. Honestly, I was weirdly excited about this match and I enjoyed it for what it was. The nose ring spot ruled and Big Dave looked great. It was everything I was expecting and that’s okay. Sometimes you just want a shitty piece of pizza. ***¾

Baron Corbin def. Kurt Angle

Kelly: Kurt goes out on his back, as any good wrestler should. The match was alright enough, I was just happy to see Angle make it through without getting hurt. Should Corbin have been his final match? Absolutely not, but what can you do? Angle walks off into the sunset, as he probably should have done a while ago. **¼

WWE Intercontinental Championship: Finn Bálor def. Bobby Lashley (c)

Kelly: This was mercifully quick. Look, if this was in a different part of the card, I might have cared, but I’ve been here for over six and a half hours, I just want to get to the main event. Credit to these guys for going for the spear through the middle ropes at this hour. That was a sick spot and no one cared. Demon Balor and Bobby’s weird contacts get the Gentleman’s Three. ***

Winner Takes All Triple Threat Match for the WWE Raw Women’s Championship and the WWE SmackDown Women’s Championship: Becky Lynch def. Ronda Rousey (Raw champion) and Charlotte Flair (SmackDown champion)

Kelly: The ending of the match may have killed this one for me. I don’t know, I’m torn. I really wanted to like this match. Much like the Bryan/Kofi match, I wanted Becky to have her moment here, but I also wanted the match to deliver too. It did to a point, I suppose. The work was stiff and the pacing was good, but it never felt like it kicked into that final gear. There was no really hot closing stretch. It just of just ended suddenly, and not even in a decisive way. Becky’s win is marred in controversy. I understand that they wanted to keep Ronda looking strong, but maybe you don’t need to do that. She probably would have been fine losing this match clean as a sheet, but we’ll never really know. Becky wins and the victory feels kind of hollow.

Maybe I’d have a different opinion on things if I hadn’t been working on this review for the past seven and a half hours, but here we are. I wanted a happy ending and the one we got is bittersweet. With the WWE you have to take what little wins you can get because they come so few and far between. Becky won and got her moment, but I don’t know if I’ll remember it a year from now. You can say that for 90% of this show, really. Becky wins and everyone goes home… sort of happy. ***¾