WrestleMania 37 Thread

[Team Farrell]

Goddamn, Bad Bunny killed it. He and McAfee are what you get when you take a celeb that is legitimately a fan and have them take it seriously before stepping in the ring.

Shotzi Banks out here.

The problem with girls the size of Banks is that when Bianca hits a 450, Banks is so small that it obviously doesn't connect.

Bianca and Sasha had a good match, but for the love of god stop with the crying. Act like you're a star that knows you deserve to be there.

[PEN15v2]

I thought it was a near perfect night of wrestling. This is what I look for in a show. No matter how shitty the weekly show can be, the stories still connect enough, and then WWE fires on all cylinders at the PPVs. While I'm seeing online fans shit on the women's Turmoil and the Cage match, I truly believe they would have crapped on those matches regardless of what they did. All the matches exceeded expectations, told good stories, and reminded me exactly what wrestling should be about, 34 years after I started watching.

I NEVER expected WrestleMania to be a better show than Takeover. But Night 1 might have been the best wrestling show of the last 5 years.

[Team Farrell]

I can only really comment on the opener, semi main and main event. Last night was a long night and I nodded off after the Hurt Lock and sat back up when Braun was throwing Shane off the cage.

[Oliver]

While it's not going to end the weekend ahead of Moxley/Barnett because it's highly unlikely anything will, Sasha/Bianca might just be the best Mania main event since 30. Trying hard to find one as good in the period between then and now.

Night One reminded me of WM31. There was nothing over 20 minutes, every match got a chunk of time to leave a mark, and as such it didn't get boring at any point. The women's tag gauntlet was a misstep in terms of quality and didn't really have a good moment in it to make up for that, in the way Shane/Braun did, but otherwise the night was pretty good.

[Team Farrell]

I would pay extra for a feed that was just the hard cam. I can't take these cuts.

EDIT: Not to keep harping on this, but the entrances are my favorite part because with only one 8K camera they can't do a billion cuts.

[Oliver]

I would pay extra for a feed that was just the hard cam. I can't take these cuts.

EDIT: Not to keep harping on this, but the entrances are my favorite part because with only one 8K camera they can't do a billion cuts.

I don't know, Coach, there was a bit during Bianca's entrance on night one when they kept cutting between her face and the fireworks above the arena constantly that made me feel physically nauseous.

Thought Night Two was a bit of a step down compared to Night One, but the main event, in my opinion, was just as good. Also good was Shayna choking out Natalya because that made me laugh a little bit.

Just to be clear, somebody backstage looked at a Nia/Shayna vs Natalya/Tamina match and thought 'yeah, THIS should be the second longest match on the card'. I mean, who does that? That 'feud' wasn't even lukewarm, and then you've got Crews and Big E getting seven minutes for their bout, less than half the time. I just cannot with that.

[PEN15v2]

I preferred the women's tag over the IC title. With the ending with Dabba Kato getting involved, a shorter match was the smart choice. So I'm glad with the match times we saw from those. The women did a great job despite the lack of build.

[Powder]

What was really amazing to me was the amount of heels that won at WM.
Lashley
AJ and Omos
Orton
Nia and Shayna
Apollo
Sheamus
Rhea - sort of a tweener, but she turned heel last Monday and was playing the heel last night
Roman

Out of 14 matches, 8 were won by heels, and 6 out of the 7 title matches were won by heels.

Very surprising by the WWE, also surprising was that the Main Event of Night 2 was won by a heel to close the show. I cannot remember the last time that happened, when a heel closed a WM, but I know someone will jump in and remind me.

[meandi]

Just a few years ago when Brock defeated Roman. A few years before that, Rollins cashed in mid-match and defeated Brock and Roman. The Miz defeated Cena at 27. Stone Cold turned heel and defeated The Rock at 17, and HHH was the first heel to ever retain the title at 16.

[Powder]

Brock vs Roman closed?
and Wasn’t Rollins a face in the cash in?
The Miz did, but that was more about Rock than Miz, but you have a point.

but still, that is not a lot of times.

[Team Farrell]

I don't want to be negative about these shows, because I think overall they were very good.

However, I didn't much care for night one's main event. I don't care for Sasha, I don't feel any connection to the "big moment" of two black women main eventing WrestleMania (especially when it seemed like they were priming Lashley and Drew to main event prior to that), and I wasn't blown away by the match itself.

I'm sure that some people could say every one of those things about Rock-Hogan, and I'm sure that to someone watching at home this is "their Roc-Hogan", and the crowd was into it. So I know that at the end of the day, I'm "wrong" but that was just my thought.

Rhea and Asuka was an odd, somewhat disjointed, match that ended out of nowhere. I said last night that it seemed like they were planning on having more time. Weird match.

The Women's Tag Title, though. I thought was actually really good. Shayna and Nattie working super snug, Tamina and Nia doing the "giant" thing, and Nia working -- to paraphrase Jim Cornette -- a level of difficulty of five with an execution of eight made for a really good match. I still think Shayna's basics are the shits, but the knee immediately made me forget that. The only thing the match was missing was Tamina slamming Nia (unless I missed it?). They teased it over and over and never paid it off.

Orton vs Fiend...my feed went out for several minutes and I didn't panic. I'm done with supernatural shit and Spirit Halloween masks.

Sheamus and Riddle, as well as Sami and Owens killed it. Big E and Apollo wasn't as good but they used every second that they had and it made for some entertaining stuff. I actually think that the quality of the match would have been higher without the weapons, but that's also the main thing that set it apart from the US Title and Sami-Owens.

The main event was a well worked, hard-hitting, intense professional wrestling match featuring grown men in a fight for a Heavyweight Championship. You'd think that has all the ingredients for me to give it five stars, but I'm so sick of the no DQ in a triple threat bullshit leading to interference and weapons for no reason. When a match opens with a superkick from a guy not even involved in the match, it takes me out completely.

Everything they did -- the interference from Jey, the con-chair-to, etc. -- was earned by the build-up and made sense. But I'd have liked to see it in a way where it's not blatant in front of a referee with no consequence. You can bump a ref to get to the con-chair-to spot, and you're in a position where you have three guys which should make it really easy to distract a ref for interference.

Overall, I thought both days were really good and I especially enjoyed watching night two on the big screen (and staying awake for it!).

[PEN15v2]

Pretty fair review, COACH, and I'm pretty much in agreement with most. Though I still enjoyed the main from Night 1.

They did pay off the slam, but it was botched. Not sure if Nia didn't jump enough, or if Tamina didn't get a good hold, but it was closer to Lex hiptossing Yoko

[Team Farrell]

I must have missed that. I was still trying to get the audio working properly on the PA system during that match.

[PEN15v2]

As for Bianca vs Sasha, it'll be overrated by fans for socio-political reasons, but it was still very good. And Sasha really needs to figure out her character. Either she's a heel or she's not. The creative seemed to push her into a heel role by Mania, but it was basically promoted as a face vs face match, and Sasha is just as unlikable as Charlotte in their Boss/Queen gimmicks. Bianca also has a "I'm better than you" gimmick, but she isn't mocking about it. She somehow does a better job being a face than the supposed GOAT.

[Team Farrell]

I just find that I think people think Sasha is one of the greatest women's wrestlers ever based on the past more than her actual ability.

When the women in NXT were first tearing it up, she was doing these high spots and having matches unlike anything the women were "allowed" to do at the time. But the division has grown, both physically and in terms of skill level.

Not that she's awful and they need to release her, or that I don't think there's a place at all for physically smaller women in the division, but I just don't know if she fits anymore on top of a division populated by these great athletes and incredible physical specimens like Charlotte, Rhea, Bianca, Bayley and very like Raquel Gonzales and Io Sharai before too long; and hard hitting badasses like Becky, Asuka, Shayna, now Tamina getting a renewed push, and possibly Mia Yim soon enough.

I honestly think that if she were brought in today, she'd be one of those 110-lb girls working with Candice and Shotzi on the NXT midcard as opposed to working main events with Io, Raquel, Martinez and Toni Storm.