Wrestlemania 38 - A Stupendous Weekend in Dallas

[The Gaffer]

18 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

I do think it’s a shame that Sami is essentially Santino Marella. I firmly believe that he could be, if they got behind him, a Daniel Bryan-type star for WWE.

I'd say it's the best role in the company if you've settled on the office not backing you to be a main event star. 

Angles galore, always called on to do social media/content spots, willing to show as much arse as possible. Santino had the life for years with them. 

Bollocks to this "If you ain't here to be the champion" guff the legends go around sprouting at hotel convention halls they can barely open the doors to. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

The moral of Wrestlemania seems to be that wrestling is a lot more fun when it’s not done by wrestlers.

Weird.

Bravo to Cody/Seth for finding a way to stand out amongst an absolute, unabashed celebration of non-wrestlers.

[IronSheik]

3 hours ago, air_raid said:

This might sound ludicrous after everything I’ve said about Cody adequate Rhodes, but if he stays over enough, perception is reality, and if the paying public want it, I can easily imagine a scenario where he’s booked to beat a few of the other heels and starts looking for the title by SummerSlam.

Good to see you're already adopting one of the Mark Callaway 3 mental moves for life.

Edited April 4, 2022 by IronSheik

[mim731]

23 minutes ago, Gay as FOOK said:

I'd say it's the best role in the company if you've settled on the office not backing you to be a main event star. 

He's also going to do much less harm to his body and probably be better remembered in this role. There's only ever going to be room for so many main eventers, and being a memorable midcard comedy act who can also pull off very good matches, is a very good place to land. Sami also seems to be having the time of his life, so good for him! 

[garynysmon]

53 minutes ago, Winston said:

This is one of my main gripes with modern day WWE, just far too much content.

Back to basics with a 2 hour Raw, less belts would go along way to help everything mean more but it's just not how they're set up to operate now unfortunately.

Its seriously off putting knowing there’s an expectation that you’re going to have to invest 5 hours a week at the very least. 

I can’t imagine that would have been much fun  even at the height of the attitude era, let alone these more sterile times.

I know we live in a time of boxsets and binge watching, but at least most Netflix or HBO productions are carefully written and mastered productions which have been designed to keep the suspense/intrigue going throughout.

For any 3 hour wrestling show there’s no way to avoid several “chuck midcarder C and F together for a 15 minute match to fill a segment.”

While ratings are down, I’m still astounded they remain as high as they do.

That said, I don’t believe for a second that ROH will be its own indepenent brand and that Tony Khan’s excitement and lack of discipline will mean it will be just another AEW show/production and added to the weekly chore.

[FLips]

Watched Knoxville vs Sami this morning and loved it. Exactly the sort of stupid shit I like in wrestling.

[air_raid]

1 hour ago, Winston said:

Back to basics with a 2 hour Raw, less belts would go along way to help everything mean more but it's just not how they're set up to operate now unfortunately.

The stupid thing being that they have many titles to give more  matches meaning and yet neither the Intercontinental nor United States title were important enough to get onto a WrestleMania with 16 matches lasting two nights.

Which reminds me, I have business in the SmackDown thread….

[Ironic Indie Lad]

Ended up not watching the shows, mostly as the usual group of friends I watch with were not interested this year. There is no way I was watching 8-10 hours of WWE by myself in one weekend. 

I did watch some clips of the main things and the highlight was definitely Austin absolutely fucking losing his shit laughing at Vince losing all control of his body and quite possibly his bowels.

[Loki]

The second night was a confirmation of what the WWE brand, and particularly Wrestlemania is... it's entertainment dressed up with sport.  The logical conclusion of it NOT being wrestling is that it doesn't need actual wrestlers.  You get celebrities and train them at the PC, and then the crowd laps it up.  And it works - the crowd enjoyed Zayn/Knoxville more than Reigns/Lesnar.

A much weaker night, and honestly the best bit was Vince McMahon having a match at, what, 77?  It's like he saw Austin last night and thought "anything he can do".  That glass smash pop was ace, and let's hope or assume that this was the last time these two interact.

The WWE is a monstrous money-making organisation, it's one of the genuinely successful content creators in a fractured media market.  It's found a perfect blend of its deep history and archive, celebrity/social media pull, its athlete-production system and its ability to put bums in seats.  The wrestling is filler around the rest of the content, which is what drives engagement.  So for tv and lesser PPVs you have belts and feuds between wrestlers but that ends up taking a back seat to the important stuff like Pat McAfee bumping for Vince, and beer and Stunners.

Like most things American, it's saccharine sweet and I can only take small doses though, so Night 1 was enough for me and I shall probably zone out until Summerslam.

 

[d-d-d-dAz]

It was a 2 night demonstration of what the company is.

It feels like after years of wielding the phrase ‘sports entertainment’, they’ve finally achieved its endpoint: it’s an entertainment program, the ‘sport’ is the vehicle to get them there. But it doesn’t mean anything, substantively. Anyone can put on a pair of boots and be equally as credible as anyone else. Being ‘good’ doesn’t really mean anything.

And, It genuinely feels like they don’t even feel the need to nod to traditional wrestling anymore, there was no huge effort to put on a wrestling clinic or 5* match like in the past.

It was just fast moving fun that you’re either on board with or your not.

I think they’re quite happy to cede the work rate and wrestling to AEW, whilst they focus on Johnny Knoxville’s and Logan Paul’s and fireworks and singing and whatever else.

I enjoyed it to be honest. I couldn’t watch it all the time, but a couple of times a year it’s a good party.

Edited April 4, 2022 by d-d-d-dAz

[SaitoRyo]

There was enough good (or otherwise entertaining) stuff spread over the two nights for me. 

Owens and Zayn were two of the weekend's MVPs for sure. Both did their jobs perfectly in very different scenarios and deserve a lot of credit for their work up to and on the show itself. 

Cody return was a good moment but the match didn't do a lot for me. In fact, a lot of the wrestling didn't, but I think that's mainly because I don't like the modern style so much. 

Thinking about it, I probably enjoyed the Austin farewell match and the Jackass stuff more than anything else. Felt like the Texas crowd agreed with me. 

I know Brock is Brock and he'll always be in the title mix, but I'd like him to move away from Reigns now. Cowboy Brock is a lot of fun and there could be a really interesting dynamic with some other members of the roster.

Hell, put him in a programme with Owens or Edge or something, just keep him and Roman apart for a long, long time. 

[Tsurutagun]

The more I see Gable Steveson the more I think he's the next Tom Magee 

A lampost has more charisma than that guy

[Guest]

Wwe should leave workrate to aew, as wwe has always been at its peak when less was more. My favourite Daniel Bryan match was the 8 Second one at mania as it told a great story and it led to great character work. Yeah you need longer matches to fill tv time, but it’s the moments that make character people connect with. 

[CTXRussomark]

I did the same as night 1 and cherry picked the matches to watch and just skipped to the finishes of everything else.

Thought Knoxville/Zayn was tons of fun and Zayn carried it all tremendously.  It was a bit ropey in parts and completely daft, but I was smiling the whole way through.  The pop for Wee Man was incredible.

Lashley vs Omos was pretty bad.  I didn't even know this was a match but happened to land on Omos' entrance whilst skipping through and he caught my attention.  He looks impressive and he's not on the Giant Gonzales level of bad, but still not good.

McAfee vs Theory was perfectly fine, but as @d-d-d-dAz notes above it probably says a lot that the only matches I was really interested in on both nights involved celebs/part-timers.  As soon as Vince got in there I knew this was the Austin moment for the Sunday crowd but the Vince/Pat part dragged on for way too long.  They seemed to be filling time for ages with not a lot actually happening.  Should've had the glass break at one of the two counts.  Having said all that, the Austin segment was all anyone will remember of this.  And Vince's body seemingly going "fuck this" at even having to sell a kick to the gut.  This should definitely be it for Austin/Vince.

I thought Lesnar/Reigns sucked.  Felt like I'd seen the exact same match about 10 times before.  Just finished spamming and then s coin toss to see with guy eventually stays down.  Heyman was fucking unbearable on the outside too.

All in all I enjoyed most of what I saw from the two nights, but given that was mainly one-off appearances and the big main event did nothing for me, it didn't make me want to dip back in again any time soon. 

[Mr Kennedy]

I enjoyed night one and I will watch bits of night two. 
 

I wasn’t keen on Austin having a match given what happened with HBK and Undertaker the Saudi shitshows but I was always going to watch a (potential) return of Austin. He was my idol when I was a kid and I’m a sucker for nostalgia. Fucking hell what a show him and Owens put on. I’m not even calling this a “well at least it wasn’t horrific”, it was actually a decent match. Having taking it all in now my only minor gripe about it was that I felt the feud could have started with The KO Show months/weeks ago and built up to announcing the match ahead of time. No dramas though as it was all still such a great moment.