WWE WrestleMania Vegas (42) Discussion

[JLM]

Wrestlemania 42 Night 2

Oba vs Brock

Incredible atmosphere for this. Absolutely smoked anything on night one before it even got started. This was the only thing on either night that I wanted to see live and I'm glad I did. I loved how this was done. I'd have taken a two minute squash as well, but they have done that before and this way does more for Oba. Brock losing out BADLY trying to go blow for blow, then resorting to desperate tactics, playing all of the hits and still losing emphatically. He wasn't caught off guard, it wasn't a fluke, he did everything he normally does and it wasn't close to being enough. 

I'd have liked Oba to celebrate in the ring for a bit longer to cement his moment before Brock's retirement took over. Also he needs to drop those running uppercuts and do big full body splashes in the corner instead. Royce Keys can show him how to do it. He also shouldn't look remotely surprised that he's beaten Lesnar. He's been on top throughout the build, his go home promo was bursting with self assured swagger. He needed to keep his game face on and shout loads of ad-libbed shit into the sky. Mark Henry can show him how to do that. 

Tiny nitpicks aside though, this was fucking electric and everything I hoped it would be. I watched it live but still rewatched it when I went back to do the rest of the show because it had that spine tingling energy you want from Wrestlemania from the moment Oba's theme hit. 

A true torch passing. Cole's call was an obvious one but also the correct one: Oba Femi is The Next Big Thing. 

Penta vs Rey vs JD vs Rusev vs Lee vs Evans

God how devastating to get an untelevised jobber entrance at Wrestlemania. Hogan burying cruiserweights even in death. What a worker. Mad that all three luchadores wore red. What is the group chat even for lads?

Really happy to see Dragon Lee finding his groove in WWE. He's very good and it's nice to see him on the big show. 

Evans had a very iffy moment where him and JD were at the top of the ladder, he was meant to be fighting for the belt but he was just staring at ring side waiting to be tipped off the ladder for several seconds before it actually happened. Rusev having to launch himself off the ladder for no reason for the OG Cutter spot looked so silly that I'm surprised it got quite so many replays. 

Rey looked fantastic! Trim and nimble and flying about like it's 1995. The man is a miracle.

Most of the big spots here looked near flawless, particularly the big West Coast pop, the destroyer onto the ladder and McDonagh's picture perfect Spanish Fly. Some phenomenal camera work and direction too, with replays from all sorts of angles and the stellar drone shot of Penta sitting atop the ladder celebrating his victory. So chuffed for Penta. Such a big fan of the guy and he is clearly living his dream right now. 

Trick vs Sammy

This was fine. Did the job, Trick is a star, but was hoping for a better match. Also Trick got battered for most of the match and only got back into it via interference. I guess Yachty's interference was justified because Sammy hit him first, but still, I'd rather have seen Trick fight his way back into the match on his own. Also disappointed that the crowd wasn't really rooting for that to happen when he was getting beaten down. 

Regardless, sky is the limit for Trick, nice big moment for him on the big show. I'm equally interested to see where Sammy goes next though.

 

Finn vs Dom

This was also fine. Cracking entrance from Dom. Better than Drew/Fatu from night one. Had more heat and a bit more hatred and fire from both performers. 

Rhea vs Jade

Nice big fight feel for this one. There were glimpses here of what could have been a fantastic 7 minute sprint. Rhea's two excellent counters for Jaded (the finish in particular looked slick as hell!) and Jade in probably her best in-ring form of this WWE run. If they had just gone right at it from the start and sprinted to the end it could have been so much fun. Instead it was just decent. Decent in a featured singles match on a big stage for Jade is still an achievement though. A testament to how good Rhea is, but Jade also held up her end perfectly well. The One Winged Angel looked a bit rough but it was cool to see her do something new for the big match, and other than that I thought she nailed everything. Iyo taking out the lackeys looked bad until the moonsault, but hey at least she got on the show I suppose. Anyway, yeah, this was good enough, and with all of Jade's other qualities that's all it needed to be. She is built for Wrestlemania even if she is not built for great matches.

Vince would have fucking loved that Danhausen/Cena bit. I really do like Danhausen but good LORD I struggle with WWE doing big comedy. The Miz is awful, Michael Cole gleefully shouting "Midgets!" was awful. This was terrible. 

Punk vs Roman

Magical entrance for Punk. The AFI bit, the jacket, the gear, every expression and little deliberate movement putting over the gravity of the situation. Superb.

What an excellent match. I love how Punk conveyed that he was outmatched pretty much all the way through. Even when he's on top you can see him trying to convince himself he's got this under control. The first time he gets knocked down by a Reigns, the look of complete shock on his face. He immediately squared up to him afterwards but you saw for a second how hard it rocked him. It was a match full of wonderful little touches like that. I particularly loved all the times Punk had nothing left but a wild swipe of the arm in Roman's general direction, at the end when he was spent but also earlier in the match when he rocked himself with his own headbutt.

The exchange of submission holds towards the end was completely captivating, the panic from punk in the guillotine chokes especially. An incredible effort all round from Punk too, a marathon match with a massive and ambitious high spot so deep into the thing. Amazing stuff. The variation of the typical fore arm exchange sequence was great as well, with each man changing the attack and the other making a point of responding with the same move to show they're still hanging. The GTS where Reigns flopped back onto the shoulders only for Punk to fail to lift him was a wonderful spot, and Punk was mesmerising for he entire closing stretch as an increasingly depleted and eventually spent force. The only quibble I have with it is that I'd have loved to hear prime JR call it, as Cole dropped the ball a bit for me towards the end. "Cover, to crown a new champ, got him!".  Punk's soul has left his body two minutes before this, he is bleeding, his whole body has turned red, he is fighting on pure instinct/hatred of Reigns/his body's refusal to get the memo that he's done. I'd have loved to hear the commentators calling that. This is a minor thing though, the match was amazing and along with Oba/Brock will be a reason to remember this Wrestlemania when night one gave us so little to work with.

Overall a much better night 2, obviously. Finn/Dom and Trick/Sammy were still in that middle of the road TV match spot along with most of night one, but Oba/Brock was a special moment, the ladder match was a fun spectacle, Rhea vs Jade felt like a big deal and the main event was pure Wrestlemania Magic. 

Edited April 22 by JLM

[simonworden]

6 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

Oh I cried when Miseria came on. Fucking magical. Goosebumps. I never thought I'd see Punk live again in WWE, let alone an entrance like that and at Mania. Just beautiful. As someone who's been a fan since early ROH I couldn't have been happier.

Watching that, I was actually wondering who remembers from the time? It was from a time in Punk's career that was only a couple of years and most fans are not old enough to remember and even if they were the odds are they've never watched it. The amounts that are actively watching now that watched Punks matches in ROH etc live or on tape is surprisingly small. Most would've watched them post him going to WWE and I'm betting most who reacted only even knew he used the song as he did the entrance during the dog collar match against MJF.

I'm not even a massive punk fan but the original dog collar match against Raven was a defining moment in my early fandom. 

I'm done shouting at the cloud

[Statto]

10 hours ago, JLM said:

A true torch passing. Cole's call was an obvious one but also the correct one: Oba Femi is The Next Big Thing. 

I'd tweak it to New Big Thing.

Clearly derivative of/referential to Brock's early nickname, but with the implication that Oba is already the big thing now.

[DavidB6937]

10 hours ago, JLM said:

Vince would have fucking loved that Danhausen/Cena bit. I really do like Danhausen but good LORD I struggle with WWE doing big comedy. The Miz is awful, Michael Cole gleefully shouting "Midgets!" was awful. This was terrible.

This isn't an argument against it being terrible, but I've read a bit more about it and it does seem they're from Micromania Midget Wrestling who had some shows on over the week in Vegas, so potentially it's not quite as backwards/offensive as on the surface. Can definitely see why it's not to a lot of peoples tastes though.

[JLM]

Yeah Cole said on commentary that he had been approved to call them that by the performers themselves, but I still cringed at how chuffed he was about it. “Take THAT you wokes!” I’m glad they’re OK with it but the whole thing still felt so horribly dated and tasteless and just the worst of WWE comedy. 

[BomberPat]

I don't think them being Micromania guys makes it any better, it's just very lazy "you know what's funny? Little people!" humour, which smacks of WWE getting their hands on someone genuinely funny and trying to force them into doing the kind of comedy that pops the old men in the writer's room instead. I can see why people were suggesting it had the fingerprints of Vince McMahon on it. 

It basically just reminded me of this:

It's making Danhausen someone who's wacky and zany and LOVES TO HAVE FUN, rather than allowing him to just do what it does. It's the same thing with him actually seemingly have magic powers (judging from the GIF I saw from Smackdown) - the whole point is that it should be ambiguous whether he is actually a little weird demon bloke, or just a nutter. The moment he has magic powers, then what? It's the same problem that made 90% of Bray Wyatt matches bollocks. With Undertaker and Kane they were smart enough to not have them use lightning powers actually in the match.

[Supremo]

It is funny watching the two very different visions for the Danhausen character.

He’s at his best just being a little weirdo backstage, but they can’t help themselves in WWE-ifying him. It has to be about LOVING TO HAVE FUN, with dancers, little people and pyro, always accompanied by Michael Cole and John Cena telling you how funny he is.

It’s seemingly beyond them to realise he’s actually at his funniest mooching about without a laugh track, stamping on plastic forks to pretend he’s Cold Stone Steve Austin, whispering that he’s tricked everyone with his disguise, despite still being in full makeup.

Ultimately, you can see how Danhausen himself is a genuinely funny lad, with loads of comedy influences like The Simpsons and Conan O’Brien, but he’s forever swimming upstream working with a bunch of actual weirdoes who’ve only ever consumed WWE comedy.

Edited April 22 by Supremo

[d-d-d-dAz]

https://www.cagesideseats.com/wwe/436521/jelly-roll-wraps-up-wrestlemania-42-story-vlog-pat-mcafee-celebrity-criticism-cody-rhodes-randy-orton-tko

This genius, 3D Chess, TKO vs Uncle Paul's Boys quasi-invasion feud mad people on social were predicting is going to be weird if even the celebrities don't want to be there anymore.

[Supremo]

“Though the mission was supposed to be Randy Orton saving the business, what happened instead is, Cody Rhodes proved he is the one. The good news is, the business doesn’t need to be saved after all. Good for them. For me, I finished my story. I came up on the indies. IWA East Coast. I went through development, NXT. I was a wrestler, trained by Rip Rogers. Get to WWE. Commentator, pre-shows, wrestled, reffed, managed. Lucky to do all of that. It’s been a hell of a run. Thank you, wrestling,”

Really funny if that’s the end of it. What’ll go down as a mad little factoid that you built an entire Wrestlmania Main Event around. Like when they made Debra The Rock’s manager leading into Wrestlemania 17 but instead of someone smartly binning it off immediately they double and triple downed all the way to the pay per view before bottling it.

“Can I just shock you? Attitude Era’s a bit crap in retrospect. Didn’t hold up to repeat viewings at all.”

Maybe the real friends were the sunglasses re-adjustments we made along the way.

Edited April 23 by Supremo

[TheScarlettChad]

You do have to laugh. They clearly had zero plans. So many thought it'd lead the sole bonkers WWE vs TKO storyline. No idea honestly how that'd have worked. Who reps TKO?

[BarryOVega]

Plus you’d hope they’d learn from all the Authority run that the company itself being heels doesn’t actually do anything positive for storylines

TKO vs WWE would’ve been a fucking nightmare, Rock turning up once in a while talking boardroom politics, that’d be great to watch, then obviously having McAfee, who in fairness to him has been popular as a commentator and part time wrestler, turning up and talking even more insider bollocks

Thankfully it looks like they’re not going down that road, the only authority storyline that ever worked was Vince vs Austin because the owner didn’t like the new champions attitude, no other authority storyline has ever made sense, Bischoff vs Cena being one of the worst, a savvy operator like Bischoff should’ve been celebrating like fuck getting Smackdown’s megastar champion, instead he randomly decides he doesn’t like Cena’s attitude so spends months trying to screw him

Anyway, didn’t watch Raw because it’s shite and I can read the results in 5 minutes 

Also just realised this isn’t the Raw thread

Edited April 23 by BarryOVega
I’m poor at knowing what thread I’m replying to eh?

[AshC]

Marvellous Marc Mero.

[air_raid]

9 hours ago, Supremo said:

What’ll go down as a mad little factoid that you built an entire Wrestlmania Main Event around. Like when they made Debra The Rock’s manager leading into Wrestlemania 17 but instead of someone smartly binning it off immediately they double and triple downed all the way to the pay per view before bottling it.

Or Travis Scott.

[Supremo]

The contrast of these two photographs perfectly encapsulating the difference between Night One and Night Two.

The Punk photo is amazing. The height he gets. The shape he’s in. Punk definitely borrowing some of Rey Mysterio’s stem cells this year.

Meltzer went the full five stars for Punk vs. Roman. Well deserved. You’d hope in the days that followed Seth Rollins took some time to reflect on how things were improved by his absence, realise how shit he is, and work to improve.

Surely he wasn’t out there doing one-day worked shoots on Mainstream TV shows that achieve fuck all. What whopper would do that?!

Imagine coming out of Wrestlemania 42 and your prevailing thought is, “worked shoot angles with celebrities are good, aren’t they?”

Worst there is. Worst there was. Worst there ever will be.

Edited April 25 by Supremo

[wordsfromlee]

I didn’t realise until I watched the little Wrestle Me! round up video they posted the other day, but we were joking on here about Green Shirt Guy being the kind of person who’d buy one of those $10k tickets for a ride on Cody’s bus - turns out he actually paid to have his own entrance during Wrestlemania!