Returning from under that rock he crawled under many years ago, Matt Waters returns to PWP to review Wrestlemania 34 with his usual annoying brand of general positivity. Now THAT’s how you generate buzz!
Yes, that’s right, I’m back. Where have I been? Mostly writing for The Reel World about TV and movies, and in particular working on Ben & Matt’s Marvellous Journey, a podcast series reviewing every film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At one point I was also ranking every episode of Futurama, but ran out of steam after only one season, though I’ll be continuing when the aforementioned podcast wraps up.
Kevin Ford, Justin Houston and I previewed this show and NXT Takeover: New Orleans in podcast form.
Some disclaimers: I wrote this the morning after it aired and thus none of what happens on WWE TV this week has been taken into account. I also did not watch the pre-show. Good for Cedric though. And you had better believe that like everything I’ve ever written, this is far too long!
Intercontinental Championship Match
Seth Rollins def. The Miz & Finn Balor
The Kingslayer’s entrance stopped just short of giving him a huge Jon Snow coat and sword but was pretty cool with the Whitewalker-inspired blue contact lenses. Miz coming out second led me to believe Balor would be bringing back The Demon, but instead we got the awesome decision to have him joined by a local LGBT group, with rainbows adorning his ring gear. The Balor Club is for everybody.
Placing the match first made sense given Rollins’ perpetual desire to steal the show, and they set the tone with a fun match that included a call-back to Balor’s injury at Seth’s hands a couple of years ago and some fun multi-man spots. I wouldn’t call it must-see, but it was certainly enjoyable, and Rollins has now completed the Grand Slam. There’s an opportunity to see him on the other side of his storyline with John Cena a few years ago, with him raising the prestige of the Intercontinental Championship as THE belt to set up a title vs title match down the line. We shall see.
Smackdown Women’s Championship Match
Charlotte Flair def. Asuka
I’m mad at myself for not seeing this coming beyond my token ‘If any full-time roster member is going to beat Asuka, it’ll be Charlotte’ comment when previewing the show. Asuka’s streak was already record-breaking, and the WWE are famously impatient – hence the lion’s share of said streak coming in NXT – so the odds of them keeping her undefeated for another year until her eventual loss to either Charlotte in a rematch or Ronda Rousey at Wrestlemania 35 weren’t great.
Instead Charlotte Flair’s legacy has only grown. Much like Randy Orton, Charlotte may as well be a gift from up high as far as management are concerned; a second-generation statuesque blonde with a legitimate athletic background who has the ability to portray an arrogant heel and an undeniably impressive babyface. She is the epitome of what the company likes and it’s hard to argue with that photoshoot of her with the four different women’s championships she has won. Furthermore, she’s entirely homegrown by the WWE developmental system, so a narrative can certainly be built that they went out and got a big name adored by the hardcore fanbase and utilised her as a plot device to advance the story of Charlotte Flair as the greatest of all time.
The match itself was excellent, though I’m surprised they went ahead and positioned it second on the card given the level of anticipation and ability of the two performers. Charlotte’s entrance, which saw her flanked by three hulking men in armour, mirrored her own participation as one of the masked women accompanying Triple H to the ring at Wrestlemania 30 (also in New Orleans). Asuka brutalised Charlotte throughout the match, peppering her with kicks and knee strikes, targeting her shoulder to set up the Asuka-Lock while consistently evading Charlotte’s own signature hold, the Figure Eight.
Charlotte’s athletic ability let her escape several potential match-ending scenarios with it ultimately boiling down to Charlotte refusing to be denied and finally locking on the Figure Eight, with Asuka submitting in shockingly quick fashion. Charlotte being forced to bridge up on one hand due to her injury was the icing on the cake, adding a visual that’ll be shown over and over again. The Figure Eight continues to be the ultimate ace up her sleeve, and to my knowledge nobody has survived it when it is properly locked in, with even the seemingly unbeatable Asuka forced to tap out to it. “Charlotte was ready for Asuka” indeed.
As an aside, I thought the decision to have a referee run awkwardly down the ramp to tell John Cena (sitting front row) that The Undertaker had arrived, and Cena’s subsequent sprint backstage was unusually disrespectful given how hard WWE is pushing the idea of the Women’s Revolution. This could easily have been done during either of the next two matches. I’m probably overreacting, but it bothered me in the moment.
United States Championship Match
Jinder Mahal def. Bobby Roode, Rusev & Randy Orton
There’s not much to say really. Randy Orton and Jinder Mahal bore me, I find Bobby Roode hit and miss, and Rusev is criminally underutilised. The WWE get to repeat their experiment with Mahal as a major singles champion but with slightly lower stakes that don’t demand every major show ending with him cheating to win. The story of an Canadian Indian villain holding the United States Championship is low-hanging fruit, but this company specialises in low-hanging fruit. Rusev was briefly the heroic force threatening to capture the title and return to relevance, but instead he may end up chasing Mahal as his first challenger. Better than nothing, I suppose.
Kurt Angle & Ronda Rousey def. Triple H & Stephanie McMahon
I don’t know what the general consensus is, but you can certainly colour me impressed. Heading into this I had the same reservations as most, assuming that this match would be placed near the top of the card as part of an attempt to garner mainstream attention and make a star out of the boss’ daughter. You could certainly be forgiven for thinking a match featuring the perpetually hobbled Kurt Angle, teaming with a green-as-grass celebrity who has never wrestled before to face Steph, who has been not-awful at best in her limited appearances over the years and Triple H, who now only wrestles a few times a year as a special attraction.
Indeed, right off the bat we got Trips and Stephanie came to the ring as part of a huge biker gang, with the commentary team waxing lyrical about how this was one of the greatest entrances they had ever seen. It was cool and all, but not even the best of the night in my opinion. Rousey wearing Rowdy Roddy Piper’s jacket and a kilt during her entrance was pretty cool. In fact she looked good generally, appearing to be in fantastic shape with some decent ring-gear.
But forget the visuals, Ronda looked good in the other sense too. The cynic in me assumes they rehearsed every single moment of this match until she was comfortable with it, and obviously most of what she did was a big spot, rather than twenty minutes of interstitial technical wrestling and general ring movement, but screw all of that. She executed all of her stuff well, showing off a blend of striking, submissions and throws, as well as some badass counters into and out of submissions. They smartly kept her out of the bout for a while, with Stephanie constantly trolling her and the crowd genuinely ate it up as Kurt teased the hot tag fooooreeever.
I feel the match lasted a little longer than it needed to, with three or four moments where they could have ended it with the audience in a frenzy, but Ronda needed to show what she could do and we got a half dozen excellent moments, including a hurricanrana and a vicious flurry of punches to Triple H, some of which appeared to legitimately connect. When she tripped The Game, rolled through and lifted him into a fireman’s carry I lost my mind. In fact, I foolishly believed for a moment the finish might have been Trips tapping out to Ronda, but of course it had to be her nearly snapping Stephanie’s arm off. It was the logical conclusion of this story. Also lol, HHH.
I’m legitimately shocked at how much this match held my attention throughout. I was excited to see what Ronda could do and was in turn pleased with the results. She got to beat up a multi-time world champion as well as annihilate the villainous Stephanie McMahon, with her armbar established early as an answer to Asuka’s version of it, as well as the Asuka Lock and Charlotte’s Figure Eight. If we get a year of slick counters into the hold that end dominant displays against all comers, I’m here for it, though I’m not sure how she will fare as a full-time member of the roster, with some shortcomings to her promo work obviously still apparent. But in my opinion she more than got the job done in her first outing.
Oh, Triple H and Kurt Angle were perfectly decent as well, and Stephanie continues to not embarrass herself in big match environments. All in all, this might be the match I was looking forward to the least but ended up being my favourite of the night.
Smackdown Tag Team Championship Match
The Bludgeon Brothers def. The New Day & The Usos
I still wish this was the story of the two teams who have busted their asses for years getting rewarded with their first proper Wrestlemania match going out and capping off their rivalry with a 20 minute showcase in tag team wrestling, but The Bludgeon Brothers are a classic bruiser team who are now set to dominate the Smackdown tag team division for the next few months.
The New Day got their special fun (if problematic) entrance and it’s a shame the Usos didn’t get to deliver one of their amazing pre-match promos to match. Rowan meanwhile wore his Wyatt Family sheep mask, threatening to destroy WWE’s sacred continuity.
Everybody got a chance to shine and Harper and Rowan finished it off with a huge powerbomb from the middle rope, establishing themselves as the new team to beat. It just wasn’t really anything to write home about.
The Undertaker def. John Cena
Despite a referee being heard to say that Taker was here earlier in the show, they briefly teased The Deadman not showing up, with Elias heading down to the ring to mock Cena and promptly receive a beatdown. Undertaker of course did in fact show up, and the shot of his hat and coat in the ring before the lights went out and he made his full entrance was a nice touch.
The match was exactly what it needed to be: a one-sided onslaught from The Undertaker that lasted less than three minutes. Taker is famously banged-up thanks to his litany of injuries and advanced age, but he didn’t show it in this limited performance. Cena is becoming the very thing he hates, too busy with his Hollywood projects to compete full-time in the WWE, so a shut-out from The Phenom allows him to disappear for several months, selling his embarrassment. His charmingly exaggerated facial expressions worked well here, particularly when he skidded to a halt in disbelief when Undertaker sat up in the middle of his attempted Five Knuckle Shuffle.
Taker made his annual appearance and atoned for his uncomfortable showings in recent years with a dominant victory over one of the few big names he had never tangled with, giving the fans what they wanted and allowing Cena to exit stage right for a while.
Raw Women’s Championship Match
Nia Jax def. Alexa Bliss
I’m surprised they didn’t project an extreme close-up on Nia’s eyes on the giant harlequin mask screen. I’m glad this cringey storyline that they have gone to in the past is over, because as much as we can all agree that body-shaming is a quick way to make you dislike somebody, and Alexa is meant to be vilified, I’d rather we just didn’t go there at all given this company is incapable of subtlety. Furthermore, I personally have not cared for any of the iterations of Nia Jax when it comes to her in-ring ability, and getting sympathy behind her doesn’t mean she’s got what it takes to be a babyface champion.
I figured they’d demote this to the pre-show so that the FIRST EVER Fabulous Moolah Wrestlemania Women’s Battle Royal could get some exposure, but they needed something to cleanse the pallets of the crowd, and this was ideal. Nia got to wipe out Mickie James, Alexa got to dominate for a while thanks to her underhanded tactics, only for Nia to survive her two biggest moves and capture the title with a top-rope version of her finish and then celebrate with The Rock’s family because did you know they’re related?!
You could see every moment of it coming, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Too long though.
Shane McMahon & Daniel Bryan def. Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn
It turns out we all overthought this match. Theories about partners turning on each other and interference from Dolph Ziggler and/or Vince McMahon all came to nothing, because this was the Daniel Bryan show. After being stretchered away due to a vicious assault from Kevin & Sami that allowed Shane to play the babyface in peril for a few minutes, Bryan returned and completely cleaned house, firing off all of his signature attacks and getting some moments alone two men he will likely get major matches with in the future. Zayn submits, the good guys win, and the storyline with the two authority figures beginning to turn on each other is aborted in favour of the shocking return of one of the most popular wrestlers of all time. Shane even got to defy medical wisdom with his always impressive leap across the ring despite allegedly suffering from a hernia and diverticulitis.
It was short and did everything it needed to, welcoming Bryan back into the fold and letting the fans shower him in infinite applause, rather than descending into convoluted storyline nonsense… though I’m sure that’s coming soon. Welcome back, Dragon.
WWE Championship Match
AJ Styles def. Shinsuke Nakamura
After the first two matches of the night I thought they might be giving the hardcore fanbase all the matches they cared about first and positioning all the ones they were more apathetic toward at the end. The King of Strong Style got the amazing entrance he was reported to be receiving heading into the event, with Nita Strauss and a big band playing him to the ring. P. Cool.
This just didn’t really do it for me like I hoped it might. Then again, I thought that about their match at Wrestle Kingdom 10 too. I’m not trying to be one of those cool people who say ‘Umm actually, Nakamura is overrated’, but there is a notable difference in his work at major events, and for me this wasn’t one for the list, even if it was treated as such and had an amazing finish and some shocking post-match shenanigans.
It’s perfectly possible that my own expectations are at fault here, but it felt like the most generic version of this match possible, with both men hitting all of their signature moves, Nakamura kicking out of The Phenomenal Forearm, and AJ countering the Kinshasa elegantly into the Styles Clash. They made a token effort to target the body parts needed to hit their finishers, but then hit them anyway, so for to what end?
Shinsuke hitting AJ with a low-blow and then delivering a brutal beatdown after the bout wasn’t something I saw coming, and while Nakamura was heavily booed for his actions at the time, I don’t know if crowds are going to treat him as a villain because much like Bobby Roode he has one of the best theme songs in the biz. They could of course remix it to make it less catchy, but that’s their problem to deal with. They executed a shocking turn on their grandest stage, likely necessary for one of the two, and have another heel for Daniel Bryan to lock up with down the line.
Raw Tag Team Championship Match
Braun Strowman & Small Boy def. The Bar
If you predicted Braun’s mystery partner would be a child picked from the audience then you win all the things. Not Elias. Not Rey Mysterio. Not Samoa Joe. Not The Big Show. Not Lars Sullivan. A kid called Nicholas (who is apparently the son of referee John Kone).
Braun moving through a live crowd looking for a partner seemed destined to end in disaster, with at least one drunken individual following him around a little too eagerly. And for a brief moment as he walked past members of the NXT roster invited to attend the show I thought hey, wouldn’t it be funny if Bobby Fish, crutches and all, won the Raw Tag Team Titles, 24 hours after being unable to defend the NXT Tag Team Titles due to injury.
But no, we got a young boy called Nicholas, visibly terrified at the prospect of just standing on the apron while Braun Strowman wrestled the champions. I don’t want to shame the kid by any means, but this got a little awkward, particularly when he was tagged in – to rapturous applause mind you – only to tag straight back out. Would it not have made more sense to have Braun powerslam The Bar and then let Nicholas pin them? Would it have been embarrassing and in the eyes of some disrespectful and potentially career-crippling? Sure! But it is Cesaro, after all.
It was a fun moment for the crowd that uplifted them after the beloved Nakamura turning to the darkside, and providing a buffer between that and the main event. I wonder if Braun will pick a series of increasingly awkward children to stand on the apron while he defends the tag team titles each week, or if we’ll get some a scenario with him vacating.
Rest in Peace, The Bar’s Mardi Gras float.
Universal Championship Match
Brock Lesnar def. Roman Reigns
Well. Roman got booed. Brock got booed. Paul Heyman got a more tepid response than usual, and I’m sure a lot of people went to sleep before the match even started. The foregone conclusion of all foregone conclusions played out almost exactly like you’d expect: Brock suplexed Roman a bunch. Reigns hit a lot of Superman Punches. There was a painful looking botch. Somebody bled a lot. But then Brock retained the title and every prediction went straight out the window.
Brock getting heavily booed while he mauled Roman may have been the reaction the writers were looking for, but the crowd weren’t booing because they sympathised with Reigns, and didn’t cheer when he started to fire back. Nor did they really react when he kicked out of the F-5, despite the company’s work to establish the move as utterly deadly over the last few years. Nor did they really react when Roman kicked out of four subsequent F-5’s, including one through a table. Instead they amused themselves. They chanted ‘boring’ and ‘this is awful.’ It was exactly the reaction one might have expected.
So when Brock ultimately defeated Reigns with a SIXTH F-5, it naturally drew the first major reaction of the match. Roman has been pushed well past the moon and toward the outer reaches of the solar system, with the entire point of this rematch being that he would finally be established as THE Guy, despite them establishing that at every available opportunity already. Lesnar’s dominant title reign, becoming less interesting with every passing month, surviving challenger after challenger, seemed destined to end with Roman finally avenging his loss, so that Brock could return to the UFC.
Instead Brock won and the show concluded with him looking like a hurt bunny, his music playing in the manner one would expect for a valiant hero who came up short, a standing ovation to accompany it… Only that standing ovation wasn’t there. If their aim was to elicit surprise, then they certainly succeeded, but it was a bizarre note to end the show on, especially with Rollins, Charlotte, The Undertaker, Daniel Bryan and even Ronda Rousey providing more than adequate closing shots earlier in the night.
It was a match that felt longer than it was due to the sheer apathy of the audience, culminating in a wholly unexpected outcome, leaving a lot of questions about what’s next for both men and the company’s main event scene, and not necessarily in a good way. Bobby Lashley returning and winning the title would be novel, but then you surely just have a full-time version of Brock Lesnar’s stale act. Daniel Bryan doing the unthinkable seems a fool’s dream. Shinsuke Nakamura just turned heel. Brock has beaten everybody else. As usual, we will have to wait and see how this ultimately plays out, but in the moment it felt like a shock for the sake of shock. Whether or not that is worse than a predictable but logical outcome is in the eye of the beholder, but it somewhat soured my thoughts on the show overall.
Overall
Speaking of my thoughts on the show overall, I actually thought this was one of the best Wrestlemania’s in recent memory and I enjoyed almost every single match.
The Ronda Rousey tag match was shockingly good while the John Cena/Undertaker scenario played out sensibly, and the two Royal Rumble winners coming up short against world-beating champions may have been a little unexpected, but was at least entertaining. Two very different acts are tag champions now, while Seth Rollins gets to do Seth Rollins things on Monday Nights to juxtapose Project Jinder 2.0 on Tuesdays. My least favourite matches, the US Title and Raw Women’s Title matches were dull, but mercifully short.
Some of the match order struck me as odd, but despite being five hours long, the show didn’t drag and we didn’t have to sit through any chicanery with celebrities or legends and there were no musical performances outside of America the Beautiful and Shinsuke’s entrance, so that was appreciated. All in all, while I don’t think they stuck the landing, I had a really good time and am intrigued to see where everything goes next.