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OMINOUS THOUGHTS - WRESTLEMANIA 24

I didn’t get to watch Wrestlemania live this year, mostly because I didn’t feel like paying the $55 to order the show, but a friend of mine taped it and let me borrow the tape, so after spending the weekend rewatching the Royal Rumble and No Way Out to get myself caught up (since I don’t have time to watch the TV anymore these days), I finally got to watching and was pretty happy with what I saw.

No matter what you thought of the show, the one thing you cannot say is that everyone wasn’t giving it 110% in the ring that night.  From the opener to the main event, everybody gave it all they had and whatever you may say about other WWE PPVs, Wrestlemania is the one PPV of the year that you can usually depend on to put the focus on the in-ring product.  This work ethic was apparent in the opening match as Finlay and JBL just stiffed the crap out of each other.  Bradshaw may not look like a million bucks these days, and I’m sure part of that is the fact that he’s getting a little older, but he came with his working shoes on, and neither guy was holding back anything on each other, nor did they seem at all worried about taking it either.  Even Hornswoggle took some tough shots, including Bradshaw whipping the trash can over the ropes at him.  And when’s the last time you saw Finlay take a dive through the ropes to the floor?  I would personally have preferred to see Finlay go over because, strange as this may sound due to his age, I think there’s more potential in Finlay going forward than there is in Bradshaw, but he can get his win back later.

I wasn’t as surprised as some people apparently were that CM Punk won Money In The Bank.  For one, none of the other guys in the match would have really made sense to put in that kind of position.  Punk’s over with the fans, and I believe that WWE realizes this and is going to push him, but they don’t want to rush it.  There’s a sentiment I see that basically says if CM Punk (or anyone the internet wants pushed) isn’t in the main event NOW, then he’s being buried and he never will get that push.  How long did it take Edge to really become a main event guy?  Even though everybody thought Punk was being buried when he lost the ECW Title and now he would surely be jobbing on Heat for the rest of his career, he’s on every PPV, in a role appropriate for his position on the card, and even though he wasn’t the guy originally scheduled to win the match, he’s the guy they decided to go with as a replacement winner, and that sure worked well enough for Steve Austin.

As for the match itself, good spotfest and stiff as hell.  I couldn’t believe what I saw when Morrison did that moonsault to the floor with the ladder.  It was stupid as hell for him to do considering the potential for injury to both himself and the five guys he landed on, but luckily everything worked out okay.  It was cool to see Jericho get the Walls Of Jericho on the ladder like he did to Benoit at the Royal Rumble all those years ago.  The appearance of Matt Hardy was a nice surprise that wasn’t totally unexpected, and I think it worked out better than actually having him in the match, because his return was booked as something special, and if he was in the match, it would have been killed by him not winning.  I don’t think Carlito, who is not an exciting wrestler by any definition and is a complaining pain in the ass backstage to boot, had any business in there.  Shelton ’s bump over the ropes and through the ladder was insane, and even though he’s never won the match, he’s been responsible for enough exciting spots in this match that I think he deserves the Mr Money In The Bank moniker.  Suppose he may actually win it one of these years?

The Batista-Umaga match was mildly disappointing, and though I don’t usually get worked up about blown spots unless it really kills the flow of the match, having Batista botch his own finisher on the biggest show of the year looked bad, and he was obviously very bothered by it afterward.  Umaga looked like a killer in the Elimination Chamber last month and it took three finishers to put him away there, but he was back to being just another wrestler here.  This was followed by Kane squashing Chavo in ten seconds for the ECW Title, which I didn’t realize until this show seems to have had the “World” designation dropped.  Guess that ought to tell you something.  So for all you people that cried about him never getting a second World Title run…well, this might have placated you, but probably wasn’t quite what you were looking for.

Flair vs Michaels was obviously the match most of us were looking forward to, and even though I think it would have been nice to have this match end the show, I think it fit well here and Edge-Undertaker did well enough closing the show.  I think this match sounded better on paper than it actually came off in the ring, because even though they’re both incredible workers who can tell a great story with their matches no matter how old they are, Flair is well past the point where he’d be able to keep up with Michaels in a match that we could have reasonably expected out of them ten or twelve years ago.  I really wasn’t so much into this match for the workrate as I was the story it told and the amazing moment that was Shawn saying “I’m sorry” before superkicking Flair’s head off and pinning him, and then rushing to the back, distraught over what he had done, and the huge ovation Flair got as he made his way out of the ring and the arena for “the final time.”  Hey, this is wrestling, you know this stuff never sticks.  Still, great moment and can’t wait to watch the tape of the retirement ceremony on Raw.

So from there we go to Ashley and Maria against Beth Phoenix and Melina.  The less said about this the better, but the right team went over, because even realizing what the WWE women’s division really is, I didn’t want to see the Women’s Champion jobbing just to put over talentless nudie models.  I really having Snoop Dogg there, as even before I heard Mike’s hotline where he mentioned Snoop being a Flair fan, I could tell the guy was a wrestling fan and got it, and was great about being part of the show.

Orton walking out of Wrestlemania with the title was no shock to me.  I had a feeling that the big stories were going to be Flair-Michaels and Undertaker-Edge, so I didn’t see the point in having a title change in what really amounted to a midcard match that turned out to go less than fifteen minutes.  I like the way it was booked that Orton didn’t actually beat Cena, but he snuck in and stole the pin after Hunter hit the Pedigree Of No Escape.  With that move being built the way it has over the years, it makes sense that it put Cena down for slightly more than three seconds, and neither Cena or Triple H looked bad in not winning.

Okay, Mayweather and Big Show.  I thought the match itself was booked well and properly.  Big Show physically dominated the guy he outweighed by three hundred pounds, and it took a low blow, a series of chair shots, and two shots from a World Champion boxer, with brass knucks, to finally put Show down for the ten count.  HOWEVER.  Big Show still lost to a non-wrestler he outweighed by three hundred pounds.  Technically, he also lost clean.  Also, since none of his posse were able to run any really effective interference, Mayweather really beat him singlehandedly.  Anyone else getting flashbacks to Bam Bam Bigelow-Lawrence Taylor, only more humiliating?  We’re not talking about an ex-football player who could legitimately physically compete with a wrestler, this guy weighs 150 pounds and was more than a foot shorter.  Was this what Show was brought back for?  I can’t imagine this was what he had in mind when he signed his new contract, but the first thing they did with him after bringing him back to look like a monster was to job him out to a non-wrestler.  Where does he go from here?

Finally, we come to the main event.  There are years, such as when Undertaker fought Big Show and A-Train, the year he had the Big Boss Man, where you don’t believe for a second that he has any chance of losing.  There are other years, such as when he had Triple H or Batista, where you think they might pull the trigger on that first loss.  This year was one of those years I definitely had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that said Undertaker might lose.  I thought it was too good a story for him to win the World Title at Wrestlemania two years in a row, and I think Edge would have been the perfect guy to hand him that first loss.  When Edge got out of both the Last Ride and the Tombstone and then hit two spears, I thought that was it.  Turns out I was wrong, and weird as it was to see Undertaker win the title by submission, he’s made it to 16-0.  Edge was the last guy WWE has right now who I think would have been worth giving the honor to, but they decided not to do it, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Undertaker’s probably going to be safe for a couple years unless somebody comes out of nowhere.  As poetic as it would be for him to retire undefeated at Wrestlemania, I do think that given the right situation, WWE would have him lose.

Overall, I really enjoyed Wrestlemania 24, and will say it’s one of the better Wrestlemanias in my opinion, and would be interested to hear what you think.  Feedback can be sent to stuwrestling@hotmail.com, so thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon.