WWE WRESTLEMANIA XL

 Lincoln Financial Field, Philly

NIGHT 1:

RHEA RIPLEY vs. BECKY LYNCH (17:09): The last time Wrestlemania was in Philly, in 1999, I remember being mad that I didn't go to it. This time, I honestly didn't care that I wasn't there. While the WWE is the hottest it's been since 2001 in terms of ratings and selling out shows, I don't think it's as entertaining or as "cool" as it was in 1999. It also probably didn't help that it was cold tonight, around 50 degrees and windy at the start of the show. You could tell that the WWE behind-the-scenes people were mad at how cold it was because they kept putting up a graphic showing the temperature. I mean...at least it wasn't raining. While Night 1 wasn't excellent or anything, it was fairly entertaining. It got a lot of negative reviews online from fans though, and a lot of people complained about how cheap the set and lighting was and blamed Endeavor, who recently bought WWE, for trying to cut costs. I thought it looked fine, although the fans were all in complete darkness which looked kind of oft-putting. The show started at 7 and ended a little after 11. The one complaint I always had was that Wrestlemania was too long. It's 2 nights and still too long now. I can't win. The other sort of negative thing about this week was that usually all of the other wrestling companies do shows in the Wrestlemania city. For whatever reason, it seemed like the shows were a lot bigger in recent years. I guess you can blame AEW for having most of the best wrestlers in the world and they didn't have a show this week. ROH did have a show at the Liacouras Center on Friday night, but even that card wasn't as star packed as usual. One reason was probably that Bryan Danielson was in Mexico wrestling Blue Panther in CMLL on Friday night and Jon Moxley was in Japan wrestling on the NJPW Genesis show Saturday. Those two were on the last ROH PPV but not this one. I did watch some of the DDT show and the Wrestlecon show but there wasn't anything spectacular on either one. Nic Nemeth, Mike Bailey, and Joey Janela seemed to be wrestling on every show this week for whatever reason. I'm actually more excited to see AEW's Dynasty on April 21st than anything else. Bryan Danielson vs. Will Ospreay? Fuck...who cares about The Rock, right? Wrestlemania opened with the women's title match. It was a good match but kind of didn't feel like a big deal since it went on first. I figured Becky Lynch would win the title but wasn't too surprised when she lost since it was early on the show. It was a good, back-and-forth match, though nothing excellent or anything. It seemed to me like the only thing the WWE built up for Wrestlemania was The Rock vs. Cody...which kind of made every match seem less great. Considering Rhea Ripley won the title at last year's 'Mania...maybe she should've lost. **1/2

AUSTIN THEORY & GRAYSON WALLER vs. AWESOME TRUTH (R. TRUTH & THE MIZ) vs. THE JUDGMENT DAY (DAMIAN PRIEST & FINN BALOR) vs. #DIY (JOHNNY GARGANO & TOMMASO CIAMPA) vs. THE NEW DAY (KOFI KINGSTON & XAVIER WOODS) vs. CATCH REPUBLIC (PETE DUNNE & TYLER BATE) "LADDER MATCH" (17:21): This was definitely the most entertaining match on Night 1. The weird thing was that there were two sets of tag team titles to win, the RAW titles and the Smackdown titles, which meant there were two winners. They did a lot of big spots here. Gargano gave Tyler Bate a DDT off the apron through a table. Grayson Waller got power-bombed out of the ring onto a ladder bridge. And JD McDonagh, who wasn't even in the match, got tossed off a ladder through two ringside tables. R. Truth got the biggest pops in this match and perhaps the night. He tried to tag into this match and also tried to pin someone which got big pops. Fun match but it peaked about halfway through. ***

ANDRADE & REY MYSTERIO vs. DOMINIK MYSTERIO & SANTOS ESCOBAR (11:02): The highlight came when two men in Eagles luchador masks came out of the crowd to toss Dominik into the steel post. They took off their masks to reveal themselves to be Eagles players Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson. Other than that, the match was just okay. There was a cool move where Joaquin Wilde, who wasn't even the match, got catapulted from the ropes to the floor. I think he's an NXT guy or something. **

JEY USO vs. JIMMY USO (11:07): The crowd, which everyone online said was bad tonight, didn't seem to care about this match. It was okay, but nothing really eventful or exciting happened. It was just there. Maybe they should, like, make them a tag team again? *

BIANCA BeLAIR, JADE CARGILL & NAOMI vs. DAMAGE CTRL (ASUKA, DAKOTA KAI & KAIRI SANE) (8:03): This match seemed to only be to set up Jade Cargill as a big star. The crowd seemed to like her so I guess it worked. There wasn't really much to this besides that, though, although Bianca looked good in this. As we learned in AEW, Jade is only good for a few fleeting moments and not good in a full, long match. How the WWE will work with this knowledge is still to be determined. *1/2

SAMI ZAYN vs. GUNTHER (15:29): They should have had Sami Zayn win the title from Roman in the main event of last year's Wrestlemania. You do remember he was the most over wrestler in the company last year, right? Or do we forget? The WWE I guess is trying to reclaim that, as they had him end Gunther's 2 year IC title reign here. That's a good move and all but it would've been nice if they, like, had actually built up this feud. They didn't. The match was good. It was a typical beat down then comeback story. They had Zayn's wife at ringside cheering him on and Zayn went over and kissed her after he won. If you're going to have Gunther be this unbeatable monster and have the title for 2 years...maybe build up the challenger that unthrones him? Hello? WWE? Who writes this shit? **1/2

THE ROCK & ROMAN REIGNS vs. CODY RHODES & SETH ROLLINS (44:34): No, that's not a typo. This match was 44 minutes long. It also didn't start until 30 minutes after the Zayn/Gunther match. Sweet Jesus. While late in this match there was some drama and excitement, most of this match was boring. I figured they could do the old, WWE, smoke-and-mirrors thing with ref bumps, interference, tables broken, etc. They did some of that, but not enough to make this super exciting or awesome. The crowd was probably cold and tired at this point...but they were not frothing with excitement witnessing the first Rock match in 8 years. Maybe they should've done the Rock vs. Roman title match instead? Duh. Of course they should have. That would've been a great main event. This? It was mostly a slog. There was no interference by Jey Uso or Solo Sikoa. Cody did give The Rock a Rock Bottom through the announce table. They brawled through the crowd. The Rock pulled the ref out of the ring at one point. The Rock said "fuck" on camera. This was just way too long. It probably didn't help that the bad guys won and thus the crowd had to sort of go home sad (The Rock was cheered and Cody got some boos though mostly cheers). Hopefully Night 2 will be more exciting, because while this show was entertaining it was also kind of forgettable. **

NIGHT 2:

DREW McINTYRE vs. SETH ROLLINS/ DAMIAN PRIEST vs. DREW McINTYRE (10:47): Night 2 was pretty much as good as Night 1. It got better reviews, probably because there were a bunch of title changes and a couple of ex-wrestlers like Cena and The Undertaker showed up. While the first and last match were fairly entertaining, the whole rest of the show was kind of just there. But this show is WWE to a T. It's entertaining, though you'll never see any great matches or anything super spectacular. It's entertaining and that's about it. The entrances in this first match were really good. Drew came out with a bunch of musicians playing the bagpipes. Seth came out with a Mummers string band and he was dressed up as a Mummer. That was great stuff. This first match was really only good after the finish, though. CM Punk was on commentary, and after Drew won the title from Seth, CM Punk started beating up Drew. Then Damian Priest came out to cash his Money in the Bank contract (which he won seemingly years ago last July) and beat Drew for the title. All of this post-match stuff got the crowd into a frenzy. It also helped that the WWE must've listened to the fan's complaints about the lighting in Night 1 and actually lit up the crowd tonight so it didn't look like they were wrestling in a dark Taliban cave. **1/2

THE PRIDE (ANGELO DAWKINS, BOBBY LASHLEY & MONTEZ FORD) vs. THE FINAL TESTAMENT (AKAM, KARRION KROSS & REZAR) "STREET FIGHT" (8:36): Bubba Ray Dudley was the referee, so the biggest crowd pops came when he did some of the old Dudley Boys' gimmicks. He put on his taped glasses. He yelled, "Get the tables!" He yelled the, "Wazzup!" gimmick. Yeah...he was supposed to be the ref. They broke tables and used Singapore Canes and chairs. This wasn't anything great, probably because there weren't any big stars in this besides, I guess, Lashley. **

LA KNIGHT vs. AJ STYLES (12:28): I know they put LA Knight in the main event against Reigns in Saudi Arabia. But...it seems like they haven't capitalized on how over LA Knight is/was with the fans. It seems like considering how hot he was last summer they probably should've made him champion a long time ago. Oh, well. This match was fairly entertaining, though also fairly forgettable. **

LOGAN PAUL vs. RANDY ORTON vs. KEVIN OWENS (17:38): It'd be nice if they came up with something new. Like last year, Logan came out with a Youtube star dressed up in a Prime bottle. And like last year, the Youtube star got beat up, this time with an RKO on the announce table that didn't break. The match was entertaining. Logan looked good as usual though he didn't do any crazy spots in this. Logan retained whatever title he has. The U.S. title? I think it's that one. **1/2

BAYLEY vs. IYO SKY (14:22): I don't know...but Bayley seems to have gotten old really fast. Watching her slowly lumber around the ring made it look like Mick Foley was wrestling or something. I was totally wrong about one thing: when Iyo Sky won the title I said her reign would be short because she's not a big star. Well...she's not really a big star but she did keep the title since the summer. Match was okay. The crowd popped big for Bayley winning the title. *1/2

CODY RHODES vs. ROMAN REIGNS (33:25): There's a couple of things. One: we all had to wait until Roman finally lost the title to finally have the answer to if it made sense to have Cody lose at last year's Wrestlemania. Was it worth the wait? No. Cody should've won last year. It wasn't a better moment this year or more emotional or more dramatic or anything. Remember last year's Backlash? The main event was Cody vs. Brock Lesnar. That would have made so much more sense if Cody was the champ and it was a title match main event. And what great Roman Reigns title matches did we get last year after 'Mania? Jey Uso at Summerslam? Ugh. LA Knight in Saudi Arabia? Lame. The other thing was would it have been better to have done their ultimate goal: The Rock vs. Roman for the title. Considering The Rock is a heel but the crowds still want to cheer him...plus you could do Cody vs. Roman literally anytime ever and never have the chance for Rock vs. Roman...I think it was a mistake to not do it. The one good thing they got out of it was to set up a future Cody vs. Rock match...but they still could have done that, anyway. We already had Cody vs. Roman last year. Why not have The Rock vs. Roman this year? Eh. It's too late now of course. This match was pretty dull until they finally started having people interfere. Solo interfered. Jimmy Uso interfered. John Cena came out. The Rock came out. The Rock gave Cena a Rock Bottom. The Shield's music hit...which makes no sense since Jon Moxley is in AEW now...but Seth Rollins came out dressed in his Shield outfit only to get destroyed by Roman so quickly the camera man almost missed it. The Undertaker came out to chokeslam The Rock for no apparent reason. No 'Stone Cold' tonight, though. Roman put Cody through the announce table. Cody speared Roman through the barricade that broke (I'm so sick of that spot). Finally Cody won and Roman's never-ending title reign is finally over. Thank God. Match wasn't anything special but all the ex-wrestlers showing up was fun. The crowd went home happy at least. **1/2