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WRESTLEMANIA 36 Post Match Thread


Dolfan in NYC

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I doubt most of those watching knew that was how Benoit hung himself. I thought they could have done without the spot but they could have done without most of that match so...

I was more curious how meetings go in the boardroom with the cage wall  hanging over it and if they'd built the performance center in the early 90s would it have been the old blue bars instead?

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Having just watched Dark Side of the Ring  that spot in the LMS definitely evoked that thought. However, not gonna criticize it. I doubt it even crossed anyone's mind and  the vast majority of the viewing audience wouldn't make the connection either. 

So, Night 2 was interesting. I'm rewatching a few matches today.  In hindsight it's not as bad as first watch indicated. 

- Liv vs Nattie overachieved a bit. Liv has improved. 

- Charlotte vs Ripley was incredible. Match of the Two Shows for sure. Ripley doesn't lose much in a loss provided she gets the big blowoff win down the line. Also, can people chill with the "Charlotte is overpushed" talk? They think she's a star. This is how they should book stars. It's why she's one of the few people that matter. If she was booked like Sasha every single person would scream about how awful it is that Vince hates the Flair family and gets off on fucking with them and is burying Charlotte etc. And, when has Charlotte NOT delivered in a big PPV match? Look at her year compared to Bayley and Becky.

- Black and Lashley was a fine sprint.  Looks like the blowoff of Lashley and Lana as an act. 

- Otis vs Ziggler was whatever. 

- LMS standing was a true disaster and ruined the show and is one of the worst matches in Mania history and one of the worst big match clunkers in a very long time. 

- Tag match was a good sprint. Bianca as a third to the Prophets can really get the Hardy/Lita dynamic. That could be a huge act. 

- Women's five way was much better on rewatch. Pretty hilarious that Bayley is getting overpushed now when it's THIS character. Not the character that could draw money and be a huge babyface. The version they run with is dour heel stuck in an eternal dead-end angle with a checked out Sasha Banks. Shocked they didn't have Lacey overcome the odds. 

- What can you even say about the Fun House? I mean, it went big. Just remember, everyone celebrating these are gonna be regretting it when the WWE rams shit like this down our throat moving forward. 

- Main event was fine. I think we all expected a real match but Brock clearly wasn't feeling this one. Drew gets his moment and hopefully he's still champ when/if fans come back.  

 

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34 minutes ago, Six String Orchestra said:

I was more curious how meetings go in the boardroom with the cage wall  hanging over it and if they'd built the performance center in the early 90s would it have been the old blue bars instead?

Quick story:  A friend of mine did some work for WWE's website and in her first meeting in Stamford, she entered the main conference room which had a big circular table with a Money in the Bank briefcase hung up in the middle. She immediately started looking under the table and around the room... The WWE guys asked what she was doing, she said, "I'm not leaving here without that briefcase." 

They loved her instantly. 

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Okay - just rewatched the FIrefly Fun House. 

Firstly, Cena is a really good egg to go along with that bullshit. But:

why the fuck do you do that to your biggest babyface star of the last twenty years? There is a VERY weird story about how they've treated Cena like an asshole since he became a part-timer. Obviously he doesn't care but why don't you put this guy in matches and feuds that matter and that can still draw? 

That art project last night was a total assassination of the John Cena character. A character that is still I imagine a hero to whatever children still watch. Bray called him a bad guy, an asshole, told Cena to succumb to his dark impulses and then made him a joke and beat him. 

There's a lot similar to how they made Mick Foley into a loser in all of his appearances after he retired in this Cena portrayal. Good on Cena for not caring but not what I'd be doing with him. Not saying you make him world champion but there's gonna be a time when they're gonna want Cena in that returning legend role that has to headline these shows and this stuff won't help.   

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I read this Uproxx article and now I feel like if that Firefly Funhouse match was really a deconstruction of not only John Cena's career, but the McMahon-styled bully babyface character, I should watch it. This sounds brilliant, actually. 

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2 hours ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

He hung himself with a weight set. It wasn’t one to one, but c’mon. You know that’s what they were going for when Orton set up a makeshift noose.

Dawg let it go. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and if that's your opinion that's perfectly okay, but you can't force your opinion on everyone else. You must not be a gym guy. Benoit made a make-shift noose out of the steel cable on his lat pull down machine. A machine that the steel cord automatically pulls up once you let go. The thing Edge was dangling on were fabric sleeves you put your elbows in so you can do crunches while hanging in the air. It's not even close to the realm of the machine Benoit used. My point with that is, while you see it as a Benoit homage or easter egg... people that work out frequently (like Edge, Orton, and probably everyone else producing that match) would never make that connection. Because a lat pull down machine and elbow straps for crunches could not be more different.

That's why it didn't get edited out. Because people who are familiar with the equipment didn't make a connection. And I can say with absolute certainty those involved didn't do it as a shout out. They did it by accident.

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32 minutes ago, Hagan said:

Okay - just rewatched the FIrefly Fun House. 

Firstly, Cena is a really good egg to go along with that bullshit. But:

why the fuck do you do that to your biggest babyface star of the last twenty years? There is a VERY weird story about how they've treated Cena like an asshole since he became a part-timer. Obviously he doesn't care but why don't you put this guy in matches and feuds that matter and that can still draw? 

That art project last night was a total assassination of the John Cena character. A character that is still I imagine a hero to whatever children still watch. Bray called him a bad guy, an asshole, told Cena to succumb to his dark impulses and then made him a joke and beat him. 

There's a lot similar to how they made Mick Foley into a loser in all of his appearances after he retired in this Cena portrayal. Good on Cena for not caring but not what I'd be doing with him. Not saying you make him world champion but there's gonna be a time when they're gonna want Cena in that returning legend role that has to headline these shows and this stuff won't help.   

I think it was fine as it was all from the perspective of Wyatt who throughout most of his WWE has technically been evil. The key is that this all needs to be returned to with a face needing to turn these retrospectives back on bray.

Edited by Eivion
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11 hours ago, Death From Above said:

The Chono/Nagata one hour draw has about 15 minutes of really good wrestling in it. 

You really gotta see the Fujita/Shiozaki match from NOAH that just came out. 30 someodd minutes of staring at each other, 10 of "crowd" brawling in a crowdless Korakuen, 10 of wrestling.

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8 hours ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

Best way to explain it would be Gallows using a throwaway line like “Thank God we dug you out in time. All those years of playing Dig Dug paid off”.

He needs to show up looking like the Bride in Kill Bill 2 when she walks into the diner.

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1 hour ago, Smelly McUgly said:

I read this Uproxx article and now I feel like if that Firefly Funhouse match was really a deconstruction of not only John Cena's career, but the McMahon-styled bully babyface character, I should watch it. This sounds brilliant, actually. 

Yeah see this is the DVDVR LOST thread (RIP - GOAT weekly thread) kind of stuff I was talking about. Glad someone put the time into writing that. The end of it starting with "Cena turns heel" was my read on the whole thing as well. Not that everything was incredibly subtle here, but it was MORE subtle than I can think of anything in this company being. 

One of the bits I thought was on the more subtle side was that, when initially confronted during the rap battle with the reality that his character is a terrible person, not only does he not sell it at all and make a deez nuts joke. He makes a TERRIBLE deez nuts joke where he rhymes "face" with "face". Which is something Cena the dude would never do but reinforces that Cena the character still didn't get it.

Edited by For Great Justice
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1 hour ago, Six String Orchestra said:

Great, Jacques Derrida goes to Wrestlemania, just what my high school English teacher always wanted. 

This is DVDVR, bruh. We should live for this sort of Critical Theory 300-level analysis. 

No sarcasm meant, either. 

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53 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Dawg let it go. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and if that's your opinion that's perfectly okay, but you can't force your opinion on everyone else. You must not be a gym guy. Benoit made a make-shift noose out of the steel cable on his lat pull down machine. A machine that the steel cord automatically pulls up once you let go. The thing Edge was dangling on were fabric sleeves you put your elbows in so you can do crunches while hanging in the air. It's not even close to the realm of the machine Benoit used. My point with that is, while you see it as a Benoit homage or easter egg... people that work out frequently (like Edge, Orton, and probably everyone else producing that match) would never make that connection. Because a lat pull down machine and elbow straps for crunches could not be more different.

That's why it didn't get edited out. Because people who are familiar with the equipment didn't make a connection. And I can say with absolute certainty those involved didn't do it as a shout out. They did it by accident.

Direct quote from Dave: "I know people in the company it offended". And the defense you are offering is like when they did the crucifixion angle years back and tried to claim it was fine because it was a symbol and not a cross. The idea they did it less than two weeks after the Vice documentary and the case was fresh in everyone's minds made it even more inexcusable.

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I'm waiting to read the second part of the Uproxx thing after watching the Funhouse match, but the first part is great. 

Quote

Strowman finally “wins the big one” at the public and creative low-point of his character’s existance, defeating a 53-year old part-timer who squashed The Fiend to sell more tickets to a WrestleMania that ended up with an attendance of zero. That managed to not only negate the point of the title change, but sacrifice six months of storytelling involving top stars like Seth Rollins and Daniel Bryan to do so. The Fiend no-sold and obliterated Rollins and Bryan only to get squashed by Goldberg, who was then squashed by Braun Strowman, who we most recently saw losing a 3-on-1 handicap match. To Sami Zayn, who just beat Daniel Bryan. It’s like an ouroboros of losing. It’d be frustrating if it wasn’t so funny.

This guy outta be posting here. 

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If this has already. been discussed forgive me, I didn't read the last 12 pages but did Charlotte go over Rhea to pop the NXT Rating? I would have went with Rhea personally.

Other things about the show; stupid coronavirus the crowd would have went unglued when Otis and Mandy sealed the deal with a hug and kiss. The Bianca Belair run in would have been crazy too. I noticed that more in night 2 then night 1 alot of big Storyline moments where devalued by no audience. Brock vs Drew stunk, I'll say it. Poor Drew there's a guy whose big moment was completely fucked up by this dumb thing. The Funhouse match was ludicrous in the best way possible. Bray and Taker look the best coming out of this. Roman too. Braun and Drew are gonna have stinkers of runs and that really sucks. I knew there was no way in hell Vince McMahon was going to end Wrestlemania with anything other than Drew hitting Brock with a Claymore but with they aired the Funhouse then had Titus O'Neil go "what?" then Mania went off the air I think Night 2 wouldn't be so divisive.

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4 hours ago, Eivion said:

I thought I remembered a hanging, but I did not know it was with a weight set. I wouldn't be shocked if neither knew just because I can see many close to that situation not really wanting to know any details and pushing it to the back to their mind just to move on. That said, someone in the planning of that match had to know. While its not impossible no one did and that was bad luck, it sure as hell isn't likely.


I don't know what the idea behind the spot was or why it was there, but I will say this: Edge and Randy Orton absolutely, 100% know how Chris Benoit killed himself.

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