Steventon

Rhea Ripley gets a crowning title win at the PPV, so of course CHHHarlotte returns and takes the title from her immediately. Classic. I would feel blessed if the most over-pushed and over-protected worker in the WWE for the last decade was capable of putting someone else over for once.

Time seemed to stand still while Natalya and Tamina stood waiting for Nia to hit that crossbody

Night 2 felt like a show with a lot of good, hard-hitting wrestling and a good effort from mostly everyone, but lacked a lot of the spectacle from Night 1 and wasn't as memorable. Outside those first 2 matches which were awful, everything was good without ever being great. The Fiend match was laughable in every way. The guys whole act and popularity is his entrance. Bad match and the red lightning continues to be awful. I'm sorry but anyone who is into this stuff with Bliss is someone who's opinion I will automatically disregard in future. Shayna was decent in the womens tag and that's the only nice thing I'll say about it. Zayn vs Owens was whatever. It was just them running through all their old staple spots together. Cool they got to do it at Wrestlemania but maybe their least match together. Sheamus vs Riddle was good with the ceiling of a 10 minutes RAW match. I prefer shooter-Riddle to spot-guy Riddle though he does have some cool stuff in his bag. Feels counter-productive to have Gatekeeper Sheamus win but that's WWE. Would be down a longer rematch. All of the Big E vs Crews matches have been good without being great. I have to wonder who pitched this whole gimmick idea, whether it was an old white hack like Prichard or these guys themselves. Daba-Kato in an General's jacket was the topping on it. Rhea vs Asuka was a good match but again suffered from how thrown together it was. On paper this should be a clash of titans, instead we got an established and super over babyface against someone most of the crowd didn't know and had acted like a heel recently. And they proceeded to have a match built around Rhea getting a big babyface title win even though she was the less popular wrestler and Asuka worked like a mega babyface. Not their fault and they put in a good effort (apron DDT was nasty), but the booking didn't do them justice here. Main event was like the Orton-Batista-Bryan match, didn't feel like a great match and nothing I'll care to re-watch, but I did enjoy it. A lot of smokes and mirrors but Bryan was great as always. Interesting finish to put Reigns over so strong, it only took them 5 years and a heel turn. In theory Reigns beat Edge and Bryan decisively here, so Cesaro should be the next in line for a title shot, but that is probably wishful thinking on my part.

Who knew hair could hurt so much? The whip was a great spot not just because it was brutal (seriously) but because Sasha had spent all match using Belair's hair against her. Not a perfect match but I thought it was really good and a satisfying title win to leave me feeling good at the end of the show, and that's really all I can ask for from a Wrestlemania. I skipped the womens gauntlet, but I'd agree the show over-delivered. Wrestlemania has always been more about spectacle than great wrestling, and thats what we got. Drew vs Lashley was as good as it possibly could have been between those guys and had surprisingly outcome Cesaro got a big spotlight performance and win. In theory he should be the de facto #1 contender for whoever wins tomorrow but I don't have much confidence in them based on track record. Rollins is one of those guys who even in defeat, the story is about him - look at last year, what did Kevin Owens do after beating him? Hopefully I am proven wrong Omos didn't do anything impressive, but he at least has personality and felt like a big deal. I thought it was smart of the New Day to play this light and I howled at Xavier yelling 'WE ARE STRATEGICALLY CUTTING THE RING IN HALF'. Cool that AJ is working with a rookie like Omos, hopefully something of value actually comes from it. Even Braun vs Shane - a WWE steel cage match with interference built around Braun Strowman selling for Shane McMahon - managed to not suck. That is an accomplishment in itself. Thank God they kept it brief and Shane took a nutso bump that wasn't on to a crash pad for once. I'm not sure Strowman dedicating his win to stupid people was the best way of framing that, but still. Bad Bunny match went way too long but he clearly put in a tonne of work and effort for this. The Destroyer was, is, and always will be dumb, especially for a non-wrestler to hit, but otherwise massive props to Drew Gulak who apparently trained Bunny for this match.

Misawa also won a lot of big matches with incredibly basic moves like elbow strikes and a face-lock, for what its worth The problem with the current scene is the guys who are getting the most time are the guys who were the worst indy guys of the last generation or so - Cole, Gargano, et al. Granted I think a lot of them have gotten better in WWE, but that generation isn't half as good as the generation of guys before them - Danielson, Joe, Ki, Aries, Nigel, etc. Also, the WWE is massively to blame for a lot of matches being stale and gimmicks being meaningless. It used to be a TNA trope to run gimmick PPVs, but WWE have taken that and amplified to the extreme. There are only so many spots you can do with a ladder, let alone when you are running them almost once a month. Why did Devlin vs Escobar need to be a ladder match? You combine WWE's staleness with a bunch of mediocre indy guys who are have to get their shit in every match and it creates a pretty tedious product. I'm not saying anything new though. I realise this is more a 'old man yelling at cloud' post than a Hot Take, but there we are. You think this is bad, wait until the guys who are influenced by the Young Bucks and Motor City Machine Guns start working half hour matches.

Sad news. Addiction is a fucker.

Thought the top 3 matches on the show were awesome. WALTER vs Ciampa was GREAT. Hella stiff of course but also a smartly worked heavyweight title match with tonnes of bombs. On a brand full of Shawn Michaels produced weepy over-acted guff, this was match was MANLY. Tag title match was a super fun spotfest. Particularly impressed with the Fantasma guys, thought all their big spots were spectacular. Just a balls out go-go-go train of cool stuff, which is what you want from a match like this. MSK feel like a really fresh act on this show and cool to see them continue their momentum and get the belts. Main event was really good. We are used to seeing the 'big' wrestler dominate the 'small' wrestler in these situations, so it was something different to see the smaller, but more experienced ace use her superior agility to dominate the bigger opponent for most of the match. Gonzales is as good a 'base' for a high flyer as any male wrestler (most women workers are terrible at it) right now and all of the spots looked great. Hell, Gonzales is definitely one of the best female workers in the world right now, and her on top is something very fresh so glad they made the right call here. Just a really good clash of styles and big main event title match, Shirai saved her best defence for last. Not sure if I will even watch anything from tonight's show, guess I'll wait and see what the reaction is, but Night 1 had 3 hits. As an aside - someone needs to start a drinking game watching these shows were you do a shot every time there is an attack on a guy's hand. With a Pete Dunne match opening up there must have been about 50 over the course of this show. One of the agents really needs to tell them to mix it up more.

Jericho promo was good and I like the idea of Tyson being the Inner Circle's second for Blood & Guts to counter Tully, assuming that's the direction they go. My only concern is this feud just being Jericho & friends vs MJF & friends, I want to see the rest of the guys in this get some moments and spotlight. Darby vs Drake was darn good, especially for a B-level defence. I was never too impressed by Drake in EVOLVE, but he stepped up to the plate. I really liked how diverse his offence was while still being all quite basic and hurt-y. Is Archer going to go back to babyface with Sting's words of encouragement? The guy might be AEW's Kane soon. Hopefully it just leads to him vs Darby. Another Britt Baker promo and no sign of Thunder Rosa. Makes you wonder why they had Rosa go over. Skimmed through the main event. The Matt Jackson - Kenny Omega friendship drama is the most lame and boring story in wrestling. Didn't care for it pre-AEW with their Elite wankfests, don't care for it now. Even dumber considering they had a high profile match against each other last year when they were still bros in storyline, but now Matt is hesitant to superkick Kenny? These guys are all far better away from each other rather than living out their masturbatory 'high art' wrestling fantasies. The worst thing about the Flair-Michaels retirement match was how it's lead to so many teary eyed 'I love you' crybaby wrestling programs after it. This guy turned his back on you, kick his fucking head in. Bucks joining the Bullet Club 2K21 is the most uninteresting angle they could have gone with.

Didn't they do the same shocking heel title win and run with EVIL last year and it totally bombed?

Who's better (or worse) - Kenny Omega or Davey Richards?

Not that I necessarily disagree with your point here, but I think this highlights a problem a lot of recent Wrestlemanias have had. They keep trying to cram as many guys on the card as possible because they are 'entitled' to work the biggest show of the year, and as a result we get a bunch of meaningless multi-man clusterfuck matches padding out the mid-card. No one should be entitled to work a show, the matches on the card should be the matches that make sense with the booking. I mean, I'd much rather watch many of these guys in the Andre Battle Royale than half the matches announced for the PPV, but still. I guess it's a symptom of having SO MANY guys under contract that inevitably a lot of them just get bunked. If I was busting my chops every week, I'd be fuming that Shane McMahon gets another big PPV spot over me.

And what a pointless accolade that is. It's even dumber in kayfabe ('it took you 35 minutes to beat a guy').

Modern New Japan is just snowflake bait fake 'epics' where guys go long for the sake of going long because they have conditioned their fanbase to think that's makes a match great. Most of the matches are painfully boring and aimless for 90% of the way until the finishers and counters at the end. Someone like Ibushi has a great physical skillset and is a great athlete, but absolutely does not have the understanding of how to lay out/pace/build a match to be going 30 minutes. The promotion's over-reliance on Bullet Club/whatever heel faction interference is a crutch to compensate for their heel workers not being able to make matches exciting without cheap tactics. Jay White' trash talk is also WWE-levels of bad. Actual hard-hitting heavyweight style wrestling in Japan has been dead for a while now.

I like that they've already had Reed beat Knight, too many ex-TNA chodes already on this show. Can we swap out Kross for Lorcan at TakeOver? Please?

As a Brit, finishing a show by 1:30 was a blessing. I actually stayed up to watch for the first time in years. The womens tag was TV-level with an absurdly dumb finish. Is Sasha supposed to believe Jax wasn't about to break up the submission? Everything about this program is so hokey and cliche. Feuding tag team partners leading to a title match jumped the shark years ago. I actually missed the finish to Big E vs Crews. Glad they are getting a WM Match seemingly to blow this off, though this innings was clearly a letdown. The Nigerian accent is another one for the 'thats so hokey' list. Braun vs Elias - woof. How many times have these guys matched up? Even the squash matches are stale as hell. Rollins vs Nakamura got decent by the end, but if I never watch a Rollins match with him talking his way through things it'll be too soon. WWE trash talk is the dirt worst. Drew vs Sheamus was good. I'm not sure it was better than their first RAW match, all of their bouts have been fun but none have blown me away bell-to-bell. Sheamus continues his awesome gatekeeper run and carried Drew to a really stiff, hard-hitting match. All of the prop stuff felt cliche and rote, and the electrical equipment bump never looks good, but everything with them just tarring each other was good shit. Bliss vs Orton... tremendous stuff. Here's a zombie rising from the dead - up next another wrestling match! Amazing to see Orton on the Stone Cold show next talking about he's at the best he's ever been in his career and this is what he's doing. Main event was really great, even with the Edge screwery. We all knew there was going to be over-booking guff and it was predictable how it went, but I thought it was reasonably well executed (minus Edge selling a chairshot to the arm like it KO'd him) and I can buy Edge as a whiny bitch throwing a temper tantrum over Bryan stealing his spotlight. Glad they've gone with the triple threat, even if this build is SHOCKINGLY similar to Orton and Batista fueding with Bryan getting inserted into it. The match itself I thought was awesome. Really great technician vs powerhouse stuff early, Reigns's stuff all looked really hurty and he put in his best shift since returning last year, and even with the predictable finish they put together some tremendous nearfalls and sequences in the close. Even if Bryan is the in the 'twilight' of his career, he's still arguably the best wrestler in the world.

The fact it was Will Ospreay of all people doing a girlfriend abuse angle is particularly gross and tone deaf (not that they probably care much what the Western fanbase thinks). But it's New Japan so they get a pass because multiple finisher reversals~!

^^^^ I wasn't too hot on the new Gojira when it first dropped, but it's definitely a grower. The heavy section towards the end slams hard 2021 METAL New Enforced album is full throttle, no bullshit, blisteringly fast hardcore/thrash to bang ya fucking nut to

Holy fuck that main event was awesome. Hats off to both women, they both brought it, bled a bunch and ate a tonne of punishment. The powerbomb on the tacks maybe should have finished it, but honestly I was shocked to see Britt Baker of all people take a tacks bump and bleed a gusher on TV. Hands down the best AEW womens match ever, really satisfying grudge match that delivered among all the forgettable vanilla workrate stuff. If they don't give Britt the belt they are dropping the ball. Enjoyed most of the rest of the episode. The Pinnacle is a crap name but I thought this serious MJF promo was the best he's done in a long time. Moxley/Kingston vs Good Bros was good and I really hope they give us Kingston vs Omega before Christian gets his shot. That finish made me think they are having Kingston sit out for a while with the injury. Cody vs Penta was mediocre, what a shock. Bear Country are a team I'd like to see more of. Darby is probably the only guy I'd be interested in seeing Archer against at this point so I'm down with that as a feud. Cage potentially going face away from Team Taz is interesting, hopefully it leads to more focus on Starks though. All the 'you weren't as good as you were in New Japan' stuff is so wanky to me. I know these guys love that shit in real life but it just makes the whole promotion feel second rate when you're constantly masturbating over a promotion they all used to work for years ago half way round the other side of the world.

I knew not to get my expectations up for Reigns vs Bryan, and looks like they will indeed by ruining it with some lame special enforcer horseshit

Pentagon has been mediocre for literally years. Once he realised he could phone it in by spending 90% of his matches posing and doing a hundred CERO MEIDOS and get away with it he hasn't looked back. That said, atleast a feud with Cody is something fresh which he desperately needs.

I thought this was a really strong reset episode. Nothing particularly stand-out in the ring but I enjoyed almost all the storyline developments. Having the 2 best talkers in the company promo on the PPV finish was as good of a recovery as they could have done. Acknowledge it, poke fun at it, move on. I am down for Omega vs Christian and vs Kingston in the foreseeable future. The only Good Brothers match I could possibly be interested in is a 6-man against Mox/Kingston/Christian. I think they should have had Christian talk though, he is a strong promo guy and this is his second appearance. I agree with whoever said the bait and switch interview segments are becoming a meme for this promotion, they need to stop doing that. Sting vs Archer or Darby vs Archer is fine with me. Doesn't set my world on fire but it's fine use of Archer in the short-term. Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky are both completely unimpressive wrestlers and need to be shuffled down to Dark as soon as possible. Both had a big opportunity to shine and were 'fine' at best. There's guys with much more upside in AEW they should give that airtime to. Page-Dark Order bit killed me and I'm down to see a Big Money Matt vs Dark Order faction battle in the short-term before moving both sides along. Main event segment was pretty good. Spears as a fall guy in tags is a decent shout out for his inclusion, but otherwise yeah he stands out in a bad way here. Interested to see what the Inner Circle do as a babyface unit and also glad they didn't go down the predictable 'New Four Horsemen' route for MJF's new faction. Penta vs Cody is a match I have no interest in, but it is atleast something fresh so I'll even take that as a positive. Are they going to run the SCU tag title shot at the next PPV? I could see the titles vs careers stip adding enough stakes to make it worthy of being on that show.

OK first of all I loved Bryce Remsburg in the bombsuit. I also rewatched the Funk vs Onita match recently and glad to see they mimicked the absurd referee costume. I enjoyed the match mostly, it gave you what you wanted from this - suspense, drama, bloody, grotesque violence. But good grief these Bullet Club finishes are the absolute dogshit worst. This was your big main event title picture career-ending blow-off match and THAT's the finish? Imagine HHH vs Foley ending with Road Dogg and Mr Ass doing a run-in. I liked Kingston going babyface and cosplaying the Onita/Funk finish, but those childrens fireworks going off was pretty embarrassing

- Vince could never lock Shaq down for a Wrestlemania match, but Tony Khan can get him to commit to a TV match. HMMMMM. Seeing Shaq in the ring was fun and him going through a table a was amusing, but that was a bad match. Cargill needs a lot of work. Velvet is a scrub herself, they really needed a more experienced person in their to carry a green athlete through things - Last week had a bunch of fun squashes. The Fenix/PAC squash was short but they missed almost every kick visibly. Poor. - JJ Dillon was a nice surprise. Nothing warmed by heart more than Tully doing the slingshot suplex on Marko and then pinning Luchasaurus (who once again looked terrible all match). No real interest in Spears with FTR but let's see where they go with this. - "No more BS" seems like an unnecessary shot from a guy who the WWE gave so much to. One legend who has just been signed announcing they have just signed another legend is a questionable move. I am calling RVD as the surprise - Having Starks getting chumped by Sting the show before the PPV was also questionable, especially as I'm calling that as the finish of the match - Closing the go-home show with a segment pushing a tag team battle royale - also questionable

Moxley is the best squash match worker on the roster, though there were a few good ones on this show. Another great promo too, even if it is obviously setting up him losing and going away on leave for a while Team Taz vs Blondes was good fun and I thought the younguns in particular looked good. I've been critical of how long they've dragged this Sting/Darby fued out but I did really enjoy this segment and thought it was easily the best segment with Sting since his debut. My favourite Fenix matches are him vs big men so I enjoyed the main event. Archer isn't half as good as Mesias or PARK and he fucked up a couple spots but Fenix looked good. Fenix has put in the work so far in 2021 and deserves more than just a random ladder spotfest for the PPV, but I am over Archer right now. I would have been happy to with him being a token title defence for Omega on TV and moving back down the card, but he's not a guy I want to see on TV every 1-2 weeks.

It was nice of Wilde and Mendoza to carry Kross and Escobar's match for them Finn vs Cole sounds like a surefire way to undo all the goodwill I have towards Balor after those Kyle and Dunne matches