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Wrestlemania XXXI - The Greatest Show Ever


Big Fresh

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Putting LT in the top 15 of athletes for the last 40 years? Dude be trolling.

We can nitpick over who outranks who or just concede that he's at least in the conversation. And he is. Dude was a freak.

 

Fuck why is this still a thing?  Josh is one of the few people with any goddamn sense here.  Also, I didn't way he was one of the TOP athletes, I said he was one of the most well known.  No, he wasn't Bo Jackson, Joe Montana or Larry Bird, but everyone knew who the hell he was.  This discussion is making me hate the show by proxy.

 

It's still a thing because your claim is ridiculous, and you won't back down.

 

I was 21 when Wrestlemania XI happened, and I had never heard of Lawrence Taylor before the Royal Rumble. Nobody in my circle of friends had. I'm sure he was well-known to football fans, but he had zero name recognition outside of that fandom. Zero.

 

Contrast with Ronda Rousey, whom I've at least heard of, despite having no interest in MMA.

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LT was considered one of the greatest defensive players in NFL History and played in New York. Its not like he was one of the random guys in the Mania 2 battle royale.

Had they existed, id presume his Q rating in 199x was higher than ronda's in 2015.

But both were designed to get water cooler talk and both did.

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If Lawrence Taylor had walked down my high street in 1995, nobody would have recognized him. If Tom Brady did tomorrow, like as not nobody would recognise him (it depends who was on the street at that time of the day, like. I would, but not many people round here watch American football). If Ronda Rousey did, people would know her.

 

Then again, if Gary Lineker did, everyone would know him, and nobody in America would. Would Americans recognise Maradona? Some people in my town still talk about the time David Beckham might have stopped at the traffic lights outside Somerfield fifteen-odd years ago. And it wasn't even definitely him. 

 

Did any backstage photographers think to get a photo with Piper and Rousey together? Someone should have. Especially if RoadDogg and R-Truth were trying to get into the frame without anyone noticing.

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Putting LT in the top 15 of athletes for the last 40 years? Dude be trolling.

We can nitpick over who outranks who or just concede that he's at least in the conversation. And he is. Dude was a freak.

 

Fuck why is this still a thing?  Josh is one of the few people with any goddamn sense here.  Also, I didn't way he was one of the TOP athletes, I said he was one of the most well known.  No, he wasn't Bo Jackson, Joe Montana or Larry Bird, but everyone knew who the hell he was.  This discussion is making me hate the show by proxy.

 

It's still a thing because your claim is ridiculous, and you won't back down.

 

I was 21 when Wrestlemania XI happened, and I had never heard of Lawrence Taylor before the Royal Rumble. Nobody in my circle of friends had. I'm sure he was well-known to football fans, but he had zero name recognition outside of that fandom. Zero.

 

Contrast with Ronda Rousey, whom I've at least heard of, despite having no interest in MMA.

 

Personal anecdotes are not a good way to win an argument.  My dad doesn't know who LeBron James is but he can tell you who Gangrel is.

 

Lawrence Taylor is one of the most important players of the Superbowl era in the by-far biggest sports league in North America.  You not having heard of him doesn't mean anything.

 

EDIT: But if we're going to be throwing out analogies, I watched Wrestlemania with a friend of mine.  We've watched close to if not outright every PPV and RAW since late 2009.  He didn't know who Ronda Rousey was.

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I'm amazed that WWE has pulled the wool over people's eyes yet again. Reigns has awesome matches with Bryan (which was 90% Bryan beating the shit out of him) and Lesnar (which was 90% Lesnar beating the shit out of him) and we're back to proclaiming him a superworker? Have you all learned nothing?

 

Yes.  That pissing all over something for the sake of doing so tends to ruin the experience.  Not to mention your carpeting.

 

It's entertainment, not public policy. No one suffers from enjoying a wrestling show on face value.

 

 

I don't do anything just for the sake of doing it. I'm just offering my take. I'm clearly in the minority this time around, which is fine. These things go in cycles. And I would think that if you care enough about wrestling to post on a message board dedicated it, you would want to engage in some degree of analysis.

 

 

Why should I bother?  Every time someone objectively mentions that Reigns is improving or has shown a new wrinkle in his offense, some of our fellow posters behave as if we spit in their food.

 

You also are assuming that we've been hoodwinked.  Why call us stupid? All because we enjoyed the show? No one is comparing Reigns to vintage Flair.  But we can acknowledge what he brought to the table last night.  It's possible to do that objectively, even if Reigns isn't your ideal franchise player.

 

If you didn't like the show or thought something could have been presented better, that's fine.  But the majority us of liking the show is OK, too. 

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Taker/Shawn hiac is still my favorite match ever and that's got an actual shitty finish.

 

I don't know.  The match was telling a story of Michaels surviving Taker's onslaught and I think pairing it with the Taker/Kane/Bearer storyline at the time fit nicely with a sports entertainment style finish. Looking at it now, it's just "Oh, it's just Kane" but back then it was his debut.  They had built him up for so long, it felt like a bigger deal.  Plus, it emphasize that Michaels only made it out with the title due to divine intervention.

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That match is the most divisive in DVDVR history I think.

 

Which is odd, because it's just kinda there.  Not really good, but not really bad.  Goes too long.  Better than their rematch, iirc.

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Taker/Shawn hiac is still my favorite match ever and that's got an actual shitty finish.

 

I don't know.  The match was telling a story of Michaels surviving Taker's onslaught and I think pairing it with the Taker/Kane/Bearer storyline at the time fit nicely with a sports entertainment style finish. Looking at it now, it's just "Oh, it's just Kane" but back then it was his debut.  They had built him up for so long, it felt like a bigger deal.  Plus, it emphasize that Michaels only made it out with the title due to divine intervention.

 

 

I think it works, but it's a shitty finish in a vacuum.  And it's a similar "booked in a corner" situation.  They always wanted to keep Taker strong, but HBK was about to challenge Hart the next month so he couldn't job, plus Taker had the other feud with Paul going on in the background that needed addressed.  It was a knot cutting finish, but it's a shitty one at the same time.  But who cares when the 25 minutes before it are that fucking good?

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This was my first ever PPV watched on THE NETWORK.

 

I was in awe throughout the entire Brock/Roman match. I thought it was pretty much perfect and I have no complaints.

 

The Sting/Triple H match was total shit in every way (booking, work, everything) and I was majorly disappointed because I was one of the ones who thought it would actually be pretty good. Well, actually the nWo bumping was good.

 

Tag title match, Cena/Rusev, and ladder match were very good (Cena/Rusev should have been longer, though). Everything else was serviceable to decent in general, but Undertaker/Wyatt was as disappointing as I expected, sadly. I actually started calling the spots multiple spots ahead before they did them because it was so paint-by-numbers. Rock/Rousey/Steph/Hunter segment went on far too long.

 

Brock/Roman makes up for any bad stuff with brilliant work and great booking (and clever for them to dispatch Ambrose earlier in the night and avoid the plot hole of him not stopping the Rollins cash-in).

 

EDIT: Did Jey Uso get hurt for real during the tag title match? It would be weird to remove him so early if not. It sucks for him to get so little time regardless.

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What again was the point of Taker beating Bray?

 

I mean a part timer winning a match to go a meaningless 22-1 at Wrestlemania (despite Cole's doofus effort to make it seem like a bigger deal) instead of actually giving the rub to a guy who is an every day performer and could seriously use it at this point? Seriously? Seriously? And add in the commentators touting this as "The Dead Man is back!" as the cherry on top of the shit sundae considering the statement was so blatantly false. As usual Taker will fade away until next Wrestlemania season where the speculation will start up again as to whether he's still physically capable of going one more time.

 

I come back to give crusty ass Vince and his brain cell deficient creative team another chance and this is the type of shit I get. That and the bullshit finish of the main event, the way chessy ass HHH entrance which made me laugh my ass off more than I'm sure WWE was wanting and that clusterfuck that was HHH/Sting/NWO/DX.

 

Blah...just blah.

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Bray beating Undertaker, to me at least, implies Bray is on Brock's level, considering Brock's victory was only a year ago. Wyatt isn't what WWE considers a main eventer currently (despite him main eventing several PPVs, I know) and they likely have no plans to use him as such for the time being, so I was fine with Undertaker winning. I'm not sure what the point of the match (or Ambrose jobbing repeatedly to Wyatt to build for the match) was if Undertaker was going to win so decisively, though. I guess they just figured people really wanted to see Undertaker again.

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It's amazing to me that people are outraged that Cena, their top guy who works house shows and publicity and is on every RAW and every PPV, won his match against a newer guy but are fine with Undertaker, a guy who wrestles once a year and whose mystique is now gone, winning his match despite the fact that the story that he is unbeatable is now finished and, as a result, now beating or not beating him is a barometer as to whether someone is worth a damn or not.  Imagine a long-standing record getting broken at the Olympics, and then four years later everyone's really talking up some hotshot who could break it again and then not only does he not break it but he fails to break the previous record as well.  Imagine how profoundly the public would forget about that person?

 

I don't care for Bray Wyatt at all, but if there is a bullshit finish at the "greatest wrestling show of all time," and there were many, it was Taker/Bray.

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I don't care for Bray Wyatt at all, but if there is a bullshit finish at the "greatest wrestling show of all time," and there were many, it was Taker/Bray.

 

Let's not cry crocodile tears over Wyatt.  He's been on the treadmill to nowhere since last year's Mania and was only pushed hard recently just so he could do the job here.  You don't beat Taker two years in a row if you need him to draw next year.

 

What were the other "bullshit finishes?"  HHH/Sting was a fun, goofy match between two part-timers and, IMO, who won the match didn't much matter.  The finish was secondary to the extracurriculars, which were fun.

 

The American superhero beating the evil Russian on the year's biggest show is a perfectly acceptable finish.  Heel runs into his manager and then gets beat is a straight-out-of-the-80s finish and fit well with the old time cartoony characters in the match. 

 

Sorry, I just don't see all these bullshit finishes but your opinion is your own.

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What crocodile tears? I said, in the part you quoted, that I don't care about him. But while you may need Undertaker to draw next year, you need Wyatt to draw every night.

HHH, Cena, Big Show, Taker, and then a MitB main event were all bullshit. I don't care about any of them for a number of reasons, but it makes no sense for those matches to end that way.

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You don't need Wyatt to draw every night.  Did pushed Wyatt sell one ticket?  He's a midcarder.  They're trying to sell 90,000 tickets a year from now and some guy vs Undertaker who has lost 2 in a row just doesn't have that special ring to it.  Again, they only built him up to do this one job.

 

Do you job Cena to Rusev?  Where does Rusev go from there?  Heel vs Heel program with Rollins?  Do you push Cena, your biggest draw and merch seller, further down the card? 

 

Big Show won a jobber battle royal.  Nobody in their right mind should get worked up about that.

 

Whether the main event was booked well is a matter of opinion.  No way should Reigns have won, so at least they did that right.  I would have rather seen Brock win clean, myself, but I did enjoy the cash-in.  My only problem with it is this: the idea was that they were apparently raising the IC and US titles so Cena & Bryan could fill in as headline champs in Lesnar's absence.  Now what?

 

Anyway, we'll just disagree here, but I can't see how these finishes were so horrible.  "Guys I don't like won" =/= bad booking.  All your arguments come off like the CM Punk "they're bringing in part timers to beat the boys who bust their asses year round" complaint. 

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Judging from Raw Lesnar was the only person elevated at Mania. Rollins is a lame duck champ with a terrible supporting cast, Reigns was back to the same crap that didn't work before, and Rusev came off like a Wade Barrett level midcarder. Yeah that was some great booking at Mania lol.

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Judging from Raw Lesnar was the only person elevated at Mania. Rollins is a lame duck champ with a terrible supporting cast, Reigns was back to the same crap that didn't work before, and Rusev came off like a Wade Barrett level midcarder. Yeah that was some great booking at Mania lol.

 

That's more indicative of Raw's poor booking of the last hour than Mania's. Raw was a good show for 120 or so minutes before they were to the overly tired well.

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I had no idea who Kid Ink was. I knew Skylar Grey from the Eminem/Dre song from a few years ago. Barker, of course, I knew from Blink and I was a fan of his work with DJ AM.

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Big Show won a jobber battle royal. Nobody in their right mind should get worked up about that.

They're "jobbers" because the booking treats them that way. Mizdow is getting great reactions and deserved better.

And that Sting-HHH finish was shit. It absolutely detracted from the fun of the match. HHH went over in a way that didn't set up a rematch and leaves Sting dead in the water. And they did the handshake deal when HHH is booked as a conniving asshole and won by being a conniving asshole. Why would Sting shake his hand after being another victim of Authority bullshit? I don't even dislike HHH, but fuck that finish.

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