rolling Jericho calls The New Day trap queens 2016

The Rock beat Erick Rowan in record time, now I couldn't feel more stoked for Roman Reigns' big moment you guys.

It looks like Stephanie has been digging through Baron Corbin's closet.

so pleased i stayed up until 5 a.m. for this (assuming that this runs for 40 mins or so). kinda not kidding, it has been peversely enjoyable seeing how badly off the rails this show went after the opener.

man Stephanie McMahon though, i love her quite a lot

yeh i kind of appreciate being able to say that i experienced it, cuz surely no one who wakes tomorrow and checks the results is going to sit through it

"Hope gets pulverized by reality" is going to sum up a lot of people's reactions to this show.

daym that's a lot of booing

idk if i could have booked this show worse if i'd tried.

i'm trying right now, i love fantasy booking, but it's not easy

Holy shit Reigns' punches are so strong, he set off fireworks OUTSIDE the stadium. I am so ready for this superhero to be champion.

dream outcome - seth rollins runs out with a money in the bank briefcase for some reason, referee says "i'm going to allow this!", and so on

I think HHH legit messed up his knee a bit when he almost tripped during his entrance.

Reigns can't even do a crotch chop properly.

rest in peace, roman's balls

shouldn't inverted atomic drops be a dq anyway

^^I've always wondered about that

Yes Michael Cole, how will Reigns possibly recover from getting his face rammed into the table three times.

HHH is well on his way to continuing his streak of underwhelming, plodding WM main events.

keep trying to make sense of the reality WWE inhabits now and i just can't do it. too meta, too many levels and twists and turns. there's a thesis in there somewhere but it's always just sliding out of reach, like trying to focus on a thought on ketamine. that Stephanie intro and all these Raw promos where they acknowledge all the bullshit, it makes my fucking head spin. what the HELL is going on?!

The crowd is completely gone and the pace of this match isn't helping.

xpost

VKM gives no fucks because he sold 85 000 legit tickets to this event despite "acknowledging" the company's problems on TV, "we insulted ourselves and you carny marks still bought tickets to see us!" fuck you that's why.

yeah i get that part. it's more to do with who HHH and Steph are on tv and who they are in real life and how everything in the WWE is 100% about them at all times, whether anyone other than Vince (like idk HHH maybe) has actually made any real effort to get Roman Reigns over at any point during this whole process, what exactly we're working for here, all of it.

my brains have gone. i'm dazed. this show might have broken me. i don't think i've actually watched more than 30 seconds of this match since the bell, i've just been looking at it.

Nakamura chant from the cheap seats there. oh god if only

ah a bit of good old-fashioned violence to women, they'll pop for that

my god

well that was certainly 5 hours of my life, and i won't deny it

Five hours you guys. Not including the preshow!

xpost!

i've never seen a wrestling show like it. extraordinary.

having a literal 'don't know whether to laugh or cry' moment rn

definitely going to tune into raw tomorrow because i figure i have to snap out of this bad trip at some point

whether anyone other than Vince (like idk HHH maybe) has actually made any real effort to get Roman Reigns over at any point during this whole process, what exactly we're working for here, all of it.

It goes deeper than that -- even if Reigns was the most popular guy in the company, who in their right mind would think that a Roman Reigns WM main event should involve Reigns lying on the mat for ten minutes fighting arm submissions from a non-submission specialist? They don't know how to build up the matches properly or book them to play off the strengths of the performers. Why have weeks of crazy brawls on TV every week to build the feud, and then try to put on a technical exhibition in the actual match? It makes no sense.

Had the worst dream last night you guys

Hey guyz im hungover.

Ive watched some of this. I gave up when the rock did a promo cos fuckk off.

I dont know which set of tights zach daddy or hollywood heel ziggler who is also a face. This was fun.

Jericho and aj seemed off, with fucking jericho winning. Im unsure why, maybe cos aj is an over face and it could make roman sad?

Lesnar v. Dean was THE FUCKINH DRIZZLING SHITS.

3way was fun, love that crew.

New day v. League of boring v. Olds was won by olds? Well done guys wouldnt wanna build up yr 3 hot guys against olds at wm again, look at how bad things have been for roman since he beat the new age outlaws at wm30.

Hitc was shameful.

Corbin!

Going back to bed

so to recap

OVER

Triple H
Roman Reigns
The Rock
John Cena
The Undertaker
Shane McMahon
Brock Lesnar
Chris Jericho
Stone Cold
Shawn Michaels
Mick Foley

UNDER

Dean Ambrose
The New Day
The League of Nations
AJ Styles
The Wyatt Family

I mean that is most of the roster that'll have to carry the company this year ffs

ignoring the women's match, the IC title match and the battle royal cause they were all good and did the job they were supposed to.

they should start running the women as the main event. not kidding.

My SO and I are in agreement that Vince went to Brock and Ambrose and asked them to tone things down so as not to overshadow his boy Shane in the cage. And then Shane and Taker went out there and dropped the ball.

Also, I said this on Twitter last night and I still mean it: if we pretend the Women's Title match was the main event and everything that came after was a bad dream, this was a decent WrestleMania.

I was wondering the same thing when the matches were announced -- why book two monster vs inspirational underdog carnage matches on the same show? Except that Lesnar/Ambrose was supposed to be about hitting each other with weapons, while HIAC was about submissions (LOL) and jumping off tall buildings. Dean Ambrose going after Brock Lensnar with a barbed wire bat shouldn't lessen the spectacle of Shane McMahon jumping onto an airbag with a table covering. The Ambrose match was also built as a one on one fight, whereas HIAC was due for a million run-in since the future of the company was supposed to be at stake. I guess Vince and Steph knew it was in the bag all along.

This really was an all time badly booked and timed show. I guess Starrcade '97 will forever be at the top of that list, but WM 32 has to fall in the top five somewhere.

this was a crudball ppv and I had to stay up til 4 am to get through it

I've just got home from work and put Wrestlemania on and its...it's 4:51 long

Can anyone tell me if this is actually worth watching without spoiling it

Cos I mean if I skip entrances I can watch Nakamura vs Zayn like literally 22 times in that time period and I might well

imho it is not worth watching

watch the ladder match and watch hhh's entrance

you're welcome

done

thanks guys

the women's match was good despite the inexplicable finish. and we get to call it a 'women's' match now so that's a thing

was the crowd really dead or was the stadium just a noise suck again? as shitty and neverending as that was I can't believe a WM crowd would be that little a factor

that was one of the worst parts... the crowd noise should be there all broadcast long, other than boos for roman it wasn't there at all

just dead i think. they were into it right at the start, the pops for Owens and Zayn were huge compared to what came later.

They seemed to lose interest during the Styles / Jericho match, for which I lay the blame almost 100% at Jericho's feet. It was a really bad performance from him all round, his one job ought to have been to make Styles look good (and even with the finish that should've still been totally manageable) but he ate the whole thing up and didn't really give Styles any shine at all.

After that the booking decisions got worse and worse - or rather, they were just relentlessly negative - and every time someone (Brock, the women, Sasha in particular) managed to bring them back into it something fucking stupid would happen on the booking side of things to kill off the enthusiasm. you could feel the crowd deflating as the night went on.

videos been surfacing all day on reddit which would indicate that the producers basically turned the crowd mics off during the main-event to ensure that the boos weren't too deafening on the live feed. farce of a show

none of which is to say that it wasn't also great fun, by the end the whole thing had just become surreal. was quite sure when i woke up this morning that I'd dreamt Rocky whipping off his tracksuit

I have no problem with Charlotte winning btw, the triple threat & Flair angle makes it cool, and Sasha, Becky, Bailey & Asuka are going to need to hold this division up for the next 5 years, so waiting with Charlotte is fine for now.

I'm torn tonight whether to continue on to watch the main event. I never watch Once In A Lifetime or its sequel, I figured it just wasn't worth it. I've got some time free tonight and tomorrow morning, should I? Theres a new season of masterchef that looks funner. Or just rewatching nxt.

i wouldn't recommend it but if you know what's happened already it may make it a bit more bearable, watching it live it was a bizarre and agonising thing to see the bad, inexplicable decisions just keep piling up

I also think its worth having a discussion about wrestlemania 8 and 9.

Wrestlemania 8 was beautiful. It saw so many of the great stars of an era all together on one night. A lot of the old guard was bought back to do it, Savage retired a year before, Piper had retired/went to go make They Live/Hogan was thinking of retiring/Jake put over Taker on his way out (he was going to join the booking team until he got fired for being too high iirc?). So nostalgia and experience was important to putting the new lot over, as it was at WM31 with the Bryan IC guys promo, Taker with Bray, Sting and Triple H, even Brock, Cena and Orton facing younger guys. Who the new guys were is important too, as not many talents pools exist as good as those two (for every Shawn, Bret, Sid, Taker and Owen there is Reigns, Rollins, Rusev, Bray and Ambrose) Not too much though, and experience w. new guard ends up with a really great night of wrestling.

Wrestlemania 9 was a pile of faeces wrapped up in a shitty gimmicked venue as if it was something good. Wear a toga, don't notice that Giant Gonzalez can't walk, has no dick and gives up trying to beat Taker and instead coliforms him like a bitch manager. Bret main evented, Vince had no confidence in him, he got bitched out (i've not seen the main event of last night but i presume Roman must feel a bit like Bret did, even if Roman won the title). Shawn lost by countout (similar to Kevin Owens or AJ or New Day etc. all not winning? Wouldn't wanna put over the hot young thing). Perfect v Luger should have been a dream match, instead was boring as fuck (Brock v. Dean). The Taker gimmick match was a fucking mess.

You've lost a ton of your main event (at wm9 it was to steroids and contract issues; at wm32 its injuries and retirements) and been left with a young group who could be something special. You are Vince McMahon. What do you do? Sort it to try and make them the next stars? No? At least get through to make Raw exciting, make a few of them do ok until the next ppv? No? Bitch them out (especially if you can get hogan/attitude era guys to chump them all) and make everything seem worse than it was a couple days ago? Ding ding ding ding.

It wasn't the end of the world then, and some great talent turned it around. But 1995 still hadn't happened. Who the fuck knows what is coming up, all I know is I just wasted 4 hours of my life. It wasn't because of injuries that WM was shit, and WM9 had a good enough group of wrestlers that it could have been fun too.

idk ive been in the pub again but monday to me is knda the weekend so i got drunk and had half assed thoughts.

ok i tried watching the main event and steph cuts a promo about how all hope is dead and fuck you for wanting to thinking something good will happen

and she runs this business and its been shit last night and for months and even years so yeah hope is dead, im just not gonna watch cya steph

to your point regarding the women's match, i'm not sure there's anyone out there who is really angry about Charlotte retaining as a story that exists in a vacuum - in theory the money with Sasha is all gonna be in the chase, I think there's a good chance they drag this out for a long while yet and really do some cool shit with it.

The problem was that the match didn't exist in a vacuum and coming in the middle of all those crappy negative booking decisions, the show desperately needed a big feel-good pick-me-up babyface victory that Sasha winning would've provided. Might not have been the best thing for the long term story but it sure would've helped with the flow of the show.

This Mania did feel very close to WM 9 in terms of inexplicable booking decisions that were seemingly designed to kill off any crowd enthusiasm. But tbf at Wrestlemania 9 there was at least a concerted effort to push newer guys. I mean it's not like Tatanka was an old hand or anything, he was still a hot new thing himself at that point. Him, HBK, Razor, the Steiners, Doink, even Luger going over Perfect was supposed to be an old star making a new one. Bret and Yoko were good choices for the main event that year I think and both new to the scene themselves. Obviously the fuckery with Hogan left a bad taste but I don't think WM9 comes close to this one for the old >>>>>>> young thing.

I mean it's relatively easy to get it, I suppose. Those nostalgia moments where the old guard shit all over the current guys are what Wrestlemania are all about now, it's clear that Vince believes this is what sells tickets (and maybe he's right? 93,000 tickets is very impressive for such a nothing card, after all.

I'm most amazed / dismayed at the way the current crop of guys has been brainwashed into believing (or at least publically declaring) that this treatment is some kind of great honour for them. Like getting hit with a Stone Cold Stunner or a Mandible Claw before quietly exiting stage left is something you should be grateful for. I don't necessarily agree 100% with the way CM Punk handled his exit from the company and there was a certain amount of crybabying happening there but fair play to the guy for being prepared to speak out regarding the part-timer infestation and say "this is dumb as shit and i won't fucking do it. let triple h find someone else to leech off for his top spot at Mania".

i understand why people might say that Punk was in the wrong to complain about e.g. The Rock main-eventing ahead of him in 2013 because that drew such a huge buy-rate and obviously that's the bottom line that most people are interested in. but this year we're not even talking about putting big-name part-timers into the main matches ahead of guys who are always there (well ok we are, but this is no longer the main problem). the old guys aren't even having matches to help build interest in the show now, they're just showing up post-match to bury the current roster and leave again.

the most disappointing thing about aj losing to jericho is the knowledge that i'm going to have to watch at least one more styles/jericho match

i think the thing that baffles me most about the whole show is actually Shane O'mac.

i mean imagine them plucking some guy from the mid-card to set up a Wrestlemania Hell In A Cell match with Undertaker. imagine they film all sorts of vignettes showing him doing a load of MMA and jiu-jitsu training, giving him plenty of mic time every week in a major storyline with Vince McMahon and Taker.

Imagine on the night this hypothetical mid-carder gets 40 minutes of time on the PPV with a specialised entrance and the most spectacular can't-miss HOLY SHIT moment on the show all nicely rehearsed and prepared for him. he gets in the cell with Taker, goes toe-to-toe trading a bunch of faux-MMA shit with him, kicks out of a bunch of finishers and eventually takes his massive stunt bump. He gets to do the whole "won't stay down, so much heart!" bit, gets the respectful embrace of the Taker and then gets wheeled out on a stretcher to a standing ovation while giving the crowd the thumbs up.

Is there any chance whatsoever that this hypothetical mid-carder wouldn't be a solidly established main-event fixture after all that? And they've just proven how easy it is to do it. So why the fuck don't they give these spots to some of the active roster guys?! idgi idgi idgi, it makes my head hurt