Jay White checking his contract to see if there’s a cooling off period. 😂

People are talking about Omos working stiff and injuring Brock? Nah. The only thing Omos did that was remotely reckless looking was that first gutwrench throw. Everything else was clean. I know Lesnar doesn't sell much, but when he does, he's one of the best ever. Not kidding. That match is yet more evidence.

If anyone doesn't know what Strong Style is (aka NJPW style), the answer is Sheamus vs McIntyre vs Gunther. I know people dig that shit, these people would dig a lot of NJPW too.

Edge with the entrance of the decade. The only reason being the music. South of Heaven by Slayer. What a song. The only downside is they cut the song off before it really kicks in. Skipped through the match because I didn't really care but it was a fitting end to the storyline. Edge wins by Conchairto.

Belair beating Asuka surprised me. Really felt like Asuka's time even though I personally felt like Asuka has been kinda lame for a while now.

Shane McMahon ... Snoop Dogg with a better People's Elbow than The Rock. I mean the actual elbow itself, it looked pretty nasty. His punches are almost as bad as Shane's.

Reigns vs Rhodes, wow. What an amazing match. I knew the result but that didn't change how exciting it was. Great work from everyone.

Apr 3, 2023 18:39:42 GMT CM Punk'd said:

If that was Jessica Carr, she'd still be standing after that bump.

I thought the exact same thing Speaking of referees, I loved his reaction to when he heard Solo whip Cody. The replay got a great shot, "Oh I got you now boooyyyy!"

Apr 3, 2023 13:37:26 GMT Blindy said:

Cody somehow ate a super man punch and was able to deliver a perfect clothesline before selling like death. This is 90's wrestling at it's finest.

It was a weak superman punch, didn't knock Cody down, he had just enough energy to hit a lariat.

I've lost a lot of respect for Roman Reigns. He needed his boy Solo to interfere on four separate occasions, as well as The Usos to hit their double team finisher. I'm starting to think Reigns isn't really that good a wrestler.

But the real take home point of Wrestlemania is...

Cody Rhodes WAS NOT READY!!!!!!!

Ya know even though I hate Cody and wanted him to lose simply because it felt like they HAD to do it... the fact that it didn't happen I honestly feel kinda bad.

Me reading the results last night: lol I can't believe they Lugered Cody

Me after being reminded of this...



lol I can totally see why Cody got Lugered

Someone said Vince looks like he’s on Undercover Boss. Lmao!

Wrestlemania 39 Thoughts

Logan Paul gets it. Dude oozes star power. What I don't get is Seth Rollins' gimmick. Best I can tell it's just "guy who wears wacky outfits." Unfortunately weather issues here caused my power to flicker on and off meaning I missed most of this match and the Lana/Dump(?) tag that followed it. 

Based on the small sample size of Royal Rumble & Wrestlemania DominiK Mysterio might just be the best thing going in this company. Dude is a heat magnet who knows his role. His entrance was fantastic. Rey followed it up with an equally cool entrance where he had three themes and was chauffeured by Snoop. Breaking out the big guns for Mania. You love to see it. Then streaming issues hit until finally calming down for the finishing stretch. Would have liked to see Dom go over here, but I get why they had Rey win. Give the fans a feel good moment at 'Mania. Plus it sets up a future match involving Bad Bunny* in Bunny's home territory of Puerto Rico. Now that WWE is back to doing lengthy title reigns again they need to give Dom an HTM style run with the US or IC Title. Would be glorious. Do it!

*Fun Fact: When Bad Bunny was first announced for Wrestlemania a few years back I thought he was the Cash Me Ousside girl 

Charlotte/Ripley started rough before picking up to become a good match. Looks like I'm still a low vote on this one though. Thought it was good, not great. They hit hard, but what really got it in the win column was Charlotte's penchant for landing dangerously on her face. Completely different style, but it reminded me of one of those entertaining Sabu trainwrecks where you can't look away because, let's face it, all tru wrestling fans are ghouls deep down. Also liked Ripley winning with a super version of her normal finisher. Our Olympic Hero would approve. ***ish.

McAfee/Miz didn't work for me at all. I'm even tempted to call it a DUD. Pat Mac came out of nowhere to steal the show for me at last year's Mania. Who knew the retired Colts punter would be such a natural? But his whole schtick seemed forced and even a wee bit cringe this time around. Also hated how they used Miz here. Dude is like an 18 year veteran who has main evented a 'Mania and been a World Champion. So why is he acting like Heenan or Hart being a tricked into a match with Hogan or Warrior? It makes no sense! If anything the part time punter should be leery of the veteran pro wrestler! Yeah, this sucked. I do get a kick out of Michael Cole always marking out for Pat Mac. It's very wholesome. 

Zayn & Owens vs Usos was a mixed bag. I'm likely to be a low vote on this one as well. Saw somebody elsewhere call it "the greatest WWE tag match of all time!" and all I could think was "it would have been the 3rd best tag match on the first Clash." Crowd was hot, it was the right finish, and I liked the strategy both teams employed of taking one wrestler out of the equation while trying to finish off the other. Very 90s All Japan! But I can't imagine even Hogan & Warrior surviving as many finishers as Zayn & Owens did, and the former were basically real life superheroes while the latter are just a pair of regular Joes (Jeans?). Better never see a Young Bucks hater (which is a perfectly valid take btw) call the Usos a great tag team either because I will call you out. Even the Bucks of Youth would have been like "you guys might want to chill with the Superkicks." Seeing the Usos throw 632 Superkicks gave me traumatic flashbacks to the awful Duggan/Bubba feud in 95-96 WCW where all I could think was "be nice if one of these guys finally learned a new move." MAYBE I would rate it higher if I had paid more attention to the "omg best storyline evar"...but probably not. 
===============
4 Team Women's Match was a mindless actionfest and not a particularly good one at that. The anticlimactic finish saw Ronda Rousey slap on an armbar for the win after doing a whole lot of nothing up to that point. Liv Morgan is to the stupid one legged Codebreaker as the Usos are to the Superkick. LEARN A NEW MOVE!  Highlights were Natalya's double Sharpshooter and A Tall Girl no selling a missile dropkick in the style of Minotaur vs. Keith Hart. My biggest pet peeve was the lack of matching outfits. I watch WWE 1-3 times per year and can't be expected to remember who is teaming with who. I don't even know who most of these women are! Get your tag teams in matching gear for us casuals!

*Unfortunately got sidetracked after that. Wanted to watch the Walter GUNTHER 3 Way and Reigns/Cody but it was not to be. Couldn't believe they Lugered Cody until I was reminded of Cody dickishly smashing a HHH throne in AEW. It's all about The Game and how you play it. Still this comes off as a once a decade level booking blunder that people will still be complaining about 20 years from now. We'll see. Actually I probably won't see because I doubt I'll be watching any WWE until next year's Rumble. But you guys will!

Overall Thoughts- What I saw fell well short of what I saw last year. Last year had the super fun impromptu Austin/Owens match and Pat Mac coming out of nowhere to steal the show opposite a game Austin Theory. This year had the Mysterios entrances and....I guess Rhea/Charlotte was alright? And the Night 1 main event tag had its moments?

Baker



It’s DominiK Mysterio, just giving you a heads up so he doesn’t find you in the streets

Apr 6, 2023 3:00:21 GMT System said:

Baker



It’s DominiK Mysterio, just giving you a heads up so he doesn’t find you in the streets

Whew! Thanks for saving my life. I owe you big time. Blaming UT for sending me down the wrong path.

All in all I enjoyed Wrestlemania this year. I loved the throwback to Wrestlemania XXI, I thought the set was great with the movie posters and they really lit the stadium up. I don't think any match was a stone cold classic, but they all delivered and served their point. Strangely, that men's fatal four-way tag was the stand-out match for me. It was just 9 minutes of spot wrestling, but it never dragged, everyone got a big moment and it was really laid out. So often these matches over-stay their welcome or just feel disjointed until the finish, it was refreshing they were able to keep topping themselves.

I can understand where you're coming from with a lot of those matches Baker . I enjoyed them all but like you I didn't have that feeling that I'd just watched a great match. I didn't get that Ronda/Kurt vs. HHH/Steph or Gunther/Ilja feel. That Charlotte/Rhea match in particular stood out to me because of the insane bumps both women took. Rhea with the RVD DDT sell, Charlotte taking German Suplexes like she's working AJPW. I enjoyed all of that and the strikes were pretty snug as well but the pacing was all over the place. I think they went to the well too often with the stunned kick-outs and it just dragged things down. The finish was a little contrived with Charlotte basically going to the top for no reason, just so Rhea could hit her finisher off the top. I still enjoyed the match, but I think that's what stopped me from enjoying it as this all-time Wrestlemania classic.

Outside of the improntu Miz segments which kind of sucked, the only other issue I had was the amount of commercials on the show. I would have appreciated this more live and if I was at the show but watching it through, there were large 15 minute windows of nothing happening. I wouldn't be shocked that of the 8 hours, 1 hour was purely dedicated to ads. I can live with less wrestling and think the entrances and post-match storylines are just as important as the action, but when it's just ads that's too much.

Still, I'd take The Miz bribing kids with Wrestlemania tickets and Otise' exposing Chad Gable as a terrible son over a Saliva performance everyday. With that said, man I'm worried about Big E being unable to pick between the exact same flavour of Snickers. If that isn't CTE, I don't know what is!

Top to bottom, one of the more consistent Manias of all-time. I'd have it in the same wheelhouse as XXVI, not in the Top 5, but floating around.

Baker great points on the Usos vs KOZayn main event. I actually don't mind The Usos superkick spamming. It is undoubtedly excessive but what makes the Young Bucks' superkick spam bad is the insufferable "SUPERKICK PARTY" self awareness. Not the move itself.

For The Usos there's none of that and I do believe they are spamming these kicks to try and win the match because it's easy and effective for them. It gets dull but it's believable.

And yeah KO and Sami kicking out of a million finishers each was too much. The Usos wrestled a perfect tag match like they always do. They only lost because their challengers activated the invincibility cheat code. A line I've used before and will continue to use. At least The Usos also got some of the same treatment. From memory Jey kicked out of a stunner and some other huge moves.

You would really enjoy the IC title three way. A pure clobbering hoss fest.

I didn’t mind the kick outs. In fact.. this is a rare time when I thought they were super effective. The story just said.. Sami and KO aren’t going to be put down easy. They both hate Roman and want to end the Bloodline and with an ally they don’t want to let each other down. I loved the match. Any other setting.. not so much. But I found it believable for some reason.

I’m always of the opinion that you should save all the extra kick out stuff for a big time situation that everyone is invested in. This was certainly that, so it’s forgivable.

What a weekend! I loved the IC title match & the tag title match was a heck of an emotional rollercoaster ride.