Wrestlemania 29: What Was This??

I am a hardcore wrestling fan.

Or at least I was.

Anyway, as you can see, I'm pretty confused. I like the thought of it, but I'm more often disapointed with the reality of it these days than not. And no recent event more emphasizes this than Wrestlemania 29.



This show...

This was supposed to be the biggest show of the year. It's a show that would, more often than not, at least have a few things that would make me stand up and take notice. Wrestlemania had none of these things this year. I left my viewing thinking more about what happened around me than what happened on the show. In fact, I'm a bit worried that I'm not going to remember a thing about it by tomorrow. Because of this, I don't even think I can remember most things about this event, so here are some things that DO stick out in my mind.

So, let's at least start with the positives. There WERE some:

- CM Punk vs the Undertaker was overall a pretty entertaining bout. Both guys seemed to put out a lot of effot to make this a good match, and it showed. Punk is a great heel... I don't think anyone is going to try to contradict that. And having him be with Paul Heyman makes for AWESOME segments, as Heyman is great at showing emotion and lending gravitas to a situation (his facial expressions are phenomenal, especially when he's conveying fear). Undertaker moved around pretty dang well for someone who has been going at it for as long as he has, and I think having him only wrestle once a year was a great move for this stage in his career. It keeps his body fresh, and it makes every segment he's in feel all the more special. Even having Living Colour sing Punk's entrance theme live went relatively well.

- Triple H(HH) vs Brock Lesnar even ended up being surprisingly better than I expected. I am a huge fan of Lesnar's. Combined with my already well-established love of Paul Heyman's work, should be no surprise to anyone. And Triple H, someone whom I normally can't even muster up enough willpower to care about, was pretty good as well. Tonight's Triple H seemed to be more in line with the 2002-2003 Triple H that I was actually quite the fan of. It really looked like he struggled to get the win, and that's really important. Even hooking on the kimora three times not only made sense from a technique vantage point, it also showed a bit of desperation to end the match. A very good match in general, though I'm confused as to why he had that powder on his abdomen during his entrance...

- The final minutes of Rock vs Cena were really good as well. It even seemed as if Cena was about to turn heel on us, with the way he was mocking the Rock's elbow. There was a lot of "I don't give a shit" swagger in his actions, and it made me stand up and notice.


And... here are the parts that, well...:

- The television preshow was absolutely dreadful. Why do they advertise the event starting from 5pm if all they will have on TV is the same promo packages repeating over and over again ad nauseum. ESPECIALLY the dreadfully unfunny Alberto Del Rio "parody" of Zeb Coulter and Jack Swagger. Absolutely horrendous.

Of course you may have noticed I specified TV. The online preshow was a MILLION times better.

Speaking of which:

- Why was an intercontinental title match taking place on a preshow? I don't care if the title has been passed around more times than YOUR MOM... NO championship match should be relegated to a preshow status. If you feel your championship isn't worth anything anymore, then GET RID OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP.

- The Sean Puff Diddy Dirty Daddy Money Combs concert stuck out like a sore thumb. At first, hearing the Rocky music intro being played to an arena with Wrestlemania highlight videos made me think that we were getting a "title match intro theme" and got me pretty excited. You usually only see that in Japanese feds like NJPW, or my favorite example of this, NOAH. But no, it was just the intro to the P Diddy mini concert. Which was so ridiculously inconsequential and irrelevant that I really struggled to find a reason for it to exist other than the fact that he included this year's "Official Wrestlemania Theme Song(R)."

- Just when you think you had a Randy Orton heel turn, you got yet ANOTHER Big Show heel turn. Yawn.

- Finally, besides the Undertaker-Punk and Lesnar-HHH matches, and the last few minutes of Rock vs Cena, the rest of the show just felt EXACTLY like watching a normal 3 hour edition of Raw. EXACTLY. LIKE. IT. This is an experience that you are charging people $60 a pop to see on PPV? It's no wonder people are staying away from the PPV model in droves. Now, before you shoot me in the face, I'm sure that Wrestlemania itself will do fine.

I'm really interested in seeing how the next few PPV's buyrates turn out. This show really turned me off moreso than any other show in recent memory, and I can't be the only one.