I've seen a lot of people criticizing this Wrestlemania, and I think it's terribly unfair. I think this one was far superior to last years, and maybe even WM 23. It wasn't as good as WM 21 or 22, but still wasn't bad.
1) Dark Match - Colons vs. Miz/Morrison: The move to make this a dark match says one of two things to me. Either the match went REALLY bad in practice, or the WWE just wanted to make time for other things. If the match was bad, then I'm glad they moved it to dark match. If it was to make time for other things, I'll address that in a moment.
2) MITB - I was VERY impressed with this match. There was a trace of logic to the match, a ton of high spots, and a great crowd-popping match. It's a shame that Punk won, because the fans in attendance were DESPERATE for MVP or Christian to win, and it would have blown the roof off the building for one of them to win. Anyways, when ranked with other MITB matches, I'd say this was second only to the one from WM 21. Highly enjoyable bout. And Shelton Benjamin is basically a god when it comes to MITB.
3) Kid Rock - This....was just atrocious. Fans didn't care, most viewers probably didn't care, no one has figured out why he's actually there, and was a poor transition to...anything really. I would much rather have seen either the Divas introduced (it would have been nice for some old ones to be recognized), of the tag team bout here. This segment was just terrible, and I hope it's edited out on the DVD. It won't be, but I'll be skipping it. Terrible.
4) Diva Battle Royal - Meh, it was what you'd expect. Santino winning, and then dancing afterwards was somewhat amusing, the match wasn't terrible, it was good seeing some older Divas in there...but it was still a Battle Royal, and a Diva Battle Royal at that.
5) Jericho vs. Legends/Rourke - I, for one, LOVED this whole segment. I would rather have had Snuka and Piper not even been in the bout, as Steamboat completely stole the spotlight here, but it was still fine. Made Steamboat's possibility of victory believable. Anyways, Jericho and Steamboat put on a HELL of a performance, and was some very good wrestling. I was very very impressed with this. And then, when the match was over, the Mickey Rourke thing was interesting to watch as well, and fun to watch. I know some people like to crap over Rourke being there, and how long it took him to get in the ring, and how Austin should have made an appearance, but if you quit over-analyzing the segment, it was pretty interesting.
6) Hardy vs. Hardy - I was disappointed with this match, even though it exceeded my expectations. Allow me to explain.
I didn't expect much in the way of quality in this match, but I feel like the first few minutes were pretty good. There was some solid storytelling in the match, a couple of memorable spots, but all believable. However, after the first half of the match, the Hardys just degenerated into a mindless and messy spotfest of a match. It was "spot", "lay around" and "spot" again. I HATED the last half of the match, even more because I thought they were doing pretty good to start the match. They sucked the energy out of the crowd, because while the crowd popped big for the major spots, they had NOTHING to keep them interested in between spot. The Hardy's didn't do a good job working the crowd, just popping them with mindless spots. Thus, I was disappointed, even though the match exceeded my expectations.
7) JBL vs. Mysterio - When Mysterio came out, you could literally HEAR JR, Cole and Lawler trying to figure out if this was a joke. That's how silly Mysterio's attire was. Like, it was awful. Who ever thought of that, and put it on Mysterio deserves to be fired. The announcers didn't even say anything for several minutes because they didn't know how they were supposed to react to something so ridiculous.
As far as the match goes, this may have been another case of two guys not working well together, and not wanting to have a bad match on 'Mania. But, it was pretty fun and exciting for the few minutes it happened. And JBL quitting was...well, I don't know.
8) Undertaker vs. HBK - This was a very good match. Highly enjoyable, perhaps overplayed the "kick out of finishers" thing, but still very good. But, I've seen several people say that it was the greatest match of all-time, or greatest 'Mania match ever...or whatever. It wasn't. The biggest problem I had with the match is that it never had a good flow. The action was jerky, start and stop, the entire way through. I'm not asking for the guys to go 100 MPH, but at least maintain constant contact with each other, with one guy doing damage to another. But, that's not what they did. They did the "couple moves and lay around for 5 minutes" thing. And that detracts from the quality of the match. It was "move, lay, lay, move, lay". There are better ways to convey that guys are "hurting" than that.
Don't get me wrong, this was clearly the best match of the night, and was very good, borderline great. But, it just wasn't elite.
9) Edge vs. Big Show vs. Cena - This match should have been the main-event, for three reasons. 1) It was the more interesting of the two title matches, 2) It was actually ABOUT the title, not a personal feud, and 3) It suffered from the euphoric letdown from the HBK vs. Taker match.
This match was very solid, about as good of a Triple Threat match as you could reasonably expect, especially given the differing styles of the performers. You could tell the live crowd was very entertained by the match, because they tried so hard to get into it, but they were just emotionally drained from the Taker/HBK match. But, when Cena won the title, they popped huge, showing their appreciation for the match and the winner. Good solid match, and should have been the main-event.
10) Hall of Fame - It's nice that they always recognize those in the Hall of Fame for the year. But the Austin thing? It was terrible. I hope to God that Austin never shows up on WWE TV again, otherwise what we watched last night was just a terrible waste of time, doing the same thing he's done for over 10 years now. If it was his farewell address, then fine. I can take that, one last show for the road. But, if it wasn't, then it was a waste of time.
11) HHH vs. Orton - Then again, if I had known how awful this match was going to be, I'd ask that Austin stay out in the ring for another 15 minutes. Never in my life, would I have expected this match to be this bad. I'm not even a big fan of HHH, and have long criticized his ability to work a match, but this match even surprised me with how bad it was. There was no build to the match, they didn't have the crowd into the match, and the ending was so anti-climatic, you would think that it was the third match of the night and the heel won. What a terribly booked match, and a complete waste of time. It never should have main-evented to begin with, and with the performance they put on, it shouldn't have even been close to the last match of the night.
I was SO terribly disappointed with this match, and it just kind of leaves a bad taste in the mouth of what was otherwise a very enjoyable 'Mania.
If I was rating this 'Mania out of 100, I'd probably give it a 78 out of 100. If the main-event had actually been about a World title, AND hadn't been a completely terrible match, it probably would have been bumped up to the low 90s. But the main-event and Kid Rock just took SOOO much from this show.
Anyways, I'll be buying this on Blu-Ray, but when I re-watch it, I can tell you that I'll be skipping Kid Rock and won't bother with the main-event. Everything else, I'll watch.
