Sorry, folks, I've watched the ladder match three times now (for some reason) and, on the great pantheon of WrestleMania ladder matches, it is very much bottom rung. Get it? "Bottom rung"? Ladders? Not very good? Yeah, you get it. But no, compare it to Michaels/Ramon from WrestleMania X or TLC II from WrestleMania X7 or any number of better ladder-based spotfests since WrestleMania 21 and it does not come off favourably. I am especially not looking forward to everybody pretending that Dolph Ziggler belongs in the same ring as Daniel Bryan for the next month or so.
Entrance of the night obviously goes to Rusev coming out in a fucking
tank. That was nothing less than incredible. Whereas most of the entrances walked the line between cheesy and spectacular and then fell over into cheesy territory and emerged on the other side with horrible cheese burns - I'm looking at Bray Wyatt and Triple H in particular - that entrance was perfect for Rusev. Rocky IV is one of my favourite movies and the only thing that could make this a more fitting tribute is if Cena delivers Rocky's "Everybody can change" speech after he beats Rusev at Extreme Rules. I'd go so far as to employ actors - or NXT talent if you don't want to spend too much money - to pose as members of Putin's cabinet to stand up and applaud Cena for never giving up.
Match of the night probably
was the Rusev match or, if unpredictability's more your thing, the main event. I was on the edge of my seat (well, bed) for basically the entire final match. Kudos to Roman. I mean, literally anyone else could have gone out there and got ragdolled by Lesnar, but anybody else didn't - he did. Looks like he got a few good shots of his own in as well.
If we get my Bryan versus Lesnar match at some point in the coming months...
The musical performance was probably less torturous than the Rock/Triple H/Rousey segment. It was a great segment, only somebody had hit the slow motion button and it took at least three times as long as it should have. Yes, I know they were buying time, but it's almost as if there were two really entertaining matches on the pre-show that could have been on the main card instead.
I was fucking infuriated about Sting and Triple H. The overbooking was fine, by why in the seven fucking hells do you FINALLY get Sting after 14 years, only to marginalize him, and then have him LOSE the fucking payoff match? Mind boggling.
Thank you, NorCal. This was a really good WrestleMania - one which I was expecting to be decent at best. But having Sting lose puts a huge black mark on it. It's like they wanted the match to be a microcosm of WCW and brought Vince Russo in to book the last minute of it. We're only fortunate that we didn't have Michael Cole go, "Th-that's not in the script, folks." A swerve for swerve's sake. There is absolutely no reason that Triple H should have won that match. Of all the matches Triple H won but shouldn't have - against Booker T, against CM Punk, against Brock Lesnar - this was truly the king of kings.
By the by, if they were going for the whole "Get anyone of significance out there" thing - and they clearly were - they should have had Flair come out to counteract Michaels. It would have made more sense than the nWo helping Sting, which is like having a gazelle help out a lion.
And Sting should have fucking won.
Good show though. I might even watch Raw for the first time in a year.
