STEEMPOP // The Granddaddy of Them All (and of Questionable Booking)

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Fourteen years has been the count since I last watched a WrestleMania live. With the full-throated victory of the Monday Night Wars by the WWE and the dissolution of ECW, my interest overall in wrestling was declining. This was exacerbated mainly by that aftermath, with a WWE that essentially had full control of the U.S. wrestling industry deciding to go more or less on cruise control with no pressing competition. Uninteresting talent (IMO) like Randy Orton and John Cena were getting moved to the top while some of the best-established guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Eddie Guerrero, and so on were retiring, becoming part-time to make the motion pictures, or meeting tragic and saddening ends of their life. As I have noted now in several articles in this space, is that I have had a reinvigoration of my love for professional wrestling in the past year, mostly spurred by more exposure to federations like Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling, but in a begrudging admittance that the WWE has signed and fostered several undeniable talents who have made their way by hook or by crook to the top of a company that always seems to push the wrong people at the wrong times to their top prize. As much as I have fully embraced my lapsed wrestling fanatic, though, this weekends' WrestleMania 34 was a spectacular reminder of what I used to and still do love about wrestling and everything I hate about how the WWE books.

Two of the first two things I noticed about this wrestling extravaganza of a night is how the WWE is both so talent-rich and yet poor at the same time, to the point where they cannot sustain any of their hype and especially not for a seven-hour stretch of a show. The USA Network broadcasted pre-show (well, half-broadcasted) had a slightly energetic Cruiserweight match for the vacated title between Cedric Alexander and Mustafa Ali, the annual Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, and the first ever Women's Division Battle Royal, all of which had somewhat lukewarm crowd response. These should have, in theory, been a great way to showcase the breadth of talent the company has these days, except to someone like me who has been getting reacclimated to wrestling for about a year now, it was just a veritable who's who of "who are half these people" because the vast majority of them barely break onto a Pay-Per-View, while the rest were people that used to be World Title competitors but are now relegated to this because why use the talent when you can spend 20 minutes on the main card following John Cena around in the crowd? (More on that later).

The show proper, though, opened great and with much energy. What would you expect when you put the bulk of your best actual workers at the front of the card so you could fill the back end with stunts and jank? Seth Rollins, The Miz, and Finn Balor all put on a high-energy 3-way match for the Miz's Intercontinental Belt that ended in a great fit of finisher transitions, and a result of Seth Rollins becoming a Grand Slam Champion with his first IC Belt win. Following that was a Smackdown Women's Championship match between Charlotte Flair and Asuka that also featured some excellent back-and-forth action with some really high impact moves and transitions and that ended with a mind-boggling booking decision to have Asuka not only fail to win the title, but to tap out to Charlotte and her modified version of her father's Figure Four Leglock. This is boggling to me because like a certain final match I'll get in a couple of paragraphs, what is the point of this? WWE has spent several months propping up Asuka as this indomitable force that has beat everyone the Women's Division can put in front of her. So now that is all out the window, and with a tap-out nonetheless, and for what? To prop up Charlotte as the be-all-end-all so that it'll be even more impressive at Summerslam or whatever when Ronda Rousey punks her for the title four months into her WWE career? This was the beginning of a pile of poor decisions that took a solid first hour of action and ground it into dust as the night progressed.

Next was a 4-way match for Randy Orton's US Championship that also featured Bobby Roode who I think was featured in the match for one spot of hitting his Glorious DDT, some hot RUSEV DAY!!! action presented by his t-shirt sales and complaints of lack of a push, and the actual victor of the match, Jinder Mahal, because Vince McMahon never saw a period of racial tension in the world he couldn't help but exploit for cheap heat with a stereotype.

Then came probably the most mainstream hyped match of the show and, I will admit, I'll actually give props to Stephanie McMahon and HHH as they resisted their tendencies to make a big show all about them to not only put this high profile debut match of Ronda Rousey in the squared circle relatively early in the card but to also swallow some pretty groveling spots to help sell her as she and Kurt Angle took on the power couple. Rousey's debut was pretty solid, with her showing a good assortment of suplex like throw and (of course) submission holds on her way to making Stephanie tap for the win. Personally, I think she hit all the right notes in this match, as she was all smiles and girlish giddiness on the way to the ring, but as soon as she hit the mat she had a game face on and looked very energetic and intimidating, even threatening to attempt some finishing moves like a Rolling Fireman's Carry and armbars on HHH himself. Some of her suplexes were a little too "I toss you" than an actual move with grace and impact, but that may have been by design to make her look extra vicious, and they were on Stephanie McMahon after all. Kurt Angle, meanwhile, continues to horrify me that I'll have to watch him collapse in a corpsified heap in the middle of the ring.

Afterward, we got the high excitement of a like, eight-minute, three-way tag title match between the Usos, Bludgeon Brothers, and the New Day that I almost just passed over as I was about to figure out how to verbally groan about the highly anticipated return of the Undertaker. Some guys did some moves, I barely remember the New Day in this match honestly, and then the Bludgeons brutalized their way to a title win in like eight minutes because the show was already running long. Hopefully actual exciting Viking-themed wrestling tandem, War Machine, debut soon on WWE TV to take the piss out of these guys but I already know that's just not how this company works.

And then, yes, one of the two significant returns expected of the night, the Phenom, the Undertaker, comes back after weeks of goading by real-life Michelin Man (with truthfully the biggest heart in the world) John Cena and a semi-humorous (and way too long) singing spot by Elias. The Dead Man music hit, everyone went sort of nuts, then they remembered they'd have to watch a 53-year-old man who really hasn't been able to put on much of a good match that Shawn Michaels couldn't drag him to in ten years hit his three spots and take home a win so he could retire without his last match having been to Roman @#$%ing Reigns. Props to Cena for being pretty entertaining in his goading antics and being willing to lay down in five minutes to the Taker in less time than his eternity-spanning introduction took him, but overall this was just another "sure, that happened" moment in a night that mostly aspired to hit that level of memorable as it dragged out for five hours.

The return of Daniel Bryan!! Was pretty good. He teamed up with Shane McMahon because of, of course, to take on perpetual troublemakers Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn and it was alright. Bryan takes a big bump prematch as WWE discovers that apron spots are becoming hip and lays around while Shane takes a beating and to let the crowd stew in anticipation what Bryan's return in-ring will look like if/when he makes his way back in. And it looked fucking phenomenal. He was maybe 20% slower than when he was a full-time worker (which I've been catching up on with much fervor the past year) but he moved sleekly, looked at ease back in the ring, and was generally the underdog that everyone "Yes!"ed to the top of the business several years back. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of big things from a fan-favorite worker the company desperately needs back before they continue to promote more guys with three moves and a t-shirt selling catchphrase.

Alexa Bliss and Nia Jax for the Raw Women's Title happened. I overall didn't hate Bliss' performance, which is the norm it seems, as she hit some solid jumping spots and worked Jax's leg pretty well, but overall this was about Jax beating the crap out of her prissy former friend, and that's how the match went for the most part. It came, it went, it didn't offend.

What happened after that is probably what really broke me on this night, as at this point I was already fading fast, and that was the AJ Styles versus Shinsuke Nakamura match that I was expecting to save this show and be a five-star, "Match of the Year" contender like their Wrestle Kingdom bout, and we instead ended up with a slightly above average affair. First off, the crowd was absolutely dead by this point. Shinsuke got a little bit of a pop when the intros hit, but overall the crowd sat somewhat mutedly as these top-tier talents were on a match pace at least two gears slower than everyone expected. There were some good spots, of course, notably the finish which had an elegant transition of AJ ducking Shinsuke's Shining Wizard variant and rolling him up and over into a Styles Clash. It would have been the kind of move that would have taken a hot crowd over the moon, but the crowd was barely at a simmer by this point, dragged down by a bloated card and too many gimmicky events in a row. The upside to this match was a Nakamura heel turn that promises to make this the start of a (hopefully long-running) feud and not an Internet-hype fueled one-and-done match.

And then they quadrupled down on that by having the WWE's version of Game of Thrones' "The Mountain" in Braun Strowman bury the tag champions, The Bar, who are both highly accomplished in both their singles careers and as a top tandem in the industry. It was cute enough because Braun's "mystery partner" ended up being a like, ten year old named Nicolas from the crowd that spent the seven minutes or whatever on the match shaking like adolescent me the first time I tried asking a girl out on a date. It was cute and fun, and very much in the vein of the antics Braun has been pulling all year to assert his dominance in the WWE, and it was also pretty much a slap to the face of the tag division, to what purpose I don't fucking know anymore.

Lastly, mercifully, Roman Reigns got invited to "Suplex City" in a bout with Brock Lesnar that can go fuck itself and is everything I've hated about WWE booking for all of eternity. It was a match designed to do nothing but alienate fans with two big slabs of beef for having three moves each and 10 Milliliters of charisma between them. This embarrassment went on for like ten minutes and featured Brock being a big, bright-red, sweaty and gassed out mess within three of them as his entire contribution was landing like ten suplexes and his finisher a bunch of times to make Reigns seems like some unpinnable upstart before, y'know, he was actually pinned. Meanwhile, Reigns Superman punched and bled a lot.

It was the feces-flavored icing on a five-layer cake where only one of them was delicious double chocolate goodness, and the rest was vanilla as fuck if you were lucky. There were many takeaways for this card that I hopefully have touched on, but the main one is that Lesnar and Reigns should be so far away from the top of this company and yet by hook or by crook they keep getting placed there. I don't care how much Vince likes Reigns' look or how much they feel they need Lesnar around as a "monster" while they build their next Godzilla in Strowman to dethrone him (or Reigns if/when he gets past Brock) but their output is embarrassing. And I don't even hate Roman like most do, despite his inability to find more than a fifth move in a match, at least he takes his beatings and his losses like a good worker, but he can't put on an entertaining match past five minutes to save his career. That he's perpetually put in this Superman roll is damnable, but has also been the M.O. of this company since I stopped being a regular watcher.

I honestly don't know what the point of this show was to wrap this all up. Half the best workers this company had were in the front of the show or buried between gimmick matches. The Undertaker return was the most boring thing this side of the main event which may be the worst main event at a PPV I've seen in my life. Monsters were beaten for no reason or they were made even more monstrous at the expense of pretty much the rest of the roster. Like, what is the endgame with having the last two matches be the up-and-coming monster bury an entire division of the company, and then an aging, half-assed Brock Lesnar walking over one of the few people they've set up as being able to beat Strowman? So when Strowman finally wins the belt he can make the whole federation irrelevant? What is the end game here? I don't even think booking for the company knows nor cares.

And the shame of it all is, is that it simply doesn't have to be this way. The fan responses to half these matches should have spoken volumes. You can tell whom the fans really want at the top, and they're all in the mid-card, or to be quite honest, they're on NXT. This weekend was a deep dive by myself into a lot of wrestling - and my first big exposure to NXT - and, frankly, half the guys on that roster should be headlining WrestleMania before guys like Lesnar and Reigns. Adam Cole, Johnny Gargano, Aleister Black, the newly debuted Ricochet, et al., all put on way more riveting performances than 80% of the main roster this weekend, and that's sometimes including Nakamura and Styles who I may be unfairly scolding here, but that match was such a disappointment considering the body of work we've seen them have before elsewhere, and then on top of the upchuck of disappointment this WrestleMania was. I admittedly haven't put a lot of my newfound pro-wrestling excitement into WWE product since I returned and this card was precisely why. And I don't plan on abandoning it or losing all hope considering the actual good talent they do have and occasionally use, but this show is the epitome of why WWE shows will find themselves on my second and third tiers of priority unless they take a hard look at how they do things and bother to try something, not even revolutionary, but that just makes a lick of sense, and that is obvious the crowds are begging them to produce.

-Humphrey Lee
Twitter: @HumphreyLee

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