Commissions return again, this one coming from Stuart. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi.
This was an Elimination Chamber match for the vacant World Heavyweight Title, with Shawn Michaels as a special guest referee.
I have gone on record, not only when talking about it originally but in year and decade wrap-up lists, saying that the 2014 Elimination Chamber (Cena vs. Bryan vs. Orton vs. Cesaro vs. Sheamus vs. Christian) is the best of its kind, but it is not the only really great one. I’m also a really big fan of the 2003 (the one where Goldberg nukes everyone) and 2009 (the one with the big Edge swerve, but also the insane Rey Mysterio performance) as all-time level Chambers.
Below that level, there’s the level this match is on, along with something like the 2011 (Punk/Cena final, a few months before that would have been huge), 2017 (the Bray Wyatt one), or the 2019 (Bryan/Kofi final) ones. Not the greatest, certainly ones that suffer from less than perfect line-ups despite the talent and strength of the booking, but that I simply cannot deny. Like those matches, while I have some issues with it, it just kind of works for me, one of those classic WWE productions that makes me go, “yes, this is how the system is supposed to work”.
(Less so in that it ought to be Triple H winning, but in terms of all it advances, what it does for Batista, the use it puts a still all-world Benoit to, etc.)
In short, the correct amount of bullshit.
Benoit and Jericho begin the match before Triple H is third (doesn’t fit in anywhere else here, but great political maneuvering to have HHH last longer than actual babyface challenger Orton and survive more, while also having Benoit and Jericho before him to mask it a little bit), and to the credit of both men, they are once again has never been on behavior as good as he is on when Chris Benoit is in a match. As early WAR or WCW Benoit/Jericho stuff showed, that was never exactly a guarantee, but at this point, it at least guarantees a half-decent effort. Like Triple H often did against Benoit, as also seen in this match, or later like Hunter and Orton against Bryan, there is an implicit pressure that comes from being an established Great Wrestler in the WWE, and again, Jericho is on best behavior, being more aggressive and harder hitting than usual.
After that, as everyone pours in, it is the ideal mix of things.
There is only one GREAT wrestler here, but everyone else is on their very best behavior.
Batista is obviously very good as your psuedo-hot tag power babyface, but Randy Orton in this is much better than I remembered as a mechanical babyface. The microphone work still might not be him at his most comfortable, but in terms of throwing hands and showing some energy, he is genuinely really really good in this, already being the second smoothest/most natural feeling wrestler in the match behind Benoit. Edge, Jericho, and Hunter are all limited, but primarily do things they’re best at. For Edge, that means basically nothing until the special referee gets him out first. For Jericho, it mean mostly being beaten into greater effort than usual. For Hunter, it means power moves against great bumpers and benefitting from the bells and whistles of a more violent environment, just like in his prime. Nobody is asked to do more than they can, at least not obviously so, and as a result, the match benefits in the way big gimmick matches with limited wrestlers ought to, both because of the visual bells and whistles, but also because of a larger vision that brings it all together into a larger package.
Really, what stands out the most about this match, so many years later, is how much it benefits from some blood spilled.
Everyone but Edge (coward, not in this too long) and Batista (correct call not to bleed, time isn’t right yet as a character) gets to run the blade at least a little here, and the two real pros at it in Benoit and Hunter get some real beautiful color. The match benefits from this in all of the ways wrestling often does. With blood on on the canvas, and the wounds of war on nearly everyone in the ring for large chunks of this thing, the match gains a certain feeling. We’re not talking Joe and Necro here, it is probably not a top 25 bloodletting of 2005, but on top of the selling and the certain auditory quality of almost everyone banging off the steel floor, the simple visuals make this feel like a genuine ordeal, and so later attempts at exhaustion selling and announce hyperbole from JR (another great performance in this, walking every imaginable tightrope with zero wavering) feel less like bullshit, a little more warranted, and the entire production goes down so much smoother when you have these clear visible signals that this has been a fight with actual consequences.
The other benefit is the layout and the effective narrative work.
Just about everyone reading this knows that this is all build to Hunter vs. Batista at WrestleMania, and it is incredibly effective at that. Benoit, Jericho, and Orton all absolutely die for Big Dave, with him getting rid of those first two on his own, and theoretical babyface Orton also having to cheat to get rid of him. Triple H, despite the maneuvering of suffering more and lasting longer than Orton, comes out feeling more lucky than like any kind of real winner, being beaten up by everyone but Batista, avoiding saving him from elimination, and then taking advantage of all he does.
Something feels a little strange to me about really liking a match that is, essentially, a great larger product ass WWE production than a display of any one great performance or thing to really point to, but when it comes together right, it comes together right. The match is the beneficiary of a few really good smaller performances, and although not as much of a rarity at the time as I think Ruthless Aggression WWE still had something of the magic touch when they really wanted it, also the beneficiary of exactly the right amount of larger picture work and narrative movement.
Great pro wrestling nonsense.
It doesn’t seem all that exceptional, but truly, a stellar of just how easy this all really can be when kept simple, and when given the best crutch a wrestling match can have (two-thirds of the match bleeding a lot).
It is entirely possible. I love lunch, ater all. I have never run into anybody who liked this match, or even just this match up as much as I do. It isn’t as flashy as Cena’s matches against independent greats or as ambitious as his work against smaller WWE project guys like Edge or Randy Orton, so combined with the two pay-per-view gimmick matches that followed this not being on the level of this or the inaugural SummerSlam 2008 meeting, it often gets forgotten. I’m not really even saying that it’s some top five Cena pairing (might not be top ten), but I’ve always had a real soft spot for this pairing, and especially for this match.
Narratively, I think it’s some of the better hand-in-glove, machine working like it’s supposed to, where the wrestlers and promotion find a wonderful mutually beneficial balance style work of Cena’s career as the Ace, and in Batista’s career period.
After finally collapsing under the weight of trying and failing to be The Man on Smackdown (mostly, save like a year on Raw where he broke Cena’s neck in what was previously their only ever meeting as top stars) for the last half-decade, Batista comes back around to steal the WWE Title from John Cena. What followed over the month between that and this was the greatest character run of Big Dave’s career, with no one ultra-memorable piece, but a ton of great little lines and the super super memorable SPOTLIGHT PLEASE bit. Not only was it super entertaining, Batista finally with something that felt like it genuinely suited him rather than trying to fit into a pre-ordained role, but the contrast provided made for a very very interesting story. In order to get the title back, Cena has something very sorely needed at this point, an entirely new challenge. Not only a guy who’s bigger, stronger, and who both beat and injured him in their only ever meeting, but the only real generation rival left (in the WWE), and a total character contrast in every way.
You don’t just get a chance at this every month, so for once I am not going to hurl the company under the bus (although with better planning and an ounce of care, they could have it far more often than they do), but it’s something close to the ideal situation, as a match that not only feels big in terms of the fight aspect of throwing stars at each other, but interesting from a character perspective too.
It’s, maybe secretly, one of the better WWE Title match builds of the entire decade.
The match itself also rules.
Cena and Batista succeed in large part because they either seem to know their limitations or simply have better judgment than most, both in terms of what’s best for them, but also given their spot on the card as the semi-main event. They are not interested in a whole lot of nearfalls or shortcuts, the drama of the thing is better served with just a few of them, and instead have the sort of match that, when done correctly, always impresses me so much.
Again, it’s that WCW main event style.
Huge momentum swings, what feels like very little wasted time or unnecessary movement, what feel like a constant attempt to be trying to win the match as quickly as possible as you imagine actual fighters might want to do if this shit was real, and above all, a real feeling of importance to everything. They nail every single important bit of a match like this from the obvious basic mechanical execution to the dramatic swings to the basic feeling of a match like this, with significant help from it happening in a gigantic stadium this time.
It’s always a pleasure when a match like this works out, and with these two, it ought not to be a surprise at all.
John Cena has had to — and will have to in the future — play to the egos and ambitions of others in many of his feature matches, but more than anyone to come along this century, he is such a Sting guy. Batista, a little more quietly, has always had the predisposition for this sort of wrestling in him too. The natural impulse is to look at the big Undertaker match from three years earlier, a tremendous display of huge momentum swings and a match where it always felt like every shot was a try at a finish, but there’s a lot more on his resume that fits the bill when you dig into television work against CM Punk or MVP or Finlay. He needs a little help, but as a guy who is all big dramatic swings for way way way beyond the fences, he’s perfect for this.
The match itself is relatively basic, but it all works like it should.
Big Dave overpowers Cena like before, but as a meaner version of himself, also attacks the neck he hurt a year and a half prior. The construction is especially impressive, not only never really letting Cena breathe or have a full comeback, but doing it in such a way that doesn‘t so much feel like they’re prolonging it and trying to subvert expectations, but feels like Batista simply has him figured out. Cena feel under the gun in a way he hasn‘t in a long time, not like the fake Overcoming The Odds stuff you would get against a Big Show or whoever that he was always going to beat, but in a way where the comeback feels like a real achievement.
Add in a few great cut-offs that Batista‘s size makes feel grosser than usual like the FU block into a DDT, along with the expected repeat of the mid-air Batista Bomb counter, all leading into a more final flurry, and they manage to thread they needle, creating a large scale struggle worthy of a huge building, but without the match ever feeling like it’s trying to be a Great Match, as so many others going forward would fail to do.
Dave, in the end, makes the mistake he was always going to make as a wrestler and a character, and most importantly, it‘s also the exact one that John Cena would never make.
He gets a little shaken up when the previous big move fails, tries to repeat the Batista Bomb without any variance in the set up or anything preceding it. In effect, getting lazy and leaning on natural advantages, while John Cena never does. He manages a shocking sunset flip counter to the third Batista Bomb, into the STFU, and while it‘s not the best possible finish to the match (top rope FU probably), it’s still a pretty great thematic end to the struggle when the big man taps out, rather than try to fight anymore. When faced with having to do real hard work, one of them kept going and the other one didn’t. Not everything ought to be so black and white, but in this case, with a hero and villain this great, it feels nearly exactly right.
Cena overcomes a major setback that he couldn‘t in their first meeting, adapts to Batista in a way that Batista failed to adapt to him, and on the biggest show of the year, finds a way to achieve one of the few things he hadn‘t previously, through that wonderful combination of like mostly guts and enough brains to make it work. Ideal babyface stuff on display, showing once again that the simplest concepts not only can still work when done this correctly, but that more often than not, they’re the best concepts around.
Commissions continue, again from Shock, as the snake reverses. You too can be like them and pay me to write about anything you’d like. Most people tend to pay for reviews of wrestling matches, but I am happy to talk about real fights, movie fight scenes, movies in general, make a list, or whatever. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that, just make sure I haven’t already written about it first. The going rate is $5/match, or with regards to other media, $5 for every started thirty minute chunk. If you have a more elaborate thing in mind, hit the DMs, and we can talk about that too.
This is much more like it.
Something you should know is that, at least as it pertains to the upper section of the card, I love 2004-5 Raw.
Call it a guilty pleasure if you would like. You could also call it the tail end of childhood nostalgia, as 2004 was the last year I was really like a WWE Fan proper, before the combination of TNA on free television and starting to regularly download matches from ROH and other indies at the end of the year got rid of that pesky little habit. But all of the different combinations of Evolution tags and matches against a tremendously skilled upper to midcard babyface core (Benoit, Shelton, Jericho and Edge when they were capable of being in good matches, Tajiri) do a lot for me. They’re not always perfect, old man Flair is not the most physically gifted and not every babyface there is great on their own, Shawn Michaels and/or Triple H is often also involved, etc., but any combo of Orton, Batista, and Benoit in a tag in 2004 is a slam dunk, and the brand has an astonishing success rate when attacking the rim here, so to speak.
(does 2004 Raw follow the theme of the year and Go To Work? Some would say yes. There is a man called Big (first name), an undersized all-world talent running the point, part of the team is now a coach for one of the most loathsome outfits in the sport, someone constantly getting in foul trouble, etc. If a basketball cannot hold a grudge, it also probably does not lie.)
I would love to write a bunch of words about the better Evolution tags of 2004, and their many virtues. The way they feel like updated versions of old Horsemen TV tags, the old style structure wholly unique in a WWE environment, the emphasis on hard hitting and violence, the manic finishing runs, all of that. Outside of Bryan vs. The Shield, it’s the best continuous series of matches involving a singular faction in WWE history, and I have a whole lot of time for these matches, and for writing about these matches.
This, however, is not one of the better ones.
Part of that comes down to the line up, as the very best ones tended to have a Benoit/Edge/Jericho babyface core, or the one-off Benoit/Orton/Shelton combo that came after Orton’s turn at the end of the summer. Despite the all-star line up, this makes a few choices that separates it in a more negative way from the better Evolution tags and six-mans that mostly followed.
Specifically, because this is essentially the root of every choice made, there is too much focus here on wrestlers who either totally mail it in or are not very good, and sometimes the two overlap. Almost every other great Evolution tag does not involve Triple H, who is simply not an especially good wrestler on a week to week level. The best Evolution tag work sees Orton and Batista in there for long stretches against Benoit, as he basically spends the year molding them into great wrestlers in a way you may have seen a decade later in the Bryan/Shield series (these have basically the same idea, glue your golden boys to the best wrestler in the company for 6-12 months and force them to get great as quickly as possible). Likewise, there’s a lot too much here of Shawn Michaels and Mick Foley compared to the other two babyfaces, with one (Foley) who would have been out of his element in a match like this even as an active wrestler in his prime and who now is semi-retired and clearly saving himself for the weekend’s pay-per-view, and another (Michaels) who has none of those excuses, but simply turns in an uninspired house show ass performance.
The latter is the one that really hurts, as while Foley is minimized and Hunter only in for bursts, Shawn Michaels is the one who gets the majority of the match’s big moments like the dive into break, the hot tag, and the majority of the finishing run. It’s not surprising, of course it is all about Shawn even when he is like the sixth best wrestler out of eight in the match and the third best on his team, but it’s especially grating when he turns in a dull and passionless performance off the tag and two wildly energetic and/or psychotically intense wrestlers wilt on the apron.
Generally speaking, the match simply lacks the energy of the best Evolution tag work, especially down the stretch, where a lot of things do not go right, and the usually more intricately put together Benoit-led finishing run is instead taken over by a half-speed and quarter-assed Michaels style one instead.
It is not without its virtues though!
The first half in particular is especially good. This is mostly Flair playing the hits against Shawn and then trading leather and some heavy hands (again, Flair never quite gets credit for those great corner punches) with ex-Horseman Benoit. Shelton gets in on the act and the big fella Big Dave has a few really impressive moments. Up until the commercial break, it is a genuinely super fun match. The control work on Benoit and then Shelton is also very good, largely led by Batista and Orton against both guys. The weak spots are there sprinkled in, but most of this is really really good. It’s just that it falls apart in the key moments, and for all of these foundational strengths and great flourishes throughout, it lacks the quality moments in the most memorable parts of the match, and suffers for it in ways other Evolution tags simply do not.
Shawn pins Orton with the kick, whatever.
Real far from the best version of this thing, but a fun enough house show version that just so happened to make it onto television.
Got it as completely right as the WWE could ever get something like this. The Roman Reigns stuff at this point is always going to be incredibly hamfisted and self defeating as a result, but otherwise, nailed it. They got the most out of some very very limited wrestlers and it’s a great example both of groups and matches being stronger than the sums of their parts if handled correctly.
This is not a match on the same level.
There’s a wonderful bit early on, when the crowd has been with them for everything through an opening brawl to exchanges in the ring, and then Triple H and Roman Reigns get in for a Big Staredown. JBL calls them the two studs of the teams, it’s supposed to feel huge, they try and milk the hell out of it…and it’s almost entirely silent. Few things in wrestling are as satisfying as the WWE trying to force a Big Staredown and absolutely nobody caring. On that scale, this is really only second to the famous Cena/Orton one in the 2010 Royal Rumble, or the Nia Jax/Tamina one at whichever Survivor Series. Magnificent stuff and a great description both of the match and all that follows it.
I think the matcch still works, largely through the force of effort of our young heroes, but it’s a much more reserved and drawn out thing. It’s less big, less bombastic, and leans more on Evolution than it probably should. It wants to be everything, trying to balance both the sort of classic Shield style match with also being a WWE Story. Roman gets abused a lot and comes back, big hero bullshit. They occasionally also try to tell a story about Roman being taken out and Seth and Dean overcoming that trope for once, only to then bail at the end and have Roman take two of the three eliminations. One idea is more interesting than the other, but the other isn’t inherently bad or anything either. I would just prefer they picked one or the other.
The match still succeeds despite that, and those sorts of things. Rollins and Ambrose more than do their parts as these twin balls of energy. Reigns’ hot tag work is still exceptional. While the middle dragged, the last quarter or so of this with Evolution being summarily executed one by one is classic Shield, now turned outward in a way that everyone can enjoy. It’s a great piece of booking to have them totally carve up Evolution. Even if two of them went to Roman instead of the ideal version of each man getting one of the falls with their big move, the message is about the same, and it’s a great one. Yesterday don’t mean shit. Triple H gets up and tries to stand on the hammer like he’s going out on his sword, and gets owned, never half as cool or effective as he thinks. It’s not the perfect ending that WrestleMania 30 is, but Hunter and Batista and even Orton could never have showed up again, and it would have felt like a fitting cap on the entire thing.
Of course, none of that happens. Batista has the dignity to leave for five years after this, but not forever. Randy Orton never needed to leave, but winds up drifting along for most of the last seven years since. Triple H not only doesn’t go out like this, but winds up basically just running this program again for years, as if he and his greatest creation weren’t essentially executed here.
Nothing gold ever stays, especially not when a company this stupid and self-sabotaging gets their paws all over it.
It’s the last real Shield match that isn’t embarrassing and desperate nostalgia. Definitely the last great Shield match, even if it’s more on the borderline than most of the great first run Shield matches.
All good things come to an end.
(a *** match)
The 2010s WWE golden age ended at WrestleMania XXX, with the high water mark of that era and the season finale of the company, but this is as clear a demarcation point as there is.
Some of that was unavoidable. Most of it wasn’t. Outside of Bryan’s injury, nobody had their hands forced here. Nobody put a gun to anyone’s head and killed off the Rhodes Brothers push. Nobody forced Cesaro back down the card after a picture perfect elevation. You can argue they needed a new top heel, but it’s not like Randy Orton’s push ever stopped. It’s not like they didn’t have a bunch of options that they simply decided against. A way out of a corner that they put themselves in, and that may not have actually existed to begin with. There was never any good reason to blow this all up. Not really.
It’s been seven years, and it’s never been that good again for such a prolonged period. Not really even close.
It’s a miracle that it ever was to begin with.
The WWE occasionally does a really great job of making stars, individual and collective. The last year and a half saw them do that with The Shield through a patience and attention to detail and an ability to resist an insane old man shouting to blow it up because in his head, nobody has friends and nobody can stand to be around each other for more than a year. This was a group that felt genuine, the sort of team of friends that’s incredibly easy to root for, that would be together for half a decade in another promotion run by people who understand that this stupid shit is supposed to be fun and that few things are as entertaining as friends having a blast together while doing violence. They pulled off the sort of natural heel to face transition that wrestling promotions dream about. The fact that they did it both as a group and that it was done this organically in the modern WWE environment is nothing short of a miracle. It’s incredible that it lasted as long as it did.
It’s especially incredible given that what the WWE does with even more practice and precision is destroying stars.
The next night on Raw, The Shield will break up and of all people, Seth Rollins will be the one to turn heel.
Some people will tell you they ran out of things to do, or whatever else. These people are deranged and will spout whatever the party line is. They’re hot faces, the top face act in the company with Bryan out for a while. Throw heels at them. Make some new heels. They don’t even really need to team, but together, it’s still three pieces of something that works better than anything else in the company. They don’t need to always be in the same match to be together, that’s not how stables have to work. Imagine how much more of a gut punch Seth Rollins’ HEIST OF THE CENTURY could be if it happens at the same moment as his heel turn, if that’s his heel turn. Imagine this or that, it’s a fun exercise. It’s fun to think about because there was easily another eight or nine months of stuff The Shield could have done together. It’s interesting too because a group itself hadn’t ever really been in this position before, certainly not in their primes like these three. Relatively uncharted waters in a time and place when everything else is so mapped out.
It might not have been such a problem had they not blown everything after the turn, but they did and so it is. Within the next eight months, they’d taken this group, the hottest thing in the company and miscast the babyface firestarter Rollins as a cerebral heel Triple H imitation, beaten the fight and effort out of scrappy Ambrose, and permanently ruined the prospects of Reigns as an Ace level main event babyface, the entire point of the group’s last few months.
It was too soon. For a company that’s spent decades shouting at WCW for breaking up The Hollywood Blondes after only ten months, you’d think they’d have the wisdom to realize that, but of course not. Never. It’s not entirely that neither of them were ready. All three could have still been megastars if their singles pushes were given the respect, patience, and attention to detail that The Shield’s rise was given. That didn’t happen, because of course it didn’t happen. They fucked it up, because it’s what they do.
Roman Reigns wasn’t ready to be on his own, definitely not as a solo wrestler or a babyface promo. Seth Rollins was nowhere near ready to be on his own, especially not as a heel promo or wrestler. They mostly nailed the booking with him over the next nine to ten months, to be fair, but then blew that up too once he had his crowning moment, just like The Shield. Dean Ambrose could have turned out alright, but within a few months, both got pigeonholed into WHACKY COMEDY like running a hot dog stand and using condiments as weapons, on top of seeming to get that he was really only still pushed to heat up guys like a heel Rollins and Bray Wyatt, who weren’t able of getting it done on their own. The result is the same thing that a lot of people like him began to realize over the next few years, which is that hard work has no reward anymore, so there is no point to it.
In the short term, nobody benefited from this.
They blew it up and got next to nothing in return, outside of the things they were always going to get.
In the long term, Dean Ambrose never again really fit with the WWE, especially when you consider the immediate success he had when he left and began working under his real name again. Seth Rollins may have had his success and booked reasonably well, but he would never again even touch the level he regularly competed at during the duration of The Shield’s first run. As for the Big Dog, they botched it from the moment Rollins’ chair hit his back on June 2nd, 2014 up through his return in the fall of 2020. Left and right. Spent the last half of 2014 destroying all the good will and positive energy that The Shield had built up for the pet project before going ahead with everything anyways. He has the best in-ring career of any of them, but it’s stunningly inconsistent and based on what opponents he happens to have. Far more Batista or Randy Orton, pure system players, than the next John Cena that everyone hoped for and that they blew this up to force.
It’s also that on top of losing Bryan and doing next to nothing with all the other great wrestlers, the most consistent and regular great match act in the company now evaporates, and three different acts take its place, neither even coming close to being what The Shield was in that department.
They blew up the only thing that was still working, and wound up with three separate pieces that they never totally understood how to use (until very recently). At least not in ways that benefited any of them. It’s hard to say it ruined any careers, they all turned out about where they were always going to be (oft pushed failed main eventer, really great golden boy heel, incredible non-WWE wrestler), but because of the timing and mostly the mishandling of everything that came after, it took a lot longer for two of them than it should have. “Greater than the sum of its parts” is simply a concept too advanced for anyone in a decision making capacity to understand, especially when the (then) heir apparent once forced the detonation of his own beloved babyface group so he could turn heel, since he was the least over part of it.
Funny enough, he’s the only one who really benefits from this one too.
The second major surprise out of Triple H’s 2014, which is up there with 2000 and the like as a near career best year, simply for shooting a perfect 3/3.
It’s a hell of a story too. The Shield finally completed the full face turn the night after WrestleMania by genuinely coming through for justice and genuinely saving Daniel Bryan from a three on one in an attempt by Triple H to simply give himself the title, no longer trusting anyone around him. A story to keep an eye on there, perhaps. The result was the only time ever that the major forces that gave the WWE its unexpected 12-14 month golden age in 2013-2014 being all together at once on the same side at once. It’s an incredibly cool picture for all these reasons.
Following that, Hunter was finally able to get the band back together, and we have a meeting between the best WWE group in a decade and the last group that the WWE took seriously enough to let it succeed and become something real and important, likewise guided by constantly going against the best wrestler in the company at the time and handled so well entirely because they were made up of pet projects. It feel like a big deal, because that’s what happens when you protect acts and concepts and then, yet again, you hurl them at each other in a way that’s interesting and makes sense.
Like the match against the Wyatt Family, it’s a big Shield match that manages to succeed in large part because it genuinely feels important.
It works as this big WWE formula super match, but also as more than that too. From the start, Evolution is not the team that The Shield is. Batista can’t even wear the same color as the other two, they literally can’t even get their presentation together. They immediately lose control of the ring, and while they’re able to control two Shield members (fucking guess which two) for periods of time, it’s never because of teamwork, it’s always because Triple H is smart or Randy Orton is just simply so good. Occasionally, it’s Batista being strong, but if there’s a man on the outside on Evolution, it’s him. Randy and Hunter have a chemistry together that Batista has with neither, and it’s set up throughout the match leading to the finish.
The great matches in this style work on both levels though. A reasonable foundation and then a great fireworks show. Like the Wyatt match, they do a great job of building the fireworks show up, even if most of it comes from one team this time instead of two. Rollins has to work for the big dives, Reigns’ big power spots get cut off initially, and Ambrose’s loveable overzealousness always gets him into trouble. When the cracks in Evolution show, all three Shield members’ attributes begin to show, and they have a real hard time with it for a while. It’s all manic and fun, and produces a few really exciting and fun moments, beyond just the famous Rollins concourse dive. They go a little overboard with the Batista and Roman stuff in the ring, both in them lying around just a little long while other stuff happens, and then having Roman survive both the RKO and Pedigree. It’d be less transparent if they had spread the love around a little on that, but at least one of those comes via a save. Being capable of doing something worse doesn’t make something inherently better, it’s still transparent, but it doesn’t actually matter because it winds up having an opposite kind of effect, as the section focusing entirely on how tough and strong Roman is winds up overshadowed by one of his partners being way cooler and the other getting the big setpiece.
Following the big Seth Rollins dive off the concourse entrance (very well timed and filmed, you never see it coming, genuine great production here), Roman suddenly rallies inside, and hits his punch and the Spear for the win.
It’s a curious finish for a match based around one team being a TEAM and one not to have it come down just to that, but this hasn’t been a subtle push for a long time, and it simply is what it is.
Relative to what comes after this for most of the next few years, this is at least competently done.
The whole thing is, really. An exciting match that feels important and that’s executed nearly perfectly.
One of the last great successes of the Star Making Machine, as everything and everyone else after this mostly happens because of undeniable skill, sheer willpower (from the wrestlers or fans), or both. For one of the last times in this run, it’s another example of just what it looks like and what the company can do when everything works like it should.
I said once that there were very few full shows that I would ever even consider writing about in full, and this is one of them. Possibly the one of them.
It isn’t that it’s such an overwhelmingly great show that I couldn’t not do it all at once. It’s moreso that the matches and narratives on this show all feel so connected to each other and to something bigger that it would feel incorrect on some level not to just write about the entire show. Especially if I was already going to write about most of it anyways, just split up into more traditional match reviews. It’s too good, too important, and too interesting of a show not to cover as one complete thing.
MATCH #0: THE USOS VS. THE REAL AMERICANS VS. RYBAXEL VS. LOS MATADORES
This was an elimination match for the Usos’ WWE Tag Team Titles.
It’s fine pre-show work! Most of the quality in this match comes from The Usos and Cesaro, if we’re being wholly honest, but that’s a great tag team and one of the best wrestlers in the world. The fourth most important person in this is El Torito, and he manages at least one spectacular dive here to almost steal the show in a pre-show match. Cesaro and Swagger run through the two jobber teams before getting to the match that should have simply been here all along, and it’s wonderful. Cesaro against The Usos is wonderful, and they’re a fun enough babyface team to get the most out of Jack Swagger for the limited amount of time that this match asks him to do much of anything. A miscommunication between Cesaro and Swagger gives the Usos the win.
Nothing blowaway here, but a brisk, easy, and fun match. Usually not the case with WrestleMania pre-show work, and it’s almost entirely due to a tag team that deserves more than the pre-show and a wrestler who will finally (briefly) get his due later on.
three boy
Following the match, tensions finally come to a head, and Cesaro does the thing people have been begging for en masse for the last month since his breakout February, and dissolves the team. Cesaro does so with a crowd pleasing many rotation Giant Swing, which is about all that Jack Swagger, this act, and this unbelievably wasteful team ever really deserved.
WWE WRESTLEMANIA XXX
APRIL 6TH, 2014
SUPERDOME
NEW ORLEANS, LOUSIANA
The show begins with one of the more fun pieces of WWE nostalgia bullshit ever. Usually, it’s the same three groups or same twenty people we always see, but with three of the WWE’s former Aces in the ring and three of the four or five top guys in company history, it’s just really cool. Also Hulk Hogan fucks up and says “Silverdome” instead of Superdome and that’s like a bit for a thousand years.
More than just being cool, it’s also done in a very cool way, as Stone Cold interrupts Hogan and clowns him, leading to a real fun little bit of tension and also Stone Cold getting a “WHAT” for simply listing the first ten WrestleManias off when describing Hogan’s run. The Rock then comes out to ease the tension, and all three do a spectacular job redirecting it to the current generation, likening Hogan to Cena and Austin to Daniel Bryan, before all three share some beers.
Genuinely cool!
The exact correct use of nostalgia.
Before the show actually starts, the best WWE hype video of the last decade airs –
DANIEL BRYAN VS. TRIPLE H
It’s the best build up and storyline in WWE history.
I am done coaching it in “perhaps” and “maybe” and even “of its time”. It’s better than Austin and McMahon in 1998-1999, and that’s not the fault of either Austin or McMahon. The fact that people had to force this and the rest of this show into being adds a sense of stakes and real struggle to it that Austin and McMahon simply can’t entirely match up with, because Austin was just so obviously the man. All of the little touches between SummerSlam and Elimination Chamber are basically perfect. The Shawn Michaels stuff, the title ceremony, the Wyatts/Bryan feud with the only reasoning being “the devil made me do it”, etc.
Once the match itself got made, just about every segment was a classic. If I was a maniac enough to rank the best segments of the year, I’m pretty sure all of them would come from this program. Hunter’s refusal was perfect, the veneer just barely still on. The invasion of the fans under an OCCUPY RAW banner to force the match, then following up with the fake police handcuffing beatdown, as seen in the video above. The comeback weeks later, Hunter’s shitheel video of all the other fan favorites he’s buried, even these promos on early WWE Network Raw post shows that were just pure shouting about the rights of workers against The Authority. It’s all perfect.
The presentation of this as well is stunning. Daniel Bryan makes a spirited but very normal entrance, eschewing any of the WrestleMania pomp and circumstance usually afforded to people as over as he is. In contrast, Triple H makes this all-time over the top entrance presented as like the version of himself he sees inside his own insane and diseased brain. This gold coated warrior god-king surrounded by his NXT golden girl valkyries. It’s truly truly deranged, and absolutely perfect.
The match itself is one of the best in WrestleMania and company history.
In this match, Daniel Bryan is nearly perfect.
The arm work isn’t entirely airtight, that’s really it. Otherwise, an incredible performance. The fire at the start, the wry sort of way he dominates Hunter initially, even something like changing up the knee off the apron into a tornado DDT off the apron. Read it as a bigger move for a bigger show, or changing up because Triple H is an obsessive tape watcher, it works just as well either way. Say the same for Bryan breaking out a repeated Tope Suicida spot for the first time in forever, so it feels like a huge deal. The selling itself is terrific. Only using the one arm, having problems with the Yes Lock and other holds, classic stuff. Beyond the mechanical, it’s an all time great WWE babyface performance. He’s sympathetic enough to work as a classical underdog babyface, but then fiery enough and whipping enough ass to work as a classical WWE top level babyface in the same match.
The best thing Bryan does here might not even be anything he overtly does from bell to bell. As you may have read on this blog, Bryan is the greatest wrestler of all time, and as much of that is about individual performance as it is about bringing the best out of other wrestlers. Sometimes it means him pushing someone to something or providing an example for someone like him. Other times, it’s a more nebulous thing, with the reputation that Daniel Bryan has forcing someone to bring their best to the table for fear of being to blame if a a match isn’t exceptional.
This match is the ultimate statement of that, because there has never ever been a better version of Triple H than the one we saw here, the King of Kings Road. He’s had matches as good as this, a few even better, but they’ve all had some shortcut attached to them, some gimmick to help him out. This is a boiler plate professional wrestling match, and he has never looked better in one or performed more intelligently in any single wrestling match.
Bryan comes in with his left arm and shoulder bandaged up from the months going into this of people targeting it, starting way back in December 2013. Bryan’s smart enough to keep Hunter away time and time again. There’s a great undercurrent to this that Hunter isn’t quite the technical wrestler he imagines himself to be, and it’s not until he can get into some Attitude Era bullshit with an announce table does his arm work actually pay any sort of dividend. That’s what works so well about this match for Hunter, is that Bryan seems to get the essence of the Triple H character its core and works to it. It’s not some genius god-king like Hunter thinks, but it’s this power wrestler who knows JUST enough to be dangerous and who has absolutely no moral limits. He can’t fight Bryan on the ground, not really and no matter how smart or well schooled he is, but when he can get a Divorce Court on the announce table, he can finally do something. Much like the rest of the feud, they’re also smart enough to weaponize Triple H’s past, as best expressed with his use of the repeated Crossface holds. It’s not a thing that can ever really be said, for totally fair and obvious reasons, but Triple H now using the Crossface is SUCH a god damned thing, and him doing it to Bryan is perfect. This symbol of another thing he snuffed out once upon a time, but also another example of Triple H not totally getting everything he’s doing. He’s smart enough to go to the hurt arm, he’s seen enough to know the right things to do, but he never totally gets how to make the most out of an arm based attack and has no real idea how to win with it.
Hunter goes back to his power game when it gets too hard, and it dooms him. Bryan’s tough enough to kick out of the Pedigree, but that’s all Hunter has. He gets mean and nasty, but at the other end of that is simply going for it again. Bryan escapes, outmaneuvers him, and wins clean as a fucking sheet off of the running knee.
A genuine epic level struggle, but one that manages that without going anywhere close to too far, and one that achieves that status while always being real and grounded. A masterpiece of a match that in retrospect, only Daniel Bryan could ever have gotten off of the ground, Not simply because he brought the best out of Triple H, but because only he could create a scenario wild enough for a match like this to happen, but also for a match like this to be able to be this restrained in the first place. The all time expression of the unstated and often unintentional politics of being the best wrestler of all time.
Bryan gets to the main event after all, and Triple H finally gets one of these “I did the right thing!” moments that he’s actually allowed to talk about, which you know he’s been mad about for the last seven years.
****
Following the match, Triple H and his wife attack Bryan’s arm with a chair, to try and put the main event participation of Our Hero in doubt, despite not being able to actually stop him themselves. The working class hero did the work and got there fairly, only to be kneecapped anyways yet again because The Game has been rigged from the start. So it goes.
THE SHIELD VS. KANE & THE NEW AGE OUTLAWS
It’s two minutes.
It’s two minutes and it’s PERFECT.
The Shield completely runs through three old hacks. It’s exciting and incredibly fun and wholly dominant. They get maybe a punch or two in, but thankfully, this match totally abandons the pretense. These guys are old, they can’t hang, and The Shield completely runs through them. Roman spears all three, Dean and Seth dive on them repeatedly, and the match ends with the first ever Double Triple Powerbomb. Or the Triple-Double. It’s a waste of The Shield, they could have done more on this show, but at the same time, it’s such a wonderful show of force.
At the end, JBL delivers one of his better serious calls ever with, “there goes the Attitude Era”.
It’s obviously bullshit seven years later, but in the moment, following all the fun and positive things that happened so far, it really did feel that way at the time.
THE ANDRE THE GIANT MEMORIAL BATTLE ROYAL
The best WWE battle royal in a long time, close to a decade. There were several surprisingly good ones in the mid 2000s, and they succeeded for the same reason that this did, and it’s the overwhelming pool of talent in the ring and some creative composition. The dead weight gets out of the ring fast and for the most part, it’s all fun and creative. You get down to the meat of the thing, and it’s all great wrestlers. The Big Show, Sheamus, Del Rio, Mysterio, Ziggler, Cesaro, Goldust, and the like. Cool eliminations, fast pace, really gets rid of every issue with boring and routine WWE battle royals.
Somehow Cesaro makes it to the end against obvious winner The Big Show.
Except that Cesaro just explodes on him? He hits a flurry of uppercuts on the big fella, AND THEN SLAMS HIM OVER THE TOP AND OUT HOLY SHIT WHAT?
It’s another seemingly impossible feat on this show. A battle royal win that genuinely feels like a huge deal and a starmaker. Beyond that, a battle royal with real substance and that’s full of cool stuff, instead of just being the means to an end. Easily the best of all of these Andre battle royals, as the only one they took entirely seriously, and the best WWE battle royal in close to a decade in either direction.
***
Between the big turn earlier in the show and a win as powerful and definitive at that, it seems almost impossible to deny Cesaro going forward.
Before the next contest, WWE manages to accidentally touch on something real in the media world at the time when it’s happening. Another total stunner, I know. Bray Wyatt comes out to his swamp voodoo song in New Orleans with a live performance from the band in these elaborate and creepy little costumes, at the exact time that the first season of True Detective (the good one) was a big and major deal with a real similar overall vibe. We’re in Carcosa now. It’s the peak of Bray Wyatt’s career, this incredibly cool entrance while the entire act still feels like a huge huge deal.
JOHN CENA VS. BRAY WYATT
I’m not going to waste whatever credibility I may or may not have selling you on the idea that this is great.
It isn’t.
What it is though is a whole lot of fun.
The story itself is quite silly. Bray wants Cena to kill him and reveal that he’s a monster as part of some plan to show the world that Cena can be mean and violent too and that their hero is no better than him. It’s especially weird because like…yeah, no shit? If you have a working memory, you remember all these big violent things Cena’s done to end feuds. The part of it that does work though is Bray trying to bait Cena into a disqualification so he has a huge WrestleMania win, but as always, the story told bell to bell is rarely the same as the one told on commentary when it comes to these WWE concept matches.
If you can get past that though, this is a lot of fun. It’s Cena against a Monster of the Week, but Bray’s physical and over enough for it to be a fun application of formula. Cena breaks out a lot of the bigger stuff for a WrestleMania match, even if he’s in the middle of the card for the first time in a while. Wyatt matches him with a few bigger moves and more spectacular moments than usual. It’d be ideal, if not for the end, when that bullshit comes back around. Bray gives Cena a chair for some reason, like he’s going to hit him with it, but without being nearly annoying or mean enough to warrant that. Cena hits the Family outside with it instead, and counters Sister Abby into the FU to win. I’m good with the bullshit on some Buy The Ticket shit, especially with a match this fun otherwise, but yeah, real weird and a depressing harbinger of what’s to come, both for the feud and for the entire Wyatt character, who will not be covered very often on this site from now on.
Pure WWE bullshit, but wrapped up in a surprisingly fun match bell to bell.
an extremely borderline three boy
THE UNDERTAKER VS. BROCK LESNAR
We’re not here to talk about the match. You know that.
This one’s all about the finish, and saying that, this is probably better than its reputation but also nowhere near good enough to eclipse the moment itself. The entire deal is about Undertaker being so assured in his victory after the last five years he’s survived, but no longer really doing anything to guarantee that. The entire match he feels half a speed off, and leans entirely on what worked on the past. He tries the Hell’s Gate from his back that’s won a few in the past, but it totally fails. He never makes a real honest comeback until the last few minutes, and when he needs to do more, all he can break out is fucking Old School or a Kimura. He wrestles like someone assured that something will eventually break in his favor, because for 21 shows and 24 years, it has.
Except it doesn’t.
Brock just never allows him that break, and on the third F5, it finally happens.
I’m not going to eulogize the fucking Streak like it’s a person or something real, but it is a major moment.
Around the time this happened, I read a wonderful and insane piece of fanwank, the sort of theory that redefines fanwank and sticks with you. It stated that Heyman saw Undertaker up close the previous year at Wrestlemania in the Taker/Punk match and saw what was there, that The Undertaker largely won because Punk hurt himself on the big table spot and barely defeated someone like two-thirds his size. Heyman also had a history of paying off The Shield to help his clients, and conveniently, they targeted The Undertaker and hurt him. Brock Lesnar’s next match is then against CM Punk, where he finds himself just about equal and more physically dominant, before nuking another big guy, The Big Show, earlier in 2014 in his next match. Brock fails to make any mistakes here, learning something from almost losing to Punk , and specifically, he fails to make the mistakes others have made against Undertaker in the last few years, despite Taker having been shot since the dive in 2009. It all feels like a plan finally coming to fruition.
Or it’s all bullshit that just happens to conveniently fit together. It’s sort of the beauty of fanwank. Do it with enough art and skill and hey, why not? It’s the WWE, you never expect anything out of them, but it makes sense, so…fuck it. Why not?
Really though, it’s one of the most significant things to happen in the WWE and pro wrestling all decade. A pro wrestling sort of 9/11 or JFK assassination, not in terms of actual importance (this is all nonsense fake fighting, none of it is actually important, we are all incredibly dumb for caring about it at all), but in the sense that most people I talk to seem to remember exact circumstances of their viewing experience or where they were or what they were doing when they found out. It’s not a unique thing, people tend to have those sorts of memories for the big things, but this is such a big thing that it seems almost a universal experience.
For me, I was in my sophomore year dorm room, leaning back in my shitty yet weirdly comfortable standard issue chair after digesting a Dominos pan pizza and bread bites, either drinking an Oberon or leftover Guinness from the holiday a few weeks prior. Headphones in to be nice to that fucking freak Kevin, the roommate who lived on Subway tuna melts and Pepsi Max, talking in a group chat. I was stunned. Genuinely stunned. It’s a result beyond even Oracle capabilities, I’m not sure that I closed my mouth for a whole minute. I’m not sure anyone in the chat wrote anything for a minute or two, which I’m not sure I’ve ever experiences in years of watching live pay per views in group chats.
I’ve never really experienced a feeling like it when watching wrestling otherwise, and the best thing I can say about it is that it’s the entire reason you manufacture streaks to begin with.
The only thing wrong here is that The Undertaker ever wrestled another match after this.
A stunning display of an entire company’s inability to look at a calendar.
THE VICKIE GUERRERO INVITATIONAL
I’ll give this as much respect as the company did. I think that’s fair. It wasn’t especially good, the only match on the show that’s obvious filler and that you could cut and lose absolutely nothing. That being said, after a thing like what came before it, you needed a little bit of a break. Feel sorry for all the women who got thrown to the wolves like this, but it was also easily the weakest match and weakest build on the entire show, so it’s not like it was the wrong choice of matches to sacrifice either.
RANDY ORTON VS. BATISTA VS. DANIEL BRYAN
This was for Orton’s WWE World Heavyweight Title.
Even if it’s not better than Bryan’s first match on the show, Hunter once again simply HAVING to outshine his proteges, it’s still a much better match than most people remember.
Obviously, this should have simply been Orton against Bryan. It’s been the central feud of the WWE over the last six plus months, really going back to their series in June and brief team against The Shield before that. It’s not the end of the world though. Batista is an addition that adds to the match in his own way, both as this obvious corporate avatar in contrast to Daniel Bryan, but also as the other representation of the last decade plus of WWE plans that Bryan’s upending.
The match itself is really great. A lot of complaints I’ve read and heard are about sections where Bryan is gone, like it’s WrestleMania XX or something and there’s a long stretch without him, but that genuinely is not the case here. The story is moreso that they try and do that, but never really can. It’s that all the bullshit in the world finally just can’t succeed anymore. The arm doesn’t stop him from getting there. The combined efforts of the two chosen ones aren’t enough, because he’s just better than them. Failing that, Triple H and Stephanie come to stop his win once, and they wave crooked referee Scott Armstrong back out after his absence for months after the plot in the fall of 2013. Bryan’s finally both done playing the game the right way, and also in a spot where he no longer has to, and kicks him in the head. A dive takes out The Authority, and when Hunter goes for his trusty sledgehammer, Bryan easily takes that and knocks him out with it too.
Subtlety may not or may not be for cowards, but there is a time and a place for it, and it sure isn’t now.
Big Dave and Randy manage their big spot to take Bryan out, but it simply doesn’t work. He refuses the stretcher and instead of some big sequence like I think people have turned it into in their heads, Randy simply brings him back into the ring. The big final ran is tremendous. Batista hits his marks as well as he ever had to. Randy’s tremendous. Bryan simply won’t ever go away. They tease a few different results as well as possible, making the most out of a real audience fear that they still won’t ACTUALLY do the right thing, before then actually delivering. Bryan wipes Big Dave out with the knee, and then goes into the Yes Lock. Good things can happen sometimes. Batista taps out, and it’s all finally over, and a year of faith is rewarded.
Daniel Bryan is the WWE World Heavyweight Champion.
It’s not the greatest match ever. It’s a WWE three way, and it has many of the problems of the WWE three way in terms of feeling somewhat aimless at times and three ways being less satisfying in major moments like this. However, they still packed so much into this in terms of the story elements, and with a performance as great and evocative as Bryan’s was, so much of those problems simply do not matter, outside of that I wish he simply just got Orton one on one at the end of all this. It’s a fortunate thing that this was a great match, another fortunate success for Daniel Bryan, but up to a certain point, this was entirely about the result and the match more than came through on that result.
***1/4
There are very few times in decades of watching wrestling that have felt as good as this.
Many are tainted, and the only one remotely on the same level is Money in the Bank 2011. It’s apples and oranges, to some extent. That was a short three week build, and this was something close to a year in the making. The qualities of the former allowed it to feel like a genuine revolution, a combination of a coup d’etat and a college football rivalry game. In contrast, this was the payoff to such a long and arduous struggle. They’re different situations and different feelings. The live element of MITB also can’t ever be separated. They also feel very connected in my head, one cannot exist without the other. Or rather, this cannot exist without that opening the door. All the same, this is the high point of that movement and feeling. It’s the high water mark of a wave of unrest that Punk began, and that Punk eventually sealed with his January 2014 walk out.
I reviewed this entire show at once not just because it’s such a well put together show, or because I like it so much, but because of what it felt like at the time and what it feels like now. It’s such a hopeful wrestling show, the likes of which you rarely get from the WWE, let alone from other pro wrestling. Virtually everything on this show is about the future, and closing the book on the past for good, save for Cena/Wyatt, which exists both as an outlier and as this reaffirmation of Cena as this new generation’s living legend. A new era’s been inching closer for a few years now, and this is the show where it feels like it’s finally upon us.
To put it in another way, if the WWE is a long running television show, this entire event feels like a series finale.
Perhaps not a willing one, but definitely a show with that sort of a tone to it. It’s not exactly “Made in America” or “Felina” or “Family Meeting” or the last episode of The Wire, or any of these finales that feel like they know they’re finales. But like a television show that knows it might be the end, and which seeks to wrap up every loose end just in case.
The Bryan thing obviously works to that.
When The Authority formed after SummerSlam, there was kind of a wink and nod way they did it where it felt like the WWE admitting they didn’t want smaller workhorse types to actually be on top, with the entire “B+” and “good little wrestler” lines echoing so much, and justifying a lot of past actions with guys like Punk, Bret, Benoit, Eddie, Jericho, etc. They weren’t just heels, they were this entire system that a lot of fans hated, put on screen, the implicit made explicit. It was made even more real when Punk had enough and quit, so Bryan wasn’t just fighting some good heels with an uncomfortable truth to them, but he was fighting the WWE. This entire thing that didn’t want people like him to succeed, and actively wanted them to either die, give up, or leave. He was fighting the idea of the WWE, the kind of place that’s always told people what they want instead of really listening and valued a certain body type and image in the face of everything else, and it put Bryan over the top as a People’s Champion. So when Bryan wins here, it genuinely feels like he’s broken that. Like WWE finally stopped fighting it and accepted that Daniel Bryan is their top babyface and this needs to ride out, like Bret Hart in the mid 90s. You knew he would never get the full promotional machine, but it seemed like this would at least play out until Reigns and Rollins and Ambrose and etc. were ready, and Bryan would be that guy, in the moment and euphoric feeling that came out of this show.
On top of that, Bryan did it by going through Evolution. Triple H has long been WWE’s most enduring schemer and this was the night that all his schemes over the last ten to fifteen years completely failed in front of the world. Triple H finally gave the kind of performance that seemed to match how he’d always seen himself in his own mind, and it absolutely did not matter. His hubris got the best of him and his world collapsed and his philosophy was defeated on the biggest possible stage. He couldn’t beat Bryan and his greatest creations failed to do the same, so he had nothing but the job title. Triple H’s days on camera being done seemed like they were coming to an end in a 100% believable way befitting of that character at the end of the show. He’s COO now because he married well and because he has the mind for it, but in a Vic Mackey-ish way, where it’s all he has left and he hates it. He’s been so exposed that that’s all there is, and it’s the exact ending he deserves, an embarrassing striver exposed and beaten in front of the world, and resigned to something he hates doing.
Beyond that, The Streak ended. WWE’s longest running story came to a close and got blown off, and The Undertaker finally got beaten. Based on everything else, he should be gone. Done and retired. The Attitude Era was seemingly laid to rest by the new hot group. Cesaro became a star in an amazing moment. John Cena is the outlier, but he works with a hot new heel, leaves him something, and establishes himself as the living legend to a new generation in the way The Undertaker was ten years earlier.
I’ve never seen a WWE show that wraps up this many loose ends.
So naturally, because they put on this “episode” – one of the most satisfying episodes in the entire genre’s history – the show is renewed. Like any good show, they allowed themselves stories to continue and expand on. The Shield are now firmly babyfaces, but now are bound to run afoul of top heels now, with all new match ups there. Bryan as champion and the top babyface in the company, obviously. Cesaro’s babyface turn. Bray’s continued rise as a top level heel, and Cena’s “THE FUTURE GOES THROUGH ME” speech from a month ago as this challenge to all the young guys in the company, many of whom still have yet to test that. And of course, that clear return match between our two top heroes, with a new God level monster Brock Lesnar waiting in the wings.
There’s all this stuff to continue on with in as satisfying a manner as the last twelve months have shown them capable of proceeding. Except, they didn’t. But we can get to that later, say after a certain event on a certain Raw after a certain early June pay-per-view where WWE intentionally ruins their hottest act at a time when with a certain injury to a certain top guy, and the way they’d ruined a certain battle royal winner seemingly 100% on purpose, they needed them the most.
On this night though, everything works and leaves me and you and all good wrestling fans unable to remove the smiles from our faces. The future, if it exists, is the brightest it’s looked after a WrestleMania in 16 years, if not ever.
The WWE has reached something like a peak again near the end and everything that could be blown off has been blown off. A rocky ride, but one hell of a final season.
HANDWERK 