WrestleMania aftermath thread.

rovert wrote: »

He is booked everywhere including Dublin as Reign's house show opponent. Also you have that career link between Big Show and Andre - being introduced as the son of Andre in WCW and so on.

stankratz wrote: »

As only a very part-time casual fan in recent years, the Lesnar/Reigns match gripped me. I watched Royal Rumble in January, my first WWE viewing since WM30, and was a bit disgusted with the outcome of the Rumble, looking at Reigns thinking "Who is this guy and what am I missing about him?"

Pro Wrestling can all-to-easily be brushed off with the "Sure it's fake, what's the point?" statement by non-fans, but these athletes risk their health and well-being every time they step into the ring. It might be improvised sports entertainment, but shít still hurts at best minimally. That's when Brock Lesnar is not involved in the match. When he is, that factor increases significantly and there is no doubt in my mind that there were genuine hits going in hard between he and Reigns last night.

To say that Reign's 'just' took a beating for 12 minutes and then performed his power moves a few times is doing him a disservice though. Even in this world of live choreographed bouts with pre-determined outcomes, you still need a humungous set of balls to get into a ring with Lesnar and say "Just give me your worst" and then not only take it without flinching, but still have the stamina and ability to mount and sell a comeback after that beating. In those rare moments he dominated Lesnar near the end, I believed it and thought he had a shot at the win.

Apart from an array of suplexes (Suplex City Bitch!), there was fúck-all to this match technically, but I still loved the story told and how it was executed, and would rank it as a great match because of it. All-time great WM match? I think that might be pushing it at this moment, but 100 times better than I thought it would be going in. I thought Reigns was a nobody going nowhere, last night proved me wrong.

A few things outside of the main-event: Great to see WWE trying to give some credibility back to the Europa Leag...sorry Intercontinental title. I love that it is the old Intercontinental belt, has it been back that way for long? The Bryan segment with the old-timers was a little cringey but not so much as to ruin it for me. There's never not a good time for a Ron Simmons "DAMN" :pac:

HHH looked ridiculous in his entrance. I get that he's at the point now where he can do whatever he wants, and does it, but there should be limits. Plus why does he need to be Terminator? He's 'The Game' and spent 15+ years building that persona up. HHH, The Game is an iconic character itself, no need for props from the Ballyhaunis National School end-of-year play. Maybe it was because $$$, as it seems WWE were paid to promote the Terminator brand throughout the night. The outcome of the HHH-Sting match doesn't bother me too much. I'm just glad that Sting finally wrestled a WWE match, even if it was a good decade too late and was exciting more for the nostalgia element than anything else.

As for Rock, Rhonda, HHH, Stephanie, of course this went on way too long but that was the whole point of it. WWE were doing balancing acts all over the show last night, not least of all with the daylight/darkness thing. I think they did as well as they could do with this considering they had to appease both East and West Coast audiences. As for the segment itself, after all of that there should have been at the least a Rock Bottom on HHH, or even HHH getting one-up on The Rock. Are they setting the scene for a match next year? I actually think those two could put one last great match on. Rock would have to train hard for it though, he was out of breath after the walk to the ring last night.

I enjoyed the Taker-Wyatt and Cena-Rusev matches, don't have too much to say outside of that. Oh, did anyone else think when Lana threw her shoe in the ring "If that gets used as a weapon to win the match then I'm switching off!" A bit of a bizarre moment, hard to know what to take from the shoe-throwing :pac:

I tuned in too late to catch the IC Ladder match and the Rollins-Orton match but will catch them tonight. I did see a gif of that RKO, it was so sweet and Orton was clearly delighted with it too.

Overall I'm glad that I stayed up to watch WM, it was a good show and I will try to tune onto Raw tonight to catch the aftermath.