Unsurprising to me, considering the fact that professional wresting kind of needs fans and atmosphere to really excel at being the spectator event it’s supposed to be, that a Wrestlemania with no fans and no real atmosphere, just was not that great. It didn’t help that as a result of coronavirus running wild, there were some massive impacts to the card, like Roman Reigns pulling out because as a leukemia survivor, he’s already immunocompromised, and then the Miz pulling out because he had some ailment that scared the shit out of all other roster and personnel and probably gained him a ton of heat, things were becoming a steeper and steeper uphill battle, even before circumstances made the company turn the whole thing into a closed-door private affair.
In spite of their best efforts and making it a two-night event, very little could’ve really been done to have made the event remotely palatable to an old smark like myself. The importance of crowds and the atmosphere they bring has been completely understated in the last few weeks of both WWE and AEW putting on empty venue shows. But as much as I don’t like having to praise AEW, I have to give them credit for at least having the wherewithal to put their superstars in the audience so that there’s some sort of crowd noise or interaction to gain.
WWE on the other hand has literally nobody in the stands whatsoever, and it’s almost an eerie silence when matches go on. I have to imagine as performers, it’s really jarring and awkward to them to have to perform for nobody but the camera, but act like that there’s a crowd at all, and go through with ring entrances and staring out into nothingness like there’s a sold out show. I imagine those who are WWE grown struggled with it the most, whereas those who worked their ways through independents and alternative federations are probably no stranger to low-attendance or near-empty gates.
Regardless, the show as a whole was pretty weak, and it was entirely too difficult to get into many of the matches. I fortunately watched each night of the show the day after, so I had the luxury of being able to fast forward and skip the rest holds and extended promos in order to chew up time. As well as Rob Gronkowski segments, where the only thing I want to see out of him is to team up with Zack Ryder and Matt Riddle and make a douchey white guy bro stable, and have one program with The New Day since they’re a group of black nerds, and then get the fuck out of the WWE forever.
Undertaker vs. AJ Styles was about as bad as I imagined it would be, considering the fact that it was a gimmicky “Boneyard Match” that wasn’t so much of a match as much as it was an episode of WMAC Masters from back in the 90’s. It hid every bit of the Undertaker’s lack of mobility and stamina, and AJ Styles had to work his ass off to make it look remotely passable. It wasn’t really entertaining, but more cringeworthy that the WWE went off in this direction, but given the fact that the Undertaker is like 55 and can barely move, they didn’t really have that much of a choice.
Related, was the David Lynch-like glorified skit that was the John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt segment, because it most certainly wasn’t a match. It went on too long, and was more or less a this-is-your-life for not just Cena, but Wyatt himself, whom both of them basically did several costume changes and took a trip down memory lane showing up or having their past gimmicks referenced before it mercifully came to an end. The only part of it I actually enjoyed was when Cena was in his wigger gimmick and was making fun of Husky Harris.
If there was any strong point(s) to the show, it would most definitely have to go towards the Women’s roster. As none of the women’s matches were slapped together on the fly, had actual storylines built up for them, nor had any hokey gimmicks about them, they were all pretty decent matches. Without question, the women were the best part of the entire show, and all the matches, between the Alexa Bliss/Nikki Cross vs. Asuka/Kairi (I refuse to call them “Kabuki Warriors” fuckin racist-ass name), the Becky Lynch vs. Shayna Baszler, the Fatal Five-way, and especially Charlotte Flair vs. Rhea Ripley, were all good, solid, entertaining matches that made the best of their time and respective buildups.
The rest of the matches were either just kind of thrown together, like Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley and Street Profits vs. Angel Garza/Austin Theory, or they really needed a crowd to amp the narratives like Otis vs. Dolph Ziggler and the Smackdown Tag Team ladder match, or they featured guys that nobody gives two shits about like Baron Corbin vs. Elias.
I had positive hopes for both the Daniel Bryan vs. Sami Zayn and the Kevin Owens vs. Seth Rollins matches, but in the grand spectrum of things, both were big let downs in the sense that even at a Wrestlemania, the WWE won’t take the handcuffs off any of these guys and let them put on the clinics that most anyone who follows wrestling knows they would be capable of doing. They would undoubtedly have stolen the show, but when I stop and think about it, that’s probably exactly what Vince and stooges didn’t want, two matches to effectively bury the rest of the entire roster by standing out just that much.
The most hilarious part of the whole show(s) to me is that there was ultimately six hours worth of content, but the World and Universal championship matches probably took about six minutes combined, in two glorified, nearly identical squash matches. Despite being the biggest prizes in the company, Wrestlemanias have turned into events where celebrities or big names on known short contracts win them leading up to Wrestlemanias, and then drop them in these horrible matches to more mainstay superstars.
Seriously, the two matches had more finishers used than the time in minutes it took for both of them to take place. Like, people are being very literal when they describe Goldberg-Strowman as four spears and four power slams, and Lesnar-McIntyre being nothing but a bunch of F5s and Claymores.
Just about every wrestling fan knew that Wrestlemania was taped in advance due to the circumstances, but I’m not sure how many people seem to realize that a great number of episodes or Raw and Smackdown and probably NXT were as well.
Think about that for a second: the grandest show of them all, taped somewhere on a schedule that also was shared with a broadcast that gave Liv Morgan nearly a ten minute match against Asuka. The Street Profits wrestled against Angel Garza and Austin Theory on three straight programs, and milked out five matches once Bianca Belair’s Raw debut and smashed together six-person matches were factored into the mix.
Ultimately, because of the WWE’s determination to pound out as many taped episodes of television as possible before Florida eventually shuts them down due to stay-at-home regulations, Wrestlemania basically became one gigantic WCW Worldwide taping. And save for a handful of matches, about as equivalent of quality too.
