Wrestlemania 27 – A Review

And so, the dust settles on another Wrestlemania. Only one question really needs to be asked at this point: was it any good? Well, yes is my answer. Wrestlemania XXVII was a flawed but mostly very strong show for my money, which featured some good wrestling, some comedy of variable quality and a few surprises. With all that said, let me now look back at the show in order.

Things got off to a bad start when the news began to leak over the internet that the US Championship match between Sheamus and Daniel Bryan had been bumped from the main card and relegated to the status of “dark match” (for those of you not in the know, a dark match is a match that takes place before the cameras start rolling at a televised event – there’s usually at least one of these to warm up the crowd). This sadly appears to be becoming a familiar theme at Wrestlemania (witness the bumping of the Colons versus The Miz and John Morrison at Wrestlemania 25). I know that I was not alone in looking forward to this match, so for it to be cut was a disappointment. In any case, the match went to a none finish when the ringside lumberjacks got involved and the Raw General Manager ordered a Battle Royal to begin instead, eventually ending in a victory for The Great Khali.

Anyway, on with the show. Midnight (UK air-time) came and a singer I don’t know did a passable rendition of “America the Beautiful”. After that, we had our host, the most electrifying man in ALL of entertainment, The Rock! Rock proceeded to have fun interacting with the crowd but I felt that this segment dragged a little at home. It was eighteen minutes past midnight before we saw a wrestler (sorry, superstar) finally make his way to the ring! One can only imagine what Sheamus and Daniel Bryan were thinking. Surprisingly, it was Alberto Del Rio. The decision to start the show with the World Heavyweight Championship match was certainly an eyebrow-raiser. On the one hand, it did give a certain “let’s get started with a bang” vibe to the proceedings but at the same time it seemed somewhat unfair to relegate the winner of the Royal Rumble to curtain-jerker status. Having said that, I have heard wrestlers say that, if you can’t go on last, you want to go on first, so maybe Edge and Del Rio didn’t mind.

The match itself was very good, although undoubtedly too short. I felt that the finishing sequence was very well executed and the fact that Edge actually got the victory certainly surprised the crowd. Many fans seem upset with this decision but as I said in my predictions, waiting a little longer for the championship won’t do Del Rio any harm. Plus, the unpredictability of this outcome makes the whole show more enjoyable. The aftermath, in which Edge and Christian smashed Del Rio’s Rolls Royce was amusing enough, I suppose but didn’t really do it for me. They should have trashed the car more severely if they were going to, Stone Cold style. I must also say that Del Rio’s entrance was one of the most awesome wrestling entrances I have ever seen. Driving onto the ramp, with an image of his mansion on the screens behind him, it really looked as if he had driven straight out of his driveway and onto the stage. The set design and visual guys deserve whatever their equivalent of an Oscar is for this.

In fact, I’d just like to take a moment to congratulate WWE’s production team as a whole here, not just for Wrestlemania but for all of their work. WWE has the best camera crew, directors, sound guys, pyro and effects specialists, video editors and set designers in the business. The slick, glossy and professional nature of their productions is a major reason why nobody can compete with them and the men and women behind that do not get enough credit for it, in my opinion. At Wrestlemania they once again did themselves proud with a beautiful set-up. Nothing, however, would out-do Del Rio’s entrance, at least not in my opinion.

Back to the show. The next match was Cody Rhodes versus Rey Mysterio. In keeping with his usual tradition, Rey adopted a variation of a superhero costume on his way to the ring, this time coming out as Captain America. Which was awesome. I suppose if he ever tries to use Superman’s costume he’ll get sued by John Cena! The crowd took a little while to warm up to this match but warm up they did. Cody had a new entrance, focussing on his supposed “disfigurement” from the fateful 619 delivered by Rey back in January. The only thing that baffles me about this angle is that nobody, thus far, has simply pointed out that there is nothing wrong with Cody’s face! In any case the match got better as it went on and ended with a victory for Cody, meaning that one of my predictions had gone right.

Next up was the eight-man tag, pitting The Corre against Kane, The Big Show, Santino and Vladimir Kozlov. However, it transpired that the Corre had already assaulted Kozlov during Fan Axxess, so Kofi Kingston subbed in for him at the last minute. In all honesty, this match was purely about getting the guys on the card. All of the baby-faces got to hit one big spot before Big Show knocked Heath Slater out and Santino scored the pin-fall. It was all over in about ninety seconds. I had predicted a victory for The Corre here but again, I don’t see this as a major problem. I’m sure that they’ll soon be back to running roughshod over Smackdown again. However, I would point out that if WWE expect us to care about Heath Slater they are going to have to do better than simply having Michael Cole say “The One-Man Rock Band!” every time Slater tags into a match. How lazy is that? Oh, he’s got long hair; let’s call him the one-man rock band. Right now, Slater looks like a guy that will be wished well in his future endeavours about a nanosecond after The Corre breaks up. Ezekiel Jackson has size and power, Wade Barrett has had lots of mic time, even Justin Gabriel has a cool finishing move. What does Slater have? Long hair.

After three matches, therefore, we had seen two good matches and one throwaway bit of fun. It was time for things to be kicked up a notch and so they were with the fourth match, Randy Orton versus CM Punk. A great video package recapped the feud before the match, which went on to be one of the best of the night. The story of the match turned out to be Orton attempting to fight through the pain of his leg injury in order to deliver enough offence to Punk. Eventually, he succeeded with a beautiful spot, in which he caught Punk, attempting to deliver a flying clothesline off of the top rope, in the RKO. The two men pulled this potentially difficult manoeuvre off flawlessly and it looked awesome. Unfortunately, this left me one for three on predictions at this point, so I was really hoping that things would change soon. Some have complained that this match was too short but it went nearly fifteen minutes; that’s not terrible. Others have complained that Punk lost the match. I was also rooting for him but then, Wrestlemania is generally about the baby-faces.

Halfway through the matches and it was finally time for Jerry “The King” Lawler to get his hands on Michael Cole, in what has been one of the best-built angles in some time. Cole, dressed in a garish orange wrestling singlet (a nod to a former announce team colleague, perhaps?) came to the ring insulting Lawler and JR, who by now had arrived to do commentary. And there was much rejoicing. Early on, the match went well with Lawler getting the better of Cole’s coach, Jack Swagger, and beating the heck out of Cole in his own “Cole Mine”. Soon after, Swagger put Lawler in trouble and we began the phase of Cole’s dominance. While Michael Cole did some amusing spots, particularly his attempt at Swagger’s “Swagger Bomb”, this section of the match dragged on far too long. A “boring” chant began which, to his credit, Cole quickly paid attention to and finally Lawler got the upper hand again. Swagger got a Stunner, Cole got a whuppin’ and finally tapped out, Lawler and Stone Cold celebrated with beers that Lawler surreptitiously did not drink (being a teetotaller) and all was right with the world.

The match had gone on far too long (it was actually longer than Edge and Rey Mysterio’s matches) and, given the length of the celebration afterwards that was especially unforgivable but that was okay – Lawler had won. Except he hadn’t. After Stone Cold had given Booker T a friendly stunner, we got an email from the Anonymous Raw General Manager, informing us that due to Stone Cold’s involvement, Lawler had been disqualified and Cole was the winner. In a case of shooting the messenger, Stone Cold then stunned Josh Matthews. The upside of this was that this left us with the team of Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler on commentary for the rest of the show. The downside was that Cole had won and one of my banker bets had backfired. I was now one for four in the predictions!

After that, we had a long sequence of video packages, recapping Fan Axxess and various of the other events from Wrestlemania week. It really shows how far Wrestlemania has come over the years – and how worthwhile it is for a city to actually host the event. Then, the match we had all been waiting for. The match that surely should have been the main event. Triple H versus The Undertaker, No Holds Barred! Triple H came out first, preceding his standard entrance with an excerpt of Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and dropping the lights. The Undertaker’s entrance was awesome, as ever, though somewhat subdued by his Wrestlemania standards. Then, finally, the match began.

This was, as expected, a brutal affair. The first half of the match was a back and forth street fight in which the two traded big moves and went toe-to-toe. Highlights included Hunter’s vicious spine-buster through the Spanish announce table to the Deadman and a frankly evil-looking back body drop from the announce table to the floor delivered by The Undertaker. Eventually, the match slowed down and the second half of this battle saw Triple H gain the advantage and the action mostly take place in the ring. From hereon it was a case of Triple H dominating the match and attempting to do enough damage to his opponent to end it, while The Undertaker made sporadic and ever shorter but still dramatic fight-backs. However, no amount of big moves could quite get the three count for The Game. Finally, having already delivered three Pedigrees and countless chair shots, Triple H nailed The Undertaker with his own Tombstone Piledriver.

The Undertaker kicked out. Triple H backed across the ring, a look of actual fear on his face. It was as if, in that moment, Triple H suddenly believed the legend of the Deadman. Recovering his composure, Triple H went for his last signature weapon – the sledgehammer. Entering the ring with the hammer, Hunter advanced on his prone but stubborn opponent, only to get suddenly caught and dragged into The Undertaker’s deadly submission hold, Hell’s Gate! Hunter fought it for an incredible length of time, repeatedly trying to regain his hammer but the hold was locked in and he had no leverage to deliver a blow even if he could have maintained his grip. Finally, he tapped out. The match had lasted almost half an hour but it had told a great story. Triple H had brought more firepower than anyone had ever brought to The Undertaker but in the end the Deadman had preserved his streak, beating Triple H as much through sheer willpower as by any wrestling moves.

One last story was told after the match, as The Undertaker, in usual fashion, attempted to walk backstage under his own power rather than be helped or stretchered out. For once, he failed. He had won the battle and preserved his streak but at the end, The Undertaker was carried off while Triple H walked away from the fight. This was outstanding, everything I hoped for and I just hope that the two men get the credit that they deserve for it. The two men far exceeded their match at Wrestlemania 17, as good as that was and Triple H finally has that defining Wrestlemania match that his career has arguably been lacking. This was truly the story of an oft-used cliché, the Unstoppable Force meeting the Immovable Object. In the event, the Object remained unmoved but may have been irreparably damaged by the collision.

Following that was not going to be an easy task. There is no way that that match should not have closed the show and I began to worry that Vince had only gone with the running order he had because he wanted a feel-good moment to end the show. Did this mean that Cena was going to win? I hoped not but had no time to worry about it – Vickie Guerrero was on her way out with Wrestlemania-sized “Excuse Me”s! That meant that it was time for this year’s celebrity match, pitting Dolph Ziggler and LayCool against John Morrison, Trish Stratus and Jersey Shore star Snooki. This wasn’t too much of a wrestling match, as one would expect. The regulars all got to strut their stuff, the highlight being Morrison’s stunning version of Starship Pain to the outside. Finally, Snooki got the tag, with Michelle McCool trapped in the opposite corner.

A chorus of boos greeted Snooki as she entered the ring but she ignored them and then delivered a perfect double handspring into a butt bump on McCool. It was quite amazing. I’ve never heard grudging respect forced out of seventy-odd thousand people at once before. One moment there are all these boos, the next moment there’s some applause and you could almost hear thousands of people thinking “actually, that was pretty cool”. Snooki followed that with an odd but still quite cool cartwheel into a splash on the now prone McCool to pin her and win the match. All things considered, this was as good as one could have hoped. Wrestling fans may deplore the involvement of celebrities such as Snooki but the fact is that she got WWE an absolute ton of publicity, so one can’t blame them for hiring her. Plus, she seems to have got into the spirit of it and she didn’t stink up the joint. So I’d say this was a win for the company.

So, finally, the main event. John Cena versus The Miz for the WWE Championship. This began with an outstanding video package recapping The Miz’s rise to the top, going all the way back to his Real World and Million Dollar Tough Enough days. Some people have complained that WWE have frequently made The Miz look too weak during his WWE Championship run but they must have loved this. More than anything he has done so far, this said that The Miz is big-time. Unfortunately, WWE followed this with the low-point of the show. We had a choir come out and sing randomly, if well, before a video package started that basically could have been summed up as “John Cena sucks for Jesus”. I have never been a Cena hater but this was beyond crap. The saccharine treacly nature of this video package was just ridiculous and how anybody thought it would do anything other than even further incense the people that already disliked Cena is beyond me. The only theory that I could come up with was that Vince thought if he bored the audience for long enough they might cheer Cena out of sheer relief. In Atlanta, the buckle of the Bible Belt, seventy thousand people booed a choir! If that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does.

Finally, Cena actually came out, delivering his stupid marine salute and then making his way to the ring, somehow managing not to tell anybody to drink their milk or take their vitamins on the way. The match began. Unfortunately, for three reasons, it sucked big-time. Firstly, the crowd were largely burned out from Undertaker-Triple H. Secondly, the crowd also knew that nothing interesting would happen until The Rock came out, so that kept a lot of them sitting on their hands. Thirdly, John Cena was not at his best and The Miz, vastly improved as he is, is not yet a competent enough hand to cover that. Even Cena’s biggest detractors would agree that he is normally better than this. He seemed to lack energy, to the extent that JR and Lawler were forced to address it on commentary and speculate that something The Miz had done had had some kind of lasting effect.

In any case, the match ended with, of all things, a double count-out and frankly, I was fine with that, since it meant The Miz kept the championship. However, we were, of course, not done. With tedious inevitability The Rock came out and, after a little shenanigans with the Anonymous General Manager, announced that the match would be restarted with no count-outs and no disqualifications. I feared the worst as Cena went straight for the Attitude Adjuster. However, The Miz wriggled free and Cena turned around, straight into a Rock Bottom! One more time we heard JR calling “Rock Bottom! Rock Bottom!” and The Miz took advantage, covering Cena and retaining his title. After that The Rock battered The Miz and gave him the People’s Elbow, thus ensuring that a guy that left seven years ago had left two of the company’s top current stars lying but I didn’t mind. John Cena had not won the title! It left me three for five overall on my predictions but I really didn’t mind that. This story really has the potential to go somewhere now (more on that in my next blog) and the show, despite a major wobble in the last match, had managed to finish on a decent note after all.

All in all, I really enjoyed Wrestlemania XXVII. It was probably better than any of the last three Wrestlemania events, at least, and comparable to some of the best. I wouldn’t say it was the best of all time but it was a lot nearer to that than it was to being the worst. Oh, and one last thing. The world NEEDS to see William Regal on tour with Snoop Dog. Now.

April 5, 2011 | Categories: Pro Wrestling | Tags: Alberto Del Rio, Booker T, Christian, CM Punk, Cody Rhodes, Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler, Edge, Great Khali, Heath Slater, Jack Swagger, Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross, John Cena, John Morrison, Josh Matthews, Kane, Kofi Kingston, LayCool, Michael Cole, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio, Santino, Sheamus, Snooki, Snoop Dog, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Big Show, The Corre, The Miz, The Rock, The Undertaker, Triple H, Trish Stratus, Vickie Guerrero, Vince McMahon, Vladimir Kozlov, William Regal, Wrestlemania, WWE | Leave a comment