Ramblemania 28

Wrestlemania XXVIII
Sun-Life Stadium, Miami, Florida
April 1st, 2012

Seeing this with people, as per the case with last year's Wrestlemania. Considering I'm writing this just an hour after the show's conclusion, I want to try and gather my thoughts on blog while they're fresh and not worry about cohesiveness or anything like that. Whatever goes through, goes through and will no doubt get minor refinements later.

First off, the outdoor stadium set-up they have going on looks really good... the chopper shots from above really emphasizes the overall size of the show and looks like there might be hundreds of thousands of people, despite being around 78,000+ people in actuality.

Sheamus defeated Daniel Bryan with a Brogue Kick to win the World Title in literally a short span of time. I think the entrances lasted longer than the match. This was a fucking disgrace. I can sort of understand the context of the finish - Daniel Bryan's reign ending as quickly as it began - but I doubt that the creative brainfarts at WWE were thinking the same thing. This was fucking horrendous, an embarrassment, and a farce, because out of all the matches on the card, this was the one I was looking forward to the most, especially considering that this match was supposed to happen at last year's Wrestlemania (for the US Title), only to be bumped off the card for a stupid Snoop Dog session or whatever that fucking thing was. It was supposed to be vindication for the snub. What a waste.

Kane defeated Randy Orton in an alright match. Wasn't great or anything, but at the very least, it wasn't boring. And Kane did win, which makes sense if they want to push him as a monster threat rather than ineffective odds overcome by SuperCena or whatever. For what it was, it was alright, but nothing really special.

Big Show defeated Cody Rhodes to win the Intercontinental title. Good for Show on winning a championship that he never held before... certainly nice to see him have a worthwhile Mania moment, but I honestly didn't care for the match and basically didn't pay too much attention.

I didn't catch the Divas match... I was too busy taking a shit.

And then there's the Undertaker/HHH Hell-In-A-Cell match with Shawn Michaels as the special referee. People are already calling this match of the show... apparently, I missed something because this match was damn-near sleep inducing. I often joke about HHH matches being the cure for insomnia, but this almost fit the damn bill. If it wasn't the molasses-paced plodding, it was the horrible bits of "acting" scattered throughout, long pauses that dragged on for fifty years, and a whole bunch of false finishes trying to fool people into thinking that HHH has the slightest chance of winning in this match that would mean absolutely NOTHING in the long run.

There was never a moment among any of the false bullshit finishes that I thought the streak was threatened. There was never a moment where I thought HHH was going to get the win. There was never a moment where I believed the streak wouldn't go to 20 - 0. Even with suspension of disbelief, I knew that Taker was going to win this one based on the fact that HHH already tried TWICE to end the streak and failed. There was no third time's a charm thoughts crossing my mind. I already knew this was going end with Taker victorious. Therefore, all these false finishes meant nothing. I never fell for it. Perhaps, I was too smart for my own good or perhaps it's gotten to the point where these guys have gotten so predictable at times with their formula brawl that it's almost sad.

There was no point in putting this within Hell In A Cell; it was completely wasted and utterly worthless. This whole thing easily could have done without the Cell to begin with because they never really do anything with the Cell; a common issue I have with most Cell matches in recent years. The whole match felt... boring. Even the paper cut's worth of blood that made it through without fifty EMTs stopping the match to clean it off didn't do anything for this match. I simply didn't care and the match never gave me a reason to care. And if I don't care, then I have no reason to follow and I end up falling asleep or wait for the next match. This didn't feel like an end of an era; hell, I don't even know what this "era" that's supposedly ending is all about. Nobody's retiring, the streak didn't end, nothing that merits being the end of anything happened. They had a chance to really step up their game and they never did. I'm glad they didn't end Wrestlemania with this match, because otherwise, I'd be sleeping.

If there was any positive to be had here, it's that HHH and Undertaker won't be fighting each other at Mania 29, HHH didn't win the match, and that the HHH/Taker encounter from last year's Mania was made to look a lot better than this one. Sorry, folks. I know a lot of people enjoyed this one, but I'm not one of them.

Team Johnny defeated Team Teddy after Eve lived up to the Hoeski name by making Zack Ryder even more worthless than before. I honestly didn't care about the match.

CM Punk defeated Chris Jericho, retaining the WWE Championship in an awesome match. Lots of nice counters, psychology, told a great story, and wasn't plodding. And it didn't need extraneous cells or special referees to get the job done. Big props to Punk and Jericho for delivering the goods at Wrestlemania.

The Rock defeated John Cena in a so-so match. Nothing spectacular and nothing terrible, but certainly not worth a year's wait. If nothing else, the match actually made me care slightly about this feud and got me interested, which is something that a year's worth of promos, Twitter wars, and whatnots didn't do... so in that regard, it scores some points. But perhaps more than anything, this was a match that really could have gone either way, had that level of genuine unpredictably, and told a story being two guys who really needed to win to validate their side of the feud, so I was kinda pleased to see Rocky win it. This was slightly better than the HHH/Taker snorefest in that I wasn't falling asleep during this one... although I groaned every time Cena did a bearhug, which was more often than I cared for. And the introductions were a bit... meh.

In the end, it was far better than I had expected it to be, but not as good as it was hyped up to be. At the very least, it'll be enough to hold some people over until the eventual rematch comes along six to eight months down the line. But now the question is where does Cena go from here now that he got his ass handed to him by a part-timer who's going back to Hollywood? Who knows? Who cares?

Overall, I thought this year's Mania was far better than last year's. Not one of the best ever, but certainly a good enough show for what it was worth.