WrestleMania 36 (night 1)

This was always going to be a weird one. I’ll admit, I haven’t watched a full WrestleMania since number 20, back in 2004. To be honest, the only reason I was watching up until that point was the insane physicality (strength, agility and that absurd physique) of Brock Lesnar. When he left, I did. And with Randy Couture and Mike Van Arsdale in UFC at that time, real fights actually had better wrestling content than WWE did.

But I’ve been watching for the last few months, with some interest. The matches are not great, but the TV is pretty compelling. And with no actual sport happening, WWE (and their superior rival AEW) have the market pretty much to themselves. They just have no audience in person.

So this was always going to be a weird one because, instead of the stadium shows they usually have for this event, this year’s WrestleMania took place in their own Performance Center (sic), with no audience. The test, therefore, was in making this seem like the annual epic flagship show rather than some local broadcast. Also, as all the commentators had to constantly remind us:

THIS IS TOO BIG FOR JUST ONE NIGHT

The first match did a pretty good job as an opener. The general rule is you want to open a show with an exciting, fast paced match that won’t be so epic as to upstage the main event(s). Here, we had a women’s tag team title match between Kabuki Warriors (Kairi Sane and the brilliant Asuka) and Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross. And it really did the job. The heels (bad guys) had some very good sections of offence on one of the babyfaces (good guys).

The idea is you want the other babyface to tag in and get some revenge on the heels, so it’s all about building that anticipation, with jerk moves, near tags and things like that. Asuka and Sane are such great heels that this worked really well, especially with plucky Alexa Bliss playing the underdog so well. I was a little surprised that the heels didn’t successfully defend, as they are awesome, but the “hot tag” was had, there were some pretty high impact moves leading to the finish, and if there had been an audience, they’d have been satisfied by the outcome. I just like the bad guys, what can I say.

Then things went a bit weird, and there was a sequence of what should have been grudge matches that felt slightly flat. Perhaps this is where a really hot crowd would have picked things up, both in generating atmosphere for the audience at home, and giving something for the TV audience to feed off.

So there was Elias vs. King Corbin, which was thrown together by Rob Gronkowski of all people. It was supposed to be a grudge match, but all I could garner from it was Elias plays annoying songs as his gimmick, Corbin won King of the Ring and is a bit arrogant, and they don’t like each other. The match itself was a bit back and forth, and Corbin won it with a roll-up. I’d actually forgotten that finish a few hours later, and had to look it up for this write-up.

There was Becky Lynch vs. Shayna Baszler, which was supposed to be an uber grudge match, given that Baszler kept attacking Becky, was the first woman (or person?) ever to eliminate everyone else in Elimination Chamber, and was positioned as the greatest threat ever to this distaff Hulk Hogan. Match was okay, and the ending was clever, as Becky countered Baszler’s rear naked choke – with which she’d been putting everyone to sleep – into a pin. It surprised Baszler enough to get the three-count. Surprisingly technical end to what was largely a brawl, and was pretty much another roll-up.

Next was a disappointment between Daniel Bryan and Sami Zayn. This should have been great, but was just Zayn playing chickenshit heel and stalling while Bryan tried wrestling. Decent finish, as Zayn kicked Bryan out of the air as he came off the top turnbuckle, but otherwise not much of a thing.

There was a bizarre ladder match, the exposition of which I seem to have missed. My bad. It was for the SmackDown! men’s tag team championship, but only one member of each team was in the thing. (Oh, Miz of the defending champs fell ill, so it was one from each team.) Again, it wasn’t an epic, but again there was a clever finish. See, to win a ladder match, you need to incapacitate your opponent(s) to a degree sufficient that you can climb a ladder and grab the belt(s) dangling above the ring.

The conclusion of this one saw all three men climb ladders and all grab the belt or the ring it was hanging from. The two babyfaces smacked the heel (John Morrison, the non-Miz half of the defending champions) in unison, sending him flying – but he was holding the belt! Even though he was pretty much unconscious, ridiculously ripped body dangling limply on a horizontal ladder, Morrison retained the titles for his team. Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon or Edge and Christian vs. The Hardy Boyz this most definitely was not.*

Kevin Owens (kind of the people’s wrestler, as he’s a bit softer-built than most) vs. Seth Rollins (annoying pretty boy who’s actually well cast as the pompous “Monday Night Messiah”) was another grudge match. Because they started with big moves, after about two minutes, both wrestlers were in “I’m dead” mode.

Rollins got disqualified after hitting Owens with the ring bell, so Owens got the match restarted as a no disqualification one. As is usually the case with no DQ matches, we had one massive shot, a lot of lying about, rinse and repeat. Again a touch anticlimactic, as they followed up a very impressive elbowdrop from the top of the stage decoration with a bit of mucking about where “KO” dragged Rollins into the ring, hit him with a stunner and pinned him. It would have been more impressive if they’d made a call that falls count anywhere and the pin came after the big spot.

I almost forgot about this one (sorry, this is a long post): Goldberg vs. Braun Strowman. Strowman, like Dolph Ziggler, Jack Swagger and Brodus Clay, has one of those awful made-up names that is neither a real name like Brock Lesnar or Kurt Angle, nor a proper “wrestling” name like Randy Savage or the Ultimate Warrior. Oh well.

This one came about because Goldberg – two decades past his prime – inexplicably beat the Fiend (Bray Wyatt) for the universal title, so named because I guess that’s more impressive than a world title, and his challenger Roman Reigns dropped out because of self isolation. So Strowman stepped in because reasons. The match itself was embarrassing. Goldberg hit a few spears which Strowman kicked out of, and then Strowman hit Goldberg with a few powerslams, which he failed to kick out of. Great.

The night finished with an absolutely pathetic match between two legends: The Undertaker and AJ Styles. Anyone who knows wrestling knows that these two have been awesome. Styles carried the TNA (ugh, actually stood for Total Nonstop Action until they rebranded as Impact Wrestling) brand almost singlehandedly since about 2002. And Undertaker has been one of the most iconic WWF (then WWE) wrestlers since his 1990 debut.

But for whatever reason, the ageing (aged?) Undertaker was in need of an ego trip. So their “boneyard match” was an embarrassing pre-taped Z-movie fight scene in which Undertaker not only destroyed (wrestling lingo for ruining someone’s career is “burying” them. In this one, Undertaker literally buried Styles. In a grave) Styles, but he also embarrased Styles’ crew and – when a bunch of hooded figures appeared – he beat them all up too. Because, you know, he’s a tough guy!

I don’t know if this was an “epic” way for Styles to retire (shot like an episode of Dog: The Bounty Hunter), or if he somehow has to continue his career after this humiliation, in which he was beaten, bloodied and begging. I’m intrigued to see what happens next, as Undertaker clearly isn’t a full time wrestler anymore.

So excited for night two, right?

* I know we shouldn’t mention the guy who killed his family, but if we’re talking ladder matches, the best one ever is, gulp, Chris Jericho vs. He Who Must Not Be Named from Royal Rumble 2001

WrestleMania 36 (night 2)

Okay, are we ready for night 2? Let’s hope this one is a bit better. While I was mildly scathing of a lot of what happened in night 1, I am impressed at how many matches they managed to put together (obviously, this was not going to be two nights at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ stadium) at short notice. Not only that, but how many of the matches had a solid build, a justification for existing. Never forget:

THIS IS TOO BIG FOR JUST ONE NIGHT

We opened with Charlotte Flair vs. Rhea Ripley, and this was great. Probably the best actual match of the event. Charlotte was such a great dickhead that she reminded me of her dad. Even the story of the match was like a Ric Flair contest.

Next was Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley, and it was short but sweet. Basic set up of Black being the striker trying to evade the power moves of Lashley. They both had some good spots, the bulky Lashley had his working shoes on, but he got caught by Black’s finishing move the black mass (spinning heel kick), which the organisation are pushing as instant death.

Otis vs. Dolph Ziggler was a fun bit of soap opera. Otis is a chunky tag team wrestler, and his team – Heavy Machinery – are there to appeal to the everyman. They like beer and pies, and they’re not sculpted from granite. Story here was Otis had a date with his dream woman Mandy Rose. Her tag team partner Sonya Deville was in cahoots with bad guy Dolph Ziggler, who stole Mandy away. Otis was mad. So they had a fight.

This was actually really well done, as I usually like the Ziggler kind of character. He reminds me of the late great Mr. Perfect in look, demeanour and the fact they are/were great workhorses. But the narrative had me rooting for Otis, so well played. Otis obviously won the match and the affections of Mandy.

Edge vs. Randy Orton (last man standing) of hype behind it, but was awful. It was a slo-mo fight across the whole Performance Center. Story was that Edge had been retired for nine years with a neck injury and, just as he was ready for a return, his ex-friend Orton reinjured him. Why, Orton, why?! So they built this for a while, Orton had a strangely compelling motivation for this (“I love you too much to see you hurt by someone other than me; go home and be a family man”). But the match was aimless and felt never ending. It was shown up by two similar but far superior NXT brawls from Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano that bookended it, and it had a weird “gym equipment hanging” spot that evoked the murder-suicide of Chris Benoit. Grim.

Street Profits vs. Austin Theory and Angel Garza. This was a nothing match for the Raw tag titles. It was quite fun; both teams have a lot of potential. The Street Profits sometimes seemed a bit lost in there, and the finish was weird. Austin Theory had Angelo Dawkins up for his TKO, hit it and went for the pin. Montez Ford then came off the top rope, hitting Theory with a splash, which you have to imagine would also have hurt Dawkins. But Dawkins just rolled over and pinned Theory to retain. No biggie, I guess Dawkins had some wherewithal despite the damage. This is the issue with chucking together a bunch of matches at the last minute: if the participants aren’t very experienced, they need time to plan the match, which was clearly missing here.

Bayley vs. Sasha Banks vs. Naomi vs. Lacey Evans vs. Tamina Snuka. This was one that was thrown together at the last minute, by WWE “legend” Paige, but was a lot of fun. With this kind of match, I always have to check how someone wins. It could be first to get a pin, or it could be elimination. This was elimination. With Tamina as the big bruiser in this one, the others spent a lot of their time teaming up to get rid of her. Otherwise, you get this kind of thing:

Image credit: whatculture.com

The rest of it was pretty good. Sasha and Bayley teaming up against the faces and teasing dissent, but they made up in time to cheat to win, just as it seemed Lacey was going to win the title. A fun match.

Hold up…

John Cena vs. “the Fiend” Bray Wyatt was up next and easily the most entertaining thing over the two nights. Since I’ve been back on the wrestling, Wyatt has been the best thing in it. I missed most of the era of the Wyatt family, which seemed awesomely dark. But this new version of him, which plays on Wyatt’s defeat against Cena at WrestleMania 30, is like a mix of Mr Rogers, Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Stephen King.

Like Randy Orton before him, Bray Wyatt and his Slipknot-esque, silent alter ego the Fiend, has been on a run of claiming the scalps of veterans and legends. But Wyatt went one further and put photos of them on the wall of his “funhouse” with Xs over their eyes. Cena had always haunted him, though. So he challenged him to a Firefly Funhouse match.

Like the Boneyard match a night earlier, nobody knew what this entailed. Unlike the Boneyard match, this was absolute brilliance rather than complete shit. Wyatt and Cena went to a fictional arena, and Wyatt took Cena through his career, forcing him to relive his biggest moments, from his debut against Kurt Angle (which I remember), through his Thuganomics era, to the fateful WM30 match. It was executed brilliantly, almost Lynchian in the way it subverted traditional narrative and pulled the essence of the Cena and Wyatt characters apart. Perfect end to the show.

But…

There was sadly one more match to go. Brock Lesnar vs. Drew McIntyre for the not-Universal-but-still-important belt. The build up for this had been very one-sided: McIntyre eliminated Lesnar from the Royal Rumble with his “claymore kick”, before winning that match and challenging Lesnar. He then hit Lesnar a few more times with the claymore kick the other week, really ramping up the suspense, right?

The match itself was almost identical to the Goldberg vs. Strowman match from the night before: Lesnar hit Drew with a few F5s, all of which were kicked out of, and McIntyre paid him back with a few claymore kicks, which were not kicked out of. End of show.

There was definitely a rushed feel to a lot of this, even the matches that had been a long time coming. And it’s disappointing that main even matches seem to have devolved into constant special moves with no build, no pacing, no storytelling. Is this what WWE is nowadays?

tl;dr: it’s the WrestleMania 36 analysis!

As if 2,000 words weren’t enough, I’m doing a summary post about WrestleMania. I know, I’m droning on as much as the Edge vs. Randy Orton match.

First thing to take away is: I think it’s great that the show went ahead. People are starved for live performances, and with both theatre and sport not happening, the pro wrestling is a perfect mid point for people to reduce their withdrawals.

I was impressed by how quickly the plans shifted from one night in a stadium to two niights at the Performance Center. They built up a lot of matches with an actual reason for happening.

The flipside of that is that a lot of the matches felt like they weren’t well planned out. Now, if you’ve got a bunch of veterans, that’s not an issue: they can play off each other, if not a crowd. But the veterans were in very scripted matches (Edge vs. Orton last man standing, Undertaker vs. AJ Styles in a boneyard match, Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena in a firefly funhouse match), meaning greener performers were in half-cooked in-ring matches.

Generally, the women’s matces were the best. Becky Lynch vs. Shayna Baszler was an exception in that it felt unpolished, and all about the idea of Becky countering the rear naked choke into a pin. But the women’s tag title match was fast paced and interesting, the 5-way title match was a lot of fun, and Charlotte vs. Rhea Ripley was like a Ric Flair match in its narrative.

The most worrying thing, booking aside, was the execution of the men’s heavyweight title matches. Goldberg vs. Strowman was complete shit, but Goldberg is about 200 years old at this point, and Strowman was a last minute replacement for the immunosuppressed Roman Reigns. But Lesnar vs. McIntyre was exactly the same, has been in the works since at least January, and they can both go. Why was it so bad?

I get that the last couple of decades have seen an increase in people kicking out of finishing moves, but for both of your biggest matches to be nothing but finishing moves is embarrassing. I assume as some point we’ll find out. It can’t be time constraints because both nights aired on WWE’s own streaming network (and there were other matches you could have taken the time from).

The less said about the boneyard match, the better. Some online have said this was a good segment. Don’t fall for it. It was as embarrassing to watch as it should have been for the performers to participate in.

Braun Strowman as universal champion seems to be a case of unintended consequences: Bray Wyatt took the title from Seth Rollins, which made sense as Wyatt’s Fiend character is unstoppable. Goldberg beat him because he insisted he do so (the kids wouldn’t want to see the hero losing to a monster, apparently). I assume Goldberg was to drop the title to Roman Reigns. But with Reigns self-isolating and the Fiend possibly bigger than a belt (in that Undertaker sense), Goldberg had to drop it to someone. Let’s pick a big guy then.

The saving grace was the firefly funhouse match. It was the most creative pro-wrestling… thing that I’ve seen in years. I liked Cody Rhodes on commentary for AEW recently, showing his love of the game and his knowledge of its history, but this match was a perfect example of “show, don’t tell”. Wyatt and Cena went through both of their careers in a twisted This Is Your Life episode as well as parodising anything from mid-90s WWF commentary, the homoerotic Hulk Hogan era and the sleazy complacency of NWO. More of this, please: this is how you really make a virtue of having no audience.

So, what next? Drew McIntyre will be the champ for a decent while (at least the lack of audience meant we were spared the pathetic “you deserve it” chants, where any pretence at suspending one’s disbelief goes out of the window). Lesnar, Cena, Undertaker and Goldberg (and Edge? AJ Styles?) will step back, maybe for good. If I didn’t know better, it would seem that the men in general are taking a back seat to the women, if you look at match quality and personality. The future will be interesting.

The matches (best to worst):

  1. Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena
  2. Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte Flair
  3. Kabuki Warriors vs. Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross
  4. John Morrison vs. Jimmy Uso vs. Kofi Kingston
  5. Bayley vs. Lacey Evans vs. Naomi vs. Sasha Banks vs. Tamina
  6. Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley
  7. Kevin Owens vs. Seth Rollins
  8. Becky Lynch vs. Shayna Baszler
  9. Street Profits vs. Angel Garza and Austin Theory
  10. Sami Zayn vs. Daniel Bryan
  11. Edge vs. Randy Orton
  12. Otis vs. Dolph Ziggler
  13. King Corbin vs. Elias
  14. Goldberg vs. Brawn Strowman
  15. Brock Lesnar vs. Drew McIntyre
  16. Undertaker vs. AJ Styles

Mad Men episode 1

I’ve started Mad Men a few times, and never managed to get past about the sixth episode. Not because it’s bad (it seems brilliant). I just don’t manage it.

I tried it about ten years ago, on my own. It was on that long ago, right? I had seasons one and two on blu ray. Then I watched it – in sync – with an ex from our respective houses. But that could only last so long. I’m now watching it with the current, in person, again on Netflix.

It really is not bad. I can see why people rave about it: in terms of reputation it seems to sit on a level just below the Sopranos and the Wire, and just above Breaking Bad and Fargo. Like Fargo, you can lose yourself in the cinematography.

Forget for a moment the masculine fantasies of smoking, drinking whisky and napping in your office. What I love about the sense of place the show evokes is the sharp suits, the dizzying skyscraper shots and how cool everything is when it’s soundtracked by some hard bop.

One thing I have noticed on rewatching the first episode is how unflinching the writing is in its gaze upon the chauvanistic behaviour of the titular Mad Men. Don Draper, our (anti)hero, seems to be on the side of good when defending his new secretary Peggy when she’s verbally set upon by a particularly unpleasant weasel of a colleague.* But then he storms out of a meeting with a client, insisting he “won’t be spoken to like that by a woman“. Perish the thought.

So there’s a lot to be getting on with: aesthetically beautiful; interestingly conflicted characters (only at the very end of the episode do we learn that charming womaniser Draper has a family. He may also have unacknowledged PTSD); good cast dynamic. I hope that this time I can last the course. Mad Men was, of course, apparently the last show from TV’s golden age.

* By the end of the episode, Peggy and said colleague are getting it on.