The WWE WrestleMania 36 Reaction by Kelly Dishnow
Welcome to The WrestleMania Reaction, where I offer my take on the “the event too big for one night”. As always, you can check out John’s full in-depth report here.
Night 1 on Saturday:
I missed the kickoff match between Cesaro and Drew Gulak due to technical difficulties with my Roku device. I saw that Cesaro won with his old UFO finisher, so I’ll have to check it out this week.
After Stephanie McMahon speaks, we get a couple of nice opening montages for America the Beautiful and the usual PPV opening video.
We are welcomed to the show by Rob Gronkowski, who introduces us to Mojo Rawley. It was thankfully short.
Our opening match is for the Woman’s Tag Team Titles between The Kabuki Warriors and Alexa Bliss/Nikki Cross. The Kabuki Warriors did a good job of keeping the noise level up to make it feel like maybe there were a couple of fans in attendance. The match itself was pretty good. A couple of spots revealed editing cuts but it didn’t take away from the match too much. The Kabuki Warriors came up with some interesting spots along the way, like Kairi’s Insane Elbow to break up a pinfall attempt (one of those editing cuts I mentioned) and the Doomsday Device Powerbomb. In the end, Alexa Bliss botched her Twisted Bliss finisher to pick up the win and tag team titles for her team. Funny moment afterwards when they showed the replay with no audio, you could still hear Cole and JBL doing the commentary for the spot. At this point, they should just make the titles NXT exclusive since there’s a large enough roster to support the title. Outside of The Kabuki Warriors and Alexa Bliss/Nikki Cross, there are no real teams to defend against since The Iiconics got banished to obscurity.
Up next is King Corbin and Elias. After getting a replay from Smackdown two weeks ago where Corbin tossed Elias off the perch to the concrete floor, Corbin wants to be declared the winner of his match. Instead, Elias shows up and cracks Corbin with the guitar that makes an impressive sound in the empty Performance Center. Unfortunately, that was the only impressive thing in the match as they go on to bore the crowd to death for nine minutes before Elias finally wins. I honestly do not see what people see in Corbin. He has replaced Curtis Axel as the WWE Charismatic Black Hole and Elias deserves far better.
The Raw Woman’s Title match is next between Becky Lynch and Shayna Baszler. The match was a bit on the short side and pretty decent. The main story going was Shayna trying to put Becky down with the Kirifuda Clutch but in the end, Becky countered into a pinning predicament and gets the win to retain her title. After the match, Shayna just leaves and does not attack Becky. I found that odd for all of that buildup and nothing afterwards. Rumor has it that Vince has soured on her so perhaps she’ll be shipped back to NXT. Not sure where this will go but we’ll see.
The Intercontinental Title match is up next with Daniel Bryan taking on Sami Zayn. Sami keeps the gimmick up by constantly running away from Bryan. Bryan eventually gets his hands on Zayn but Zayn retains in the end after a distraction from Nakamura and Cesaro. The match itself was ok, but Zayn is limited in what he can do so it wasn’t what we would have expected out of these two. I’ll give it a little bit of time before I start to question the decision to put the IC title on Zayn. I don’t see any upside yet.
The Smackdown Tag Team Titles Ladder Match is up next to keep our title match streak going with Kofi Kingston, Jimmy Uso, and John Morrison. It is weird to see this as a singles match instead of a tag match, but it was the best they could do at the very last minute. The match itself was the car crash we were expecting with the empty PC adding additional reverb. All three were given their moments to shine and crazy bump spots. In the end, all three were fighting over the belts at the top of ladders when Morrison got knocked off the ladder and the titles fell with him. That was a very unique finish for the match. The match was great, as expected from these three, and the unique finish fit the in-ring story perfectly.
The Kevin Owens/Seth Rollins match is up next. Rollins’s PC entrance looks pretty cool. We are treated to a really good fight between the two with an unexpected Dusty finish after Rollins rings Owens bell with the ring bell. Owens challenges Rollins to finish the match with no DQ and no rules. Rollins agrees and fight continues. Rollins does a job keeping the brawl going until Owens returns the bell ringing and sets Rollins up on the announce table. Owens climbs the WrestleMania sign behind them and asks “How’s this for a WrestleMania moment?” before jumping off and putting Rollins through the announce table. Nice touch there Kevin. The airbags used to cushion the fall got caught on camera, but oh well. A stunner by Owens ends the match. It was very well done and Owens got a WrestleMania moment with that dive. I saw on Twitter that Owens was planning on doing some kind of dive off the pirate ship at the stadium, even scouting the ship for potential spots.
The 24/7 Title hijinks was up next with R-Truth, Mojo Rawley, and Rob Gronkowski. Gronk knocked Truth down and went for the cover, but Mojo turned on him by pulling Gronk off of Truth and pinning Truth for the title. Shame to see that friendship already dissolve so quickly. Not.
Universal Title Match is up next after Anonymous Smackdown General Manager Michael Cole randomly said on Smackdown that Goldberg would be defending against Braun Strowman instead of Roman Reigns. Our quick finisher fest ends with Braun Strowman capturing the Universal Title two years too late to complete the Triple Crown. I’m really happy for Strowman and his win but we all know that this was supposed to be Roman’s moment.
Our closing bout for Night One is the Boneyard Match between AJ Styles and The Undertaker. A hearse arrives and take a coffin out of the back to reveal, AJ Styles! Nice touch there. The American Badass The Undertaker arrives and the fight was on. It was shot in something totally not like WWE presentations. It had a very movie like vibe to it, sorta like some of the Lucha Underground stuff. Gallows and Anderson eventually show up with evil druids and Undertaker dispatches them. With Undertaker down in the grave, Styles goes to bury him but Undertaker arises though the power of pretape. After some additional crazy stunts, Undertaker dispatches of Styles and buries him in the grave. Nice touch of his hand sticking out of the grave. Metallica plays and Undertaker rides out triumphant. This was one of those things that you’ll either love or hate. I personally loved it. It was something so out of the box and they pulled it off perfectly. It was the perfect way to end Night One and left you wanting more from Night Two.
Night 2 on Sunday:
I saw Night Two’s kickoff match between Natalya and Liv Morgan. It was a decent bout with the expected result of Morgan going over Nattie.
Stephanie McMahon opens up the show again with brief comments before last night’s WrestleMania PPV opener replays. Rob Gronkowski is back to welcome us back for Night Two. No sign of Mojo Rawley anywhere.
The Night Two opener is surprisingly the NXT Woman’s Title match between Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley. The referee was abiding by the social distancing guidelines throughout the match as all of the other refs had. There was way too much distracting screaming and groaning going on between these two. We do get a really good match between the two, albeit a tad on the long side. In the end, The Shovel Queen puts another one down as Rhea taps to the Figure Eight. The world does not need another Charlotte title reign, but at least she’s banished to NXT for a little bit. This outcome is only acceptable if Rhea is the one to defeat Becky for the title soon.
Up next has the random match of Aleister Black and Bobby Lashley. Black had some really cool looking gear on and I wonder what the entrance was planned to look like for him. Anyway, since Lana was in town, Lashley got a match once he was out of quarantine from his South Africa tour. Lana provided us with more screaming and I wish we could have just piped in crowd noise. Lashley was looking impressive against Black but it all went astray when Lana wanted Lashley to spear Black instead of the powerslam. Lashley obliged and ate Black Mass instead. The match was decent for just being thrown together for no real reason. Black looked good in the effort. Lashley looked decent as well, just needs to get rid of the noisy boat anchor that hangs around outside the ring. What was the point of that storyline anyway? Nobody really got over in the end.
We get a replay of the 24/7 hijinks from last night and Charly Caruso is up in the podium interviewing Gronk. Gronk said he’s won three major championships in his life and now wants the 24/7 title tonight. Charly wishes him luck and sorry Gronk, the 24/7 title is nothing like the Super Bowl title. Thanks for playing though.
We get a replay from Smackdown on the whole Dolph Ziggler/Mandy Rose reveal. It was great to see them go the GTV route for the reveal. We don’t know who the hooded figure is yet, but best guess is Mustafa Ali. Ziggler comes down to the ring with Sonya Deville and Otis comes to the ring alone, as Tucker was injured at Smackdown. Ziggler does his best to make Otis look good. As Otis was mounting the comeback, Deville did the ref distraction spot so Ziggler can kick Otis low. Cue up Mandy’s music and here she is in her gear fight with Deville and toss her in the ring. Mandy returns the low kick favor and Otis tops it off with the Caterpillar. In the end, the good guy gets the girl and Otis carries Mandy off to the back. The match was decent and about all we expected. Ziggler finally gets a one on one match at Mania and still loses as always. Ziggler did his job to make Otis look good. I’d like to see a Heavy Machinery tag title run at some point. Mandy is likely doing a face turn run and Deville will probably become the Janetty of Fire and Desire.
Up next is the Randy Orton and Edge Last Man Standing Match. Orton starts off with a sneak attack before the bell. We should have gotten a really intense personal fight between these two. Instead, we get a long drawn out plodding fight that did give us a really nice tour of the Performance Center facility. They had a couple of crazy spots but they kept it as safe as possible. There were a few camera editing cuts that should have been used to cut down on the match. After going about 15-20 minutes too long, Edge finally puts Orton down with a conchairto on top of a semi truck trailer. The match left Ciampa and Gargano wondering why it was amateur night at WrestleMania.
Back in the ring arena, the Jobber Squad is chasing Mojo Rawley around for the 24/7 title. This is not social distancing guys. I think there’s more than 10 in the group. They get over by the perch where Gronk was. Gronk jumps and everyone is nice enough to catch him. Gronk finds Mojo in the pile and pins him for the 24/7 title. Gronk then leaves. Now that Gronk has achieved his life dream of becoming 24/7 Champion, maybe he’ll go away now forever.
We get another title defense as The Street Profits defend the Raw Tag Team Titles against Austin Theory and Angel Garza. Montez Ford can just bring energy in anywhere he is. The match was short but good and the ending was never in doubt. Theory hits Dawkins with the TKO and Ford breaks up the pinfall attempt with a frog splash. A rolling switch later, The Street Profits retain. After the match, Garza and Theory attack The Street Profits and Zelina Vega gets involved. This brings Ford’s wife, Bianca Belair out to lay out Vega while the Profits take out Garza and Theory. The Street Profits return to the ring to celebrate with Bianca. Hopefully, Bianca is added to The Street Profits and she can go on her own against Vega. The post-match activities were better than the actual match.
Titus O’Neil is shown in the perch declaring he is now the host of WrestleMania. Who cares?
The Fatal Five Way Smackdown Woman’s Title match between Bayley, Sasha Banks, Lacey Evans, Naomi, and Tamina is up next. They try to make Tamina look like the threat she isn’t and the four other ladies team up to take her out. That leaves the four likely contenders left in the ring. Naomi was the first to go after a decent effort to leave Lacey in a two on one against Sasha and Bayley. The obvious miscommunication between Sasha and Bayley happens and they square up but Lacey knocks Sasha out to get rid of her without any interference from Bayley. Bayley and Lacey battle before Sasha returns to wipe out Lacey so Bayley can retain the title. I guess we are just going to have to wait longer for the Sasha/Bayley feud that WWE has fumbled for years. At this point, I don’t think anybody would really care even if they put on their Takeover performances. The path was laid out perfectly once the Woman’s Tag Titles were introduced and that got aborted once it looked like the Bella Twins were available for a tag title run that never happened.
The Firefly Funhouse Match between John Cena and “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt was up next. We get a gimmick trip back through time and I’m surprised we didn’t bump into Scott Bakula along the way. It was an interesting take on the John Cena character throughout the years, but I don’t think it was as good as the Boneyard match. I’ll give them credit for trying something else outside of the box with successful execution. The shocked Titus afterwards was sorta funny.
Our main event is the WWE Title match between Brock Lesnar and Drew McIntyre. Brock used two actual moves, german suplex and F5, while Drew only used the Claymore Kick. The match went a tad longer than Goldberg’s match and Drew kept Claymore Kicking Brock until he pinned him for his very first WWE title. Drew deserved a far better match in front of a roaring crowd to celebrate his first title but this is what we got dealt to us. I’m very happy for Drew and excited to see the Chosen One finally lay claim to his prize.
Let’s look at the Highs and Lows:
The Highs
Drew McIntyre finally won the WWE Championship. A very well deserved honor for him and another WrestleMania where a deserving individual wins a world title. Happy for Braun’s title win too but we all know why he got it, so not that special feeling.
The Boneyard match was fantastic. It was great to see WWE try something outside of the box and not screw it up. The Firefly Funhouse match was good but I liked the Boneyard match more.
Night One had the better matches on it. Owens/Rollins, Smackdown Tag Title, and Boneyard matches were the highlights of the night.
The Lows
The Last Man Standing match was a big let down. It went on for way too long and Edge deserved a much better return match against a familiar opponent.
Night Two’s matches just couldn’t hold up to the Night One matches. Outside of the Firefly Funhouse match, nothing really stood out as must see.
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A couple of overall thoughts. The WWE did the best they could given all of the limitations that were in place (social distancing, wrestlers getting sick day of or before, gathering sizes). Even with it being taped in an empty Performance Center (mostly), I think that the overall presentation was very good. It is definitely going to be a memorable WrestleMania.
Be safe and stay home.
That’s all I’ve got, until next time.