Wrestlemania XL N2 (4.7.24) review 

 

April 7, 2024 

 

WRESTLEMANIA WEEK REVIEW #20 

 

Source: The Award-Winning WWE Network ($9.99 per month) 

 

We’re at Lincoln Financial Field in Philly for N2 of Wrestlemania. N1 disappointed. Sure, it was great to see Sami Zayn hit a turnbuckle brainbuster and the Rhea match was ok but otherwise, it fell short of expectations. Tonight, WWE have the chance to apologise for those shortcomings. I appreciate that you can’t have rice pudding two nights in a row, but we had no rice pudding yesterday. Hosts are Michael Cole, Pat McAfee and Corey Graves. Oh, and CM Punk for the opener.  

 

On a personal note, I’ve found Wrestlemania hard work so far this year. Which is why I gave up on watching stuff live. I’ve opted for getting some sleep and I feel good for the first time all week. I think I’d rather watch the show on VOD with a clear brain than watch it live struggling to stay awake. I do miss the banter and comradeship of hanging out with people in group chats though. Wrestling, like most things in life, is better with friends. 

 

If I was going to follow through on my promise to ‘review everything’ I’m only halfway. Fuck.  

 

To kick the show off we have…Stephanie McMahon. Huh. I was hoping we were done with this family of carnie scumbags.  

She happily calls this the first Wrestlemania of the Paul Leveque Era. Can’t spell “renaissance” eh? A quick word on Samantha Irwin, because I saw people putting her over yesterday. She’s one of the best ring announcers the company has ever had. Straight fire.  

 

WWE World Championship  

Seth Rollins (c) vs. Drew McIntyre  

Drew is accompanied by warriors. Seth by clowns. I think that about sums up their characters and wrestling styles. Drew immediately hits a Claymore. Hey, he didn’t build up his finisher meter. Was he taunting the whole time or something? Seth’s whole gimmick in this match is selling the knee. Drew chopblocks it early forcing them to do a limb match. 

 

Of course, they don’t stick with it because this is Wrestlemania so we have to pop off all the signature moves. Pop the crowd. I prefer them dodging moves like the “Super Stomp”/Claymore bit. Wrestlemania big matches have increasingly become “big spot” followed by kick out, followed by big spot. Which means finisher spamming. People seem to like it, what do I know. 

 

Seth kicks out of three Claymores as Punk goads him from ringside saying Drew needs to hit the “GTS”. A fourth Claymore does it and Drew wins the other world title. The one Roman doesn’t care about. This was a laugh because it was so stupid, and I can see why people would enjoy this.  

 

Post Match: CM Punk is still raging, and calls Seth “compromised” after working 45 minutes last night, with a broken knee and back. Is he just annoyed the Young Bucks are going to show footage of him attacking Jack Perry this week?  

“I can’t hear a word you’re saying because I have cans on” – Punk ruining Drew. McIntyre keeps going after Punk, so he gets a beating for it. Well, you kinda brought that on yourself brrrrrother. With Drew down, having been dinged by Punk’s arm brace, Damien Priest is cashing in. 

 

WWE World Championship 

Drew McIntyre (c) vs. Damien Priest  

Priest hits his finish and wins the belt. “Holy shit” – Pat McAfee. Hahaha. I guess there were no real plans for McIntyre to carry the belt and this wasn’t even his title match originally, so this makes sense.  

 

Honestly, this has been an entertaining opening 40:00. It already has more fire than yesterday.  

 

Philadelphia Street Fight 

Pride (Angelo Dawkins, Bobby Lashley & Montez Ford) vs. Final Testament (Karrion Kross, Akam & Rezar)  

Snoop Dogg joins the commentation station. Referee is Bubba Ray Dudley. Seeing him from a distance, I thought it was Alex Jones. Is this Infowars? Paul Ellering is on his first Wrestlemania here because they replaced him with Sunny when LOD were on Mania. Snoop’s denial that he only had one drink before starting the show lines up with the Street Profits music. Commentary gold. He’s very entertaining during this.  

 

Bobby Lashley is the same age as me. What the fuck. If I took one bump right now, I’d tap out. Out come the kendo sticks. “Ooooh, that’s that whooping stick” – Snoop. He also provides advice. “Get yo head on a swivel”. “Ohhh, watch out now!” I’m surprised the table spot is Scarlett and B-Fab on a Russian legsweep off the apron.  

Karrion has beef with Bubba for not being able to count properly. If you think that’s bad, wait till you read some of his bullshit takes. They do this whole “get the tables” business and the pre-cut table just falls apart immediately. Kross goes through a second table and the Pride takes the win. This was fun crap. Snoop made it better. 

 

Video Control takes us backstage where Paul Heyman explains Bloodline rules means no DQ, no count out, anything goes.  

 

LA Knight vs. AJ Styles 

I cannot fathom how LA Shite has gotten over but here we are. This isn’t good and is the first real misfire of N2, which has so far been a blast. They work in some high spots, but they don’t mean anything, and the VT pre-match implied this was a heated rivalry. AJ decides to make it a leg match, which leads to LA Knight’s awful inconsistent selling.  

 

The worst part is LA putting his knees up on an AJ springboard 450 and he doesn’t even sell it. AJ is rolling around and Knight is up doing some stupid wobbly legged selling. Good lord, he’s useless. It’s made worse by him being in with AJ. Knight ends up pushing AJ off the ropes and hitting his BFT finish. This ruined the momentum of the show. LA Knight stinks. Imagine having a bad match with AJ Styles? That’s all on you, pal. Shane McMahon had a good match with AJ Styles!  

 

Hall of Fame Class 

I skipped the HOF show because it’s painfully long and the crowd are awful. US Express (hahaha, what a 6-month run that was, eh?), Bull Nakano (yes!), Thunderbolt Patterson, Muhammad Ali, Lia Maivia and Paul Heyman. The only laughable introduction is the US Express, but they used it to get Bray Wyatt some love. I get that. I love that Heyman gets the ECW music to come out here to. We are in Philly, the home of extreme. No death matches on this show? Disappointing. Where’s the barbed wire? That’s the trouble with modern WWE guys. There’s no lunatics like Mick Foley in the locker room to demand crazy matches anymore.  

 

WWE United States Championship 

Logan Paul (c) vs. Randy Orton vs. Kevin Owens 

Logan is out here as US champion and energy drink salesman. Prime is terrible. 1.3 billion in sales last year. Proof people are idiots.  

For me, this is the story. Sami and Kevin are the emotional backbone of this company, and we all know if Owens looked like a star, he’d be the face of this company. Orton has 13 world titles because he looks like a stud.  

 

When we get going, Logan gets beaten up by both guys because he’s such a dick. It’s amazing to me that Logan, who’s been in wrestling for five minutes, has a better concept of selling than LA Knight, who’s been a wrestler for 21 years.  

Logan starts mocking Orton, and shoves Owens’ face into the Prime logo. “Get Prime, motherfucker”. The crowd starts chanting for “Gatorade”. Ah yes, the fabled franchise wars. It is 2040 and now all energy drinks are various flavours of Monster. They go for a super cool Afterburner into powerslam spot, but Logan fucks it up. It’s a shame, because that would have fucked.  

 

Logan goes wrong again, slipping on the ropes as Owens is doing his superplex variant. Given his high-risk approach to wrestling, it was inevitable he’d go wrong somewhere. They have two dumb as rocks kick outs that should have been saves. An Orton RKO and then a Logan brass knucks shot. Surely, you cannot kick out of a boxer’s brass knucks shot. That’s so stupid. 

 

The Prime bottle this evening is IShowSpeed, one of the most annoying streamers in the world. No, that’s not fair. He’s one of the most annoying people in the world. They have a cool finishing sequence where Orton catches Owens with the RKO to block the Pop Up Powerbomb and Paul steals the pin with a frogsplash. Huh. This was a mess with some cool stuff in it. 

 

WWE Women’s Championship 

Iyo Sky (c) vs. Bayley  

This is Bayley’s first singles match at Wrestlemania. I always got the feeling that Vince never saw her as a star but a starmaker. After how shambolically treated Damage Cntrl were under the Vince regime, it’s nice to see them get their moment in the spotlight. Bayley hurts her knee on an early dive, and she sells it so effectively, I thought it was a shoot until Io goes after it. 

 

Unlike LA Knight earlier, Bayley is consistent with her selling. I have bad knees and Bayley wrestles here like she has bad knees. Not every step is murder, but you use them for anything, it’ll hurt. I love seeing Io next to the guardrail because it reminds me how tiny she is. 5’1”. She still comes across as a mean person though. The crowd have been singing the “hey, Bayley” song basically all match, which reflects how beloved she is. 

 

Bayley gets her knees up on an Io moonsault and she sells the shit out of it, while also taking advantage of it. Are you watching this LA Knight? They do some keen mat work, standing switches and straight up striking.  

Roseplant finishes and Bayley wins the belt. This was great. I don’t like Roseplant as a finish though. It doesn’t look impactful at all. ***¾. Fabulous selling from Bayley. A masterclass in working with an injured wheel. It was maybe missing a hot finish, but the overall story of the match worked from start to finish. If it had been tidier and finisher stronger, it could have been the best of the weekend.  

 

So, one match left. How are we doing for time?  

Holy shit, they just cannot stop themselves, can they? They bring Snoop out to announce the attendance over the two nights was 145,298. And that’s why it’s two nights brrrrrother. WWE must bank a fuck tonne of money this weekend. I know they spend a lot on production and the Wrestlemania sets always look incredible but that’s a lot of tickets. 

 

WWE Universal Championship 

Roman Reigns (c) vs. Cody Rhodes  

Instead of finishing the story last year, Cody had a rubber chicken thrown at him.  

As the “wrestling has more than one royal family” whispers I get a sudden rush of emotion. Oh, wow, I want Cody to win really badly. I did not expect that. Those seeds have been planted in my conscious and this is the benefit of having someone like Cody who speaks from the heart. I laughed at how last year played out and went ***½ on a match some people really loved. Let’s see how this year plays out. 

This is Roman’s ninth Wrestlemania main event, the most of anyone, ever. Although it gets easier to rack those up when you main event both nights in the same year. As Roman steps into the ring there are still 55:00 left on the show*. Jesus. 

 

*Match time ends up being 33:25, so nowhere near as bad as last night.   

 

The match is under Bloodline rules, which means there’s no DQ or anything. They tease plunder due to that stipulation but that’s all it is early doors. Just a tease. We have a little brawl around the floor too. It all feels like baby steps into a very long match. “This is my company, you little bitch” – Roman talking smack. “Our tribal chief is talking shit” – Pat McAfee. How does Pat keep getting away with profanity on the air?  

The Rock comes back for five minutes and now everyone is cursing it up like prime Attitude Era. They do a solid job of having this build and simmer and feel epic. It’s certainly better than last night’s main event, which was a meandering mess. Roman steals the Crossroads for a near fall and then stops off to say the move sucks and couldn’t beat anyone. Reigns has been getting it done with his mouth tonight. 

 

This kinda reminds of me Rock-Austin era with the move theft. There was a spell where stealing your opponent’s moves was the norm for a big match. I’m quite enjoying the match until the Usos arrive. Jey kills Jimmy with a spear off the stage. I’d rather they’d just not turned up at all. At least they got rid of them quickly. Of course there’s still Solo Sikoa. Out to ruin his second Wrestlemania main event in a row.  

 

With Solo in the process of ruining everything, JOHN CENA runs in. This is, to be fair, top Sportz Entertainment. I am very Sportz Entertained. FU through the announce table for Solo and out comes The Rock.  

With the Rock laying out Cena we get our next surprise. The Shield music kicks in and Seth Rollins, prime dork, gets decked by Roman before he gets in there. Hahaha. What a fucking nerd. Hahaha. I’m crying. They treated him like a total afterthought. BONG! NOOOOOOOOO!  

HAHAHA. Oh my god. Prime Sportz Entertainment on the Prime logo. Three Crossroads later and Cody ends the 1316-day reign of the Roman Empire. As far as Sportz Entertainment goes this was five stars. A near perfect WWE style main event. For me, it was overbooked, and they stretched everything out to get to the fun stuff. It would have been much better if they’d not done that fucking awful main event yesterday. ***¾. Better than last year because they managed to pull the trigger on someone for once.  

 

“What could this possibly mean for the Bloodline” – Corey Graves. Who gives a shit mate. Not even Michael Cole cares. Just shut up and let something breathe, you useless goon. You can take Vince McMahon out of the headset, but you can’t undo WWE brain.  

 

We have finished the story. It’s not so much about the match. It’s that Cody quit the WWE because he hated it. He went out into the world, took the biggest chances he possibly could, came back and fucking rocked the place. Compare his story to all the lifer cowards in the WWE locker room and this is why he’s champion and you’re not. I respect it.  

 

Post Match: Cody brings out Bruce Pritchard and Triple H to celebrate with him. This does feel like a new era. It’s nice to see so many happy smiling faces in the ring at the end of Wrestlemania. This feels like a win for wrestling. So often the guy who wins the main event at Wrestlemania ends up standing alone in the ring, hogging the spotlight. This feels so totally different.  

Just to let you know how mentally crushing the past four years have been for me, as a wrestling fan (part time), I’m openly weeping here. It feels like they got this one right. 

 

The 411: 

This whole weekend has been a surprisingly powerful emotional rollercoaster. I keep going back to something Maffew Gregg told me when we were both teary eyed watching wrestling at wXw. “When it’s good, there’s nothing better than pro-wrestling”. Was this a great night of pro-wrestling? Nah, not really, but there’s hope and when there is hope you can believe again.  

 

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness – Desmond Tutu.