WWE PPV: Wrestlemania 31 News/Rumors

[Hondo]

Did TJ take over Hondo's account? 

[Gravedigger]

I guess Rollins isn't losing his push because of the dick pics...

[Chris Stern]

I guess Rollins isn't losing his push because of the dick pics...

not surprised, he is one of Trips boys and if the rumors are correct he has gone to bat for Rollins as well as Reigns and Ambrose back when they were in the shield when Vince wanted to punish them for a backstage incident involving Orton. Of course I am sure Rollins getting himself over as well as he has as a top heel certainly helps.   

[The TeeJ of Philly]

Trolling done. I'm happy so many people who were dredding how bad this could have been we're happy with it and thought it was great (sans old man Hondo being slightly positive)

My network kept buffering during the sting match so I have to watch this again. But great event.

Also, realized it today, Brock is the new Van Vader, pre-wwe

[Mike Powers]

I hated it. Seriously. So many issues. I'll detail them later (if anyone cares lol).

[Hondo]

I hated it. Seriously. So many issues. I'll detail them later (if anyone cares lol).

I'm listening, bromosexual.

[Black Death]

I hated it. Seriously. So many issues. I'll detail them later (if anyone cares lol).

I want to hear it too


I had very low expectations  going in, so I must say i enjoy the show, better than I thought it would be , but I would like to hear your thoughts

[ToneCold]

For once, based on little snippets of things I saw, I am actually wanting to watch this, and this time it won't be 9 months later.

I have already watched the Kickoff and the first hour of that was, sadly, everything I've hated for some time about modern WWE, it was basically Cena hype interspersed with NINE FUCKING NINETY NINE. The 2nd hour (not sure why it needed to be 2 hour buildup for a 4 hour show but that's an issue for another time) was better, having Lita there (even if it was for some dumb preapproved Q&A thing in a studio that looked like it was being used by a shopping network at the same time) and the matches they kinda mentioned a little in hour 1.

But at least there were matches, that said they did feel a little crammed in and the Tag match should have been longer with 4 teams involved. I enjoyed bits of the Andre battle royal but commentary telegraphed the result a bit too much with all the talk about how Big Show had always been in the finals of battle royals but had never Won one... mention that once, all good, but keep coming back to it, yeah that kinda made the result obvious along with the whole "Hey the group haven't gone after the giant at the start like they usually do, and now as people get eliminated, the group to do that is getting smaller" thing they had going on Commentary.
Poor Rybitch.

All of that said, I still want to watch the main show.   

[Mike Powers]

Now for my long awaited (haha) critique of Mania.

Tag Match - Not much to complain about here.  It probably should've gone maybe 5 minutes longer, but the right team won, in the right way.

ARMBAR - It's good to see the WWE giving a push to that young upstart Big Show.  That kid has a real future in this biz.  </sarcasm>  Seriously though, Miz/Mizdow were the only people in the match with any sort of real program going.  One costing the other the match should've been the focal point, also with them garnering the win.  Big Show should NOT be winning any matches on 'Big' PPV's in 2015.

IC Match - I hated this match.  The WWE has created their "multi-man ladder match formula", and it sucks.  To start, each individual must dive out onto the group at ringside, one at a time.  Then, 3-4 guys must lay around on the floor at all times, alternating with the 2-3 guys in the ring who are doing spots.  Zero psychology.  Just a list of spots, hindered by the WWE not allowing the type of big spots that indy feds would allow. 

And don't get me started on that finish.  Let me get this straight....2 guys, who are NOT known for headbutting, get into a headbutt battle on top of the ladder?  We're supposed to buy that these guys are smashing their heads together as hard as possible a dozen or so times, and their both okay?  It'd be different if it were tied into something.  Like the old "Samoans have hard heads" trope.  If it were Samu and Fatu doing that spot, I'd be okay.  Ziggler and Bryan?  Fucking dumb.

Orton/Rollins - Based on what happened later in the night, it made sense to have Orton win here, as much as I may disagree with it.  It is likely my Orton bias (ironic due to him being on my FWL team) but I can't stand his matches since he became 'The Viper'.  They are just sooooooo  sssssssssllllllllllllllllloooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww.  I mean, it's Mania Randy, I shouldn't have time to go make a sandwich in between your moves.  The curb stomp into RKO was nice though.

Sting/HHH - Oh where do I begin with this clusterfuck? 
~Based on his special entrance, Sting is apparently Asian and none of us knew.
~The Terminator tie in was cringeworthy in its lameness.  My wife turned to me and said "Really?" before leaving the room to do anything else.  Also, it made no sense.  First, HHH is getting ready to lead an army of Terminators into battle.  Then he is handed a bunch of Terminator heads to pose with.  Is he with them, or against them?  INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!!!
~The build made no sense.  HHH = Heel in the Authority.  Sting = Vigilante face against Authority.  But then, HHH = WWE and Sting = WCW (and in WWE canon WWE ALWAYS = Face and WCW ALWAYS = Heel).  So the heel is representing the face side, and the face is representing the heel side.  Oooookay.
~Unless he has REALLY declined since his last TNA dates, Sting could still go.  There was no need for such a shitfest schmozz of a match, especially with all the time in the world to prepare.
~Speaking of the schmozz.....okay, I can buy DX helping HHH (even though the heel/face dynamic is still kinda skewed, but it's still believable), but there is absolutely NO WAY the nWo should be helping Sting.  I mean, seriously.  What.  The.  Fuck.  The entire crow Sting character developed from the need to stop the 3 guys that are helping him!! 
~Why in the fuck were Hall/Nash on opposite sides from Waltman/HBK/HHH.  The Kliq is a part of kayfabe now.  The 5 of them were JUST buddy buddy at the HOF ceremony less than 24 hours ago.  Zero sense.
~Then the heel (representing the face team) won over the dastardly face (representing the heel team).  The heel/face then turned face/face by shaking the face/heel's hand, making him a face/face too.  I guess.

- Has a musical performance ever gone over well at a wrestling show?  Waste of time and money.

Divas Tag - It was okay for what it was.  A little sloppy at times, but what can ya do when the Bellas are in there.  No real complaints.

US Title - Rusev's tank entrace was the BEST specialty entrance they have ever done.  Made sense in the storyline, and was badass as fuck.  As for the match, their match from Fastlane was far superior.  Also, in an era where Wrestlemania has everyone kicking out of everyones finishers, Rusev was foiled by 1 AA?  And....are they seriously teasing a Rusev/Lana breakup?  For fucks sake, she is an integral part of his act!!  One last question....with Lesnar not retaining, there was no reason to put the US belt on Cena.  The wrong person won here, again.

Authority/Rock/Rousey segment - Was fun, but needed to be about 5 minutes shorter.  It meandered at times, and when they were running so short on time that they scrapped a Wyatt/UT vignette, someone should've told them to tighten their shit up.

Wyatt/UT - Scarecrow entrance was lame.  Taker's entrance in the daylight was lame (not much they could do there though).  The match was perfectally acceptable, but again the wrong person won.  Taker gains nothing from the win, and it continues the freefall that Wyatt has been on since pre-Mania 30.  He's lost so much in the past year, a win here would've provided him with a ton of material to work with, plus a signature win to hang his hat on.

WWE Title - I have nothing bad to say about this match.  They booked it perfectly.  The rub from defeating Brock was not lost at all, Reigns got to look strong, and they avoided the meltdown that would've occured had Reigns won.  There could not have been a better result than that. 

And now you see why I hated this years show.  So many people going over that didn't need it (Show/Orton/HHH/Cena/UT) pushing down those that needed a big WM win (Miz, Sandow, Rollins' 1st match, Rusev, Wyatt), + bad to middle of the road matches = bad show.

[The TeeJ of Philly]

If I may counter Mike, continue to read if not, just say booger pants.

1) Show won because it was too obvious last year to do it in teh event's first match and this year, given how it was built up and where it was placed, it didn't mean near as much. And if you want to argue that point, that's fine, but do you really want Mizdow to win the match and then potentially falter after his feud with Miz a la Alex Riley and then the WWE goes "This match hurts more than helps!"

1a) Mizdow is great, but The Miz so dislikeable that you could pair him with Big Show again, and tease Big Show spliting from him and people would react in a similar manner.

2) It's your bias on Orton

3) Triple H was holding the heads of defeated enemies, if they were regular skulls, it'd make much more sense. In the WWE 24 about WM30, they talked about the evolution of his skull king thing and how it went from being a regular king in WM22 to being something entirely larger by WM30. To me, just seems like someone traded the skull king when it was holding a metal sheet.

4) Rusev-Cena was the most throwback mania match in a long time. One finisher was all that was needed (Which I see plenty of people complain EVERYONE kicks out of everything). The face won at the biggest event of a high profile feud that had patriotism.

5) This is my biggest pet peeve. Since his feud with Cena (Which while he "lost" I thought he did get a great rub in the loss). He beat Jericho without his family's help (which helps in his "I'm the eater of worlds"). He then beat the hell outta Ambrose for the entire winter, including a Main Event PPV win. He looked dominant in the Royal rumble up til his elimination by two men. I fail to see how he has lost so much when he didn't have much prior to WM30 other than a Royal Rumble win over Daniel Bryan and a Ring of Fire win on Kane. (Which to this day, I still think they are going to finally tie in that Bray has been with the authority for so long since everyone heh as feuded with after the Authority had an issue with for the most part)

6) Taker needed the win over someone meaningful that he still has it so next year for 32, he has a chance of winning his last match (I agree, he looked bad despite being better than last year)

7) I respect your opinion on wrestler and in no way think less of you, I just disagree with you on a lot.

[Cory]

I agree 90% with what Mike said, as I posted earlier.

Dead on with Tag, Dead on with Andre Rumble, Dead on with Rusev/Cena (but cmon, Cena was winning that one all along), Dead on with Divas match, Dead on with Rousey Moment + Musical Performance, Dead on with main event.

IC Title Match - Its your spot fest, the legendary TLC match with the Dudleys/E&C/Hardys didnt have a buch of psychology....its not supposed to, its the spot fest early in the show to get a few holy shit moments and get the crowd going. The Ambrose/Harper powerbomb was one of the most violent bumps in a decade. I just thought for the token spotfest, the finish was meh. Obviously like Cena winning US, Bryan was winning this. With his surgery, probably wasn't going to take a big bump (i.e headbutt off ladder) but with the master of selling in Ziggler, could have done something better.

Taker/Wyatt - Agree with everything except the finish. Taker needed the win to look good for what everyone knows will be the last mania next year. He's not gonna miss the one in Texas and him losing would do more damage to him than the damage done to Wyatt. Wyatt looked creepy and held his own with the deadman, and if he was 21-0 or whatever people would be saying Wyatt lost but much like when Punk lost to Taker, looked stronger in the end.

[The TeeJ of Philly]

...

Jack totally explained why I'm so "contrarian" to seemingly every thing here and have been for a while. I don't think about what something means outside of the TV program when I'm watching it. I'll think about it when the show goes off.

That said, nWo helping Sting afterwards did make me go "What...?" but it didn't take away from the match in the moment.

[Mike Powers]

The thoughts I shared WERE thoughts I had in the moment. Not after reflection. DX staring down the nWo would've been awesome....around 17 years ago. And how can you not think about the Kliq, when it's become as real in kayfabe as DX and the nWo?

You seem to be advocating watching wrestling in a vacuum. You are perfect for the product the WWE likes to put out, because if it's more than 3 months old, it didn't happen. There's a rich wrestling history to draw from. Why contradict YEARS of established history? Why have storylines at all, if they mean fuck all in the long run?

[The TeeJ of Philly]

--->A nice article by Grantland's David Shoemaker aka The Masked Man on Wrestlemania 31 and the RAW after. <---

Yes Powers, I'm adovacating to watch wrestling in a vacuum, the same way you would with House of Cards or Breaking Bad or Revenge or Blacklist or Agents of SHIELD or Arrow or whatever scripted story telling TV show, because that is what wrestling is. Sometimes the story is bad, sometimes the story is great, and it's alright to not like it for that. But half the things are because you are going "What this means for this performer." You don't think about what the story of Walter White means for Bryan Cranston or the consequence of Frank Underwood's actions have on Kevin Spacey.

I feel like I'm talking to someone who is calling wrestling is fake with that argument, but it's the way I watch wrestling. Wrestling is subjective for the most part, but the way it's present, you have to be looking at it from the wrong view to judge it and analyze it as if it's sport when it's TV.

Take for example this exerpt fromRolling Stone's Jensen Karp on this years mania

The crowd inside Levi's Stadium celebrated this by being one of the first pay-per-view audiences in recent memory to not audibly crap on the product in the ring. Sure, Reigns heard his share of negativity as he prepared for his match, but through hard work and heart, he had the audience cheering for his comeback before he ultimately came up short – something we just didn't see coming. Fans didn't continuously chant for CM Punk, a wrestler who recently walked from a lucrative WWE contract last year, signed with UFC and is now entangled in a connected defamation lawsuit that promises to get ugly soon. The rebellion against the WWE as a company and creative entity was put on hold, mostly because they delivered a magnificent product for both purists and causal fans, one that paid tribute to the art form that was recently lost in snark.

Whether or not the purism continues is yet to be seen. The online gossip and moments of reality will obviously pop up again, maybe even tonight during the follow-up live Raw in San Jose. But hopefully WWE saw the positive reaction that came from just producing an awesome wrestling show without succumbing to viewers looking to pick apart the magic. In 2015, it's hard to believe kayfabe still has a place in sports entertainment, but after a month of learning too much, it was nice to just sit back and lose myself in the spectacle of WrestleMania once again.

Both links are good reads.

Also hypocrisy to damn me for my view on how I watch and how you feel WWE presents itself, but to damn WWE for drawing from its own rich history in a clear as day nostalgia match. DX and nWo as units have been established and recognized longer than the Kliq has been by almost ten years. And, Nash and Triple H have been enemies more than they've been friends, same with Nash and HBK, and Hall and HBK. The history shows those guys, while friends, are most times on opposite sides of each other.

So what about Sting? Well Sting owned the nWo wolfpac, which means he and Nash got along, and we know Nash was in nWo with Hall and Hogan, so Nash told Hall and Hogan to back him up to help Sting defend WCW's honor. X-Pac was DX because he hated WCW.

And if you think all that is too crazy or too complicated to work, it's because someone tried to make logic of something that wasn't intended to have logic be made of it. Something that was meant to be simple, nWo vs DX, WCW vs WWE, and someone asked "WHAT LOGIC DOES THAT MAKE WHEN BLAH BLAH BLAH"

TL:DR, I'm wide awake and bored.

[Mike Powers]

Wrestling is a unique medium. So saying "Big Show shouldn't have won because X, Y, Z" isn't the same thing as "Bryan Cranston being affected by Walter White's actions. Also, if you advocate watching wrestling in that vacuum.....where you only care about what's presented, nothing backstage.....much of it still makes no sense.

You want to keep talking about the Sting/HHH match.....why would the nWo care about "defending WCW's honor" when their clear goal from day 1 was to tear it down?  I "damned the WWE" for drawing from their history? No, I damned them for NOT looking at their own history, because if they had then things would've made sense.

I've loved wrestling for longer than you've been alive. There've been cycles where I've hated the (mainstream) product, for a variety of reasons. We happen to be in one now.