WrestleMania 36 Review: Part 1

With the Coronavirus pandemic at hand, in my opinion, Vince McMahon should have seriously considered cancelling WrestleMania. Whether you liked the decision or not, you would have understood why it was made. On the other hand, I will give WWE credit for persevering through the last few weeks with Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown. Both shows have lacked consistency for a few years now (especially Raw), but the irony here is the fact that they have replayed classic matches to plug the gaps in the schedule, and it has actually recently made the shows very watchable.

Wrestling however is nothing without its audience, and despite getting through Raw and Smackdown, having no fans for a showpiece such as WrestleMania borders on the unthinkable. Nonetheless here we are, with Tampa being robbed of the event, as the show was moved to the WWE Performance Centre in Orlando. To make things worse with the threat of a possible lockdown, the show was not even live, it was recorded at the end of March, and we were informed it was to be spread over two days...hmm.

In the United States it was late Saturday afternoon going into the evening, but for us over here in the United Kingdom things got underway at 11pm with the kickoff show. It was presented by Corey Graves and Peter Rosenberg. If it had not been for the circumstances, then of course Graves would have been on his normal commentary duty. In the only match of an easily forgettable kickoff show; Cesaro defeated Drew Gulak. So to the main show at midnight. BT Sport during the kickoff show tweeted the eight matches that we would see in part one, but they did not disclose the order the matches would be in. The matches were preceded with Stephanie McMahon doing an introduction. She let us know that this WrestleMania was to be different to any other that we had witnessed before. But the aim was to 'provide us with a diversion through these times'. With literally no other sports to keep us entertained, we have to appreciate their efforts to give us something, I will not be ungrateful. This was a nice touch, but could they have possibly changed the order of the main events planned and had WrestleMania later in the year, or is that not logical. Maybe I am just thinking from a fans perspective, and not contemplating for instance about the trouble that it would cause the creative team (I mean it is not like they need any help to make a hash of certain things anyway is it).

The first match was for the Women's Tag Team Championship, as The Kabuki Warriors defended the belts against Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross. Quite why Bliss and Cross are getting another title shot so soon I am not sure. Just because I like looking at Alexa Bliss does not mean I am going to display any bias. There are numerous women on both shows, and more work should have been done to produce more teams considering the introduction of the belts. There was otherwise not really a point in bringing the belts into the picture. With the match being the first on the card I assumed the Kabuki Warriors would drop the belts and that is exactly what happened. Bliss won the match with 'Twisted Bliss' on Kairi Sane after a neck breaker by Cross.

Next up was a match what could have easily been first, as Elias faced Baron (King) Corbin to solve their ongoing feud. I was not sure who would take this one, and in the end it was Elias who prevailed. The match was not the best, with the highlight being of the fact that Corbin got into a verbal battle with the female referee. This continued on through the contest and when Corbin was spotted trying to put his feet on the ropes to gain a pinfall, the ref spotted it and whilst they were arguing, Elias rolled him up for the win. A crowd would have taken huge pleasure from this due to their detest for Corbin, who plays a 'heel' so well.

The third match was the big one, for the Raw Women's Championship, between champion Becky Lynch and Shayna Baszler. This really should have been later on in the card to be honest, especially when you consider how the match was built up. It was a gritty physical battle as expected with Baszler's MMA background. The match was decent with numerous submission attempts, but it ended very poorly. In a huge anti-climax, Lynch reversed Baszler's attempt to lock in the 'Kirifuda Clutch' and got the three count. I mean...come on...this made no sense! Baszler obliterated the Elimination Chamber for what exactly if this is what they had in store. Have a count out or a disqualification surely, so therefore the storyline can continue with some sort of intrigue and transparent relevance. In my humble opinion Lynch has been booked badly at times through this title reign. At times on Raw she was involved in tag team matches, when there were numerous women she could have faced. There needed to be a change, and an opportunity was surely missed here. I wish to know where they go from here, sheerly because of the fashion Baszler buried the women's division in the chamber match to get her title shot. The likelihood is Baszler will say it was a fluke and get another chance, they certainly can not bury her like that, but with some of the things that the WWE do, you just never know to be honest.

Another title match followed; as Sami Zayn defended his Intercontinental Championship against Daniel Bryan. Zayn was obviously accompanied by Cesaro and former champion Shinsuke Nakamura, Bryan was with Drew Gulak. In a match flooded with outside interference, Zayn was ever the opportunist and retained. Zayn seized on the fact Bryan had done a suicide dive to take out Cesaro and Nakamura, who had laid into Gulak outside the ring. When Bryan came back into the ring, he tried to jump off the top rope but was caught with a 'Helluva Kick' by Zayn. Bryan had mostly dominated beforehand, and even taunted and trash talked Zayn when swinging into the turnbuckle, slapping him and 'saying you have not earned anything'. Bryan is a top performer and makes many matches better than they should be, but this match still lacked something.

Next up was the Smackdown Tag Team Championship match. This ladder match was originally meant to be the holders The Miz & John Morrison against The New Day and The Usos. There had been rumours that one of, if not both the Usos were pulling out of this match and that The Miz was pulling out as a precaution because of not wanting to put his children at risk. The match was amended and one person from each team represented. Morrison represented The Dirt Sheet, Kofi Kingston repped for The New Day and Jimmy Uso was in for The Usos. So therefore we had a singles triple threat match for the tag team titles, got it? Stop complaining and just digest what you are given please people. The match actually played out slightly better than expected. There would be moves that had a crowd been present would have got some good pops. This encounter also displayed the first real creative ending to a match. Morrison, Kingston and Jimmy all climbed to the top of the ladders and were all grabbing where the belts were hanging from, but no one was able to dislodge the belts to seal the victory. As all three battled, Jimmy and Kofi headbutted Morrison. Morrison crashed off the ladder and fell onto another ladder, but with the titles in his grasp. This just reminded us that we would have had a superb match in front of fans if all the tag teams were present.

Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins followed, in a match that got better the longer it went on. I myself was not sure who was going to win this. Two great performers in the ring, who more than deserved the oohs and aahs of spectators here. Rollins took charge of the match (including some brilliant trash talking), and seemed more intent on injuring Owens than pinning him. The former two-time Universal Champion proceeded to strike Owens with the ring bell and was subsequently disqualified. Though we wanted to see a conclusive finish whether it be by pinfall or submission, we partly understood with how out of hand their rivalry had got. Owens called out Rollins, saying he was 'a little bitch', and said the match should continue with no disqualification. Rollins came back to the ring and they continued. Owens came back strong, but had my anxiety on 100, as he climbed up high on top of the WrestleMania sign. He screamed 'and this is a WrestleMania moment' before flying onto Rollins and destroying the announce table. Thank god this did not go wrong. Owens then hit Rollins with a 'Stunner' to win what had been a solid contest.

The penultimate match was between Goldberg and Braun Strowman for the Universal Championship. Strowman was of course a late change to the card as Roman Reigns rightfully pulled out, it was too risky for him considering his battles with leukemia. There was no way in hell that this match was going to last longer than three minutes. JBL even said on commentary 'don't blink, neither one of these guys work by the hour'. Given the fact Goldberg could barely lift up 'The Fiend' Bray Wyatt for a 'jackhammer', when he beat him for the title at Super Showdown, there was not really any way that they could make Goldberg win this. Unless the WWE wanted even more people to cancel their WWE Network subscriptions because of an unrealistic conclusion, Strowman was obviously winning here. Goldberg hit three spears before trying to pin Strowman, who then kicked out. After another spear, Goldberg tried to jackhammer Strowman, and Strowman got out of it, before three powerslams were followed by a running powerslam for the win. I am not sure the match even lasted two and a half minutes. Strowman should have won this title much earlier when he was 'over', so no one can say he did not deserve it, but the WWE missed a big chance by not giving it to him when he was flying. Goldberg would have dropped the title to Reigns, so it is unclear exactly how long Braun's title run will last. One thing is for sure, and let us put the coronavirus pandemic aside, the title should never have been taken off of Bray Wyatt in the first place. I saw Paul Heyman talking on the romanticism of Goldberg at his age being champion and his family witnessing it, but the timing was not the best for me. The character of 'The Fiend' was built up to semi-Undertaker levels, all for him to lose to a man over 50...that now wrestles like he is even older than that at times. I hope everyone involved has learnt their lesson the hard way.

The last match of the night was the 'Boneyard Match' between The Undertaker and AJ Styles. Despite some good promos in the lead up to this, no one knew quite what to expect here. However the match ended up being as intriguing as it was bizarre, and it somehow against the odds had you on the edge of your seat at times as it played out like a horror movie. It featured outside in a graveyard setting, and despite the whole thing somehow working, there were some corny bits that made you cringe. Undertaker re-visited his American Badass days with his entrance on a motorbike. Styles had a humorous entrance before him coming out of a casket to Taker's music. In a match that swung back and forth. The OC (plus others) tried to help out Styles, and Styles thought he had the victory, after he knocked Undertaker down into a grave after hitting him with a shovel. AJ was going to bury him, only for the 'Dead Man' to reappear behind him. After a long back and forth which included the OC reappearing, Undertaker went on to bury Styles for the win. Some laughable camera tricks were displayed here, but you can not say it was not entertaining as a whole.

Overall the first part of WrestleMania should have got a 5.5/10, but to round things off I will give it a 6 (just), as the last match somehow did more than it was expected to. I am not sure part 2 will top it, well I doubt it anyway, but we will give it a fair chance. With a rating of 6, you would think it was a watchable event if you are a die hard wrestling fan, but remember this is WrestleMania, so 6 is a very underwhelming score, for the premier pay-per-view event.

@DubulDee