IT’S WRESTLEMANIA TIME BABY!

Good evening everyone. First off I would like to say thank you for joing our forums and I hope you keep comming back and checking out everyones new topics of the week. And if you haven’t already, please head over to I-Tunes and check out our podcast! The first episode should be up any day now!

Now that thats out of the way, on to the main subject of this post. WRESTLEMANIA! This years Wrestlemania was held at the Florida Citrus Bowl in Orlando (over 74,000 in attendance). Not my pick for the best venue (I don’t feel the vibe of the outside events, but whatever), but the show was amazing! (Well besides the bunny match which I will get to later) Lots of tense moments, emotional outbursts, and room shaking cheers and boo’s from yours truly.

So on to the first match of the night. Finaly vs JBL in a Belfast Brawl Match. Which is basically a street fight, but with a different name so it looks like Finlay created it. Honestly I was not that exicted to see this one because it just didn’t get enough build which it should have gotten, and when a match opens a show like this one, you expect it to be the pace setter for the night. Which it wasn’t. Nothing overly special happened except Finlay doing a hard dive out of the ring towards JBL and getting nailed in the head with a garbage can lid in mid air for his trouble. And one thunderous clothesline from JBL to end the match. It wasn’t as much of a domination as I figured it would be, and it also was not anywhere near the back and fourth action I had hoped. Sure JBL won and it made me happy, (I’m a closet JBL fan…. SHHHHHHH) but it lacked something special for the show of shows. (2 Stars)

Second match of the night was the Money In the Bank Ladder Match. In my opinion this should have started the show like it has in the past two years. It always sets the tone for the rest of the night. This was between, Chris Jericho, Shelton Benjamin, John Morrison, CM Punk, MVP, Mr Kennedy, and Carlito. My pick for the winner was Kennedy. He got screwed out of the case last year because of a mis-diagnosed injury. So I was hoping that it would be made up for him this year. NOPE! Punk ends up winning this one in a very anti-climactic finish when Jericho gets caught up in the ladder. Honestly the best part of this match was when Morrison got his ladder pushed over and he ended up landing with one leg on each side of the rope, giving himself the ULTIMATE sack cruncher. Overall not much to say about this one. It certainly did not live up to the previous two. (2 stars)

Batista vs Umaga was next. In what I like to call….. The slowest match ever! Not that these two are horrible wrestlers. Its the fact that when both are put in a match against eachother, it does not work at all. Umaga is very agile for his size, but Batista is a very stiff worker and doesn’t move very smoothly in the ring. Pretty good back and fourth action for the most part. But the best was the finish which almost didn’t go as planned. Batisa brings Umaga up for a Batista Bomb and uses a bit too much force. So Umaga gains momentum and almost ends up sitting on batista’s face insted of landing flat on his back. Batista was able to correct and go for the pin. Yet again, nothing amazing. (2 stars)

Next was one of my favorites of the night. Chavo vs Kane for the ECW Championship. It lasted all of 15 seconds. Chavo came into the ring, Kane’s music hit, Chavo looked for Kane to come down the ramp, Kane came from the crowd, gave Chavo a very forceful choke-slam, and went for the pin. And we have a new ECW Champion, KANE! The smile on my face was so huge that it almost knocked over my drink and girlfriend. My throat also hurts like hell from screaming because it was amazing to see Kane finally get some recognition again. (4 stars. Dont bother arguing this one with me)

Shawn Michaels vs Ric Flair. Career Threatening match. We all knew it would end tonight, but no one knew just how emotional this one was going to be. It started off very simple with a lot of technical moves back and fourth to get the ball rolling. But then it build up to an emotional roller coaster. One minute Flair would have the upper hand and put Shawn in the Figure Four twice during the match, and you almost thought Shawn would tap out. And the next minute Shawn would have Flair down on the mat from sweet chin music. This was amazing. The energy you felt and the rush you got from this was INTENSE. When Shawn went for Sweet Chin Music the first time and as he was about to connect he pulled back, I got this tingle down my spine. And when he had flair down the second time from a superkick and was winding up for his finisher, seeing flair almost in tears urging on shawn to do it, you had no choice but to feel sad because the end of an era was about to happen. As Shawn delivered his finisher, he said, ” I love you man”. And down went flair; like a mighty champion who knew he just couldnt give up, but knew he couldnt win. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING could prepare any fan of Ric Flair for the emotional response that the finish had. This was by far my favorite match of the night. (5 stars)

Now the worst match of the night. Melina, Beth Pheonix vs Maria, Ashley. With Snoop Dog for some reason. Overall crap crap crap. Total bathroom break material. If we are lucky the editors will just delete this one from the dvd release and spare us from this pointless match. Watching Ashley wrestle is about as much fun as watching Big Show take a dump. She delivers each move very stiff and just cant flow from one to the other. Maria at least tries to be entertaining, but since her playboy shoot, her character has changed and she kinda lost her momentum. Melina can move very fluid from move to move if given the means. And Beth is a powerhouse with talent to boot! Slow going and a few clumsey moves killed this match. (1/2 star) Now can we please get the women who can actually wrestle back in the spotlight???? PLEASE???

Orton vs HHH vs Cena. This was a let down match. Not because Orton retained, but because the match itself was not very entertaining. As usual Cena was highlighted with the other two being his stepping stones. I gotta say, in HD you really need to make that STFU look like it actually can keep someone locked up in its grasp. From what we could see, it looked like you could have sneezed and gotten out of it. I give Orton props for his acting, and HHH for putting both men over. But I was no where near the edge of my seat for this one. (2 Stars)

Mayweather vs Big Show = How do we make this match work out so neither man looks bad at the end? Well the answer is simple, lets make it a No DQ. That way Mayweather can beat Big Show with a chair to win. I understand they did this to make both men look good in their respective fields. I was just hoping for a little more. Dont get me wrong, I actually liked the match, and thought it was entertaining (esp when show decided to kick the crap out of the posse that was with mayweather). But his promoter was annoying as hell since he constantly kept screaming, “HEY, He cant do that! He cant do that!” every time show kicked or hit mayweather. Lets hope this is the last crossover match for a while. (3 stars)

And close second to my favorite match. Undertaker vs Edge. The Streak vs the Title. WOW is all I can say about this one. Edge dominated about 3/4 of the match by going totally offensive and giving Taker a run for his money. Plenty of false finishes to keep us on the edge of our seats, and enough build up for an amazing ending. Taker reversing Edge’s attempt at a tombstone was awesome, and the drama of the ref getting destroyed built the “oh crap” factor up like mad. The end came when edge speared Taker for the 3rd time in the match. Edge thought he had Taker, so as he took a breather after the last spear, Taker was able to lock on a submission on Edge’s neck, causing him to tap and Taker to become the new World Heavyweight Champion once again! And the Undefeated Streak to keep on going. (5 stars)

My overall impression of the show. AWESOME. The only problem that happened was when someone plugged the microwave into the wrong outlet and blew the fuse for the ringlights and viewscreens for the people in the nose bleed section. Good part about that, the crowd was spared the pain of watching that horrid divas match. Which was even worse then last year. HMMMMM Maybe WWE will get the hint and not include Ashley in any more high profile matches? Ok ok, but I can dream can’t I?

Feedback? Opinions? OMG YOU SUXORS comments? Feel free to post em here. Just no foul language and keep things respectful. Not everyone wants to read a rant with no meaning behing it at all.

This entry was posted by James on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under Entertainment, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.