Wrestlemania 34 (4/8/18):
Pre-show
Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal: I'm not a big fan of Battle Royals so I'm not really going to go in depth. Matt Hardy won after it came down to him Baron Corbin and Mojo Rawley and Bray Wyatt made his return to help Matt win
Cruiserweight Title Tournament finals Cedric Alexander vs Mustafa Ali: **3/4 Good for a pre show match. Cedric and Ali are both great wrestlers and I believe the match could've been way better had it been under a different atmosphere
Women's Battle Royal: Naomi won after Bayley eliminated Sasha, Bayley didn't know Naomi was still in and was eliminated
Main show:
Triple Threat Match for the Intercontinental Championship The Miz (c) vs Finn Balor vs Seth Rollins: Before I get into the match itself I need to give a brief rant about the entrances. Finn Balor's "demon king" entrance is awesome and I've spent a year waiting to see it at Wrestlemania and instead of doing that they decide to do some bullshit PR stunt by having Finn do his normal entrance while members of the New Orleans LGBT community cheer him on. Which I'm bi sexual myself I do not hate gay people but I do hate it when WWE does PR stuff like this to try and come off as inclusive and progressive and in turn throw away what would've been an awesome moment had they not. Now with that out of the way on to the match itself
***3/4 This was a great opener to the main show. Just a 15 minute sprint with cool high risk moves that ended with Seth Rollins becoming the final member of the Shield to complete the Grand Slam by pinning the Miz for the IC Title
Smackdown Women's Championship Charlotte (c) vs Asuka: *** This was shaping up to be so much better before the abrupt finish. I was expecting Asuka to win the belt but Charlotte is someone I could believe can end Asuka's streak so the issue is not that Asuka's streak was ended it was the fact that it was ended really without any build up in the match Charlotte locking Asuka in the Figure 8 was the first time she attacked the leg at all so Asuka tapping after 15 seconds was just to out of nowhere for my tastes
Fatal 4 Way for the United States Title Randy Orton (c) vs Bobby Roode vs Rusev vs Jinder Mahal: ** Really nothing special to this. I'm a big fan of Rusev and wanted him to win the title but instead Jinder Mahal a guy who I've been unable to take seriously as a star of any kind since WWE tried making him a main eventer won it instead
Mixed Tag The Authority ( Triple H and Stepanie McMahon) vs Kurt Angle and Ronda Rousey: ***3/4 This was so much better than I thought it would be. For Ronda's first match not just in WWE but pro wrestling as a whole she was great and while Triple H and Kurt Angle are no longer the guys they once were they can still go when they need to
Triple Threat Tag for the Smackdown Tag Titles Bludgeon Brothers (Harper and Rowan) vs The Uso's vs The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Big E): **1/2 This was exactly what it needed to be the Bludgeon Brothers just destroyed both The Uso's and The New Day with very little trouble and now we have an unstoppable monster tag team as the champs
John Cena was told The Undertaker is hear earlier so he went to the back to get ready. He came out ready to face The Undertaker but instead Elias came out and played his guitar. Cena got angry he was tricked and beat up Elias only for the real Undertaker to come out and destroy Cena in 3 minutes. I might be in the minority on this because they built up a dream match for a month to take place at Wrestlemania that only went 3 minutes but I just can't anytime I get to see The Undertaker even for a couple minutes I love it
Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon vs Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens: **** I might be overrating this but I love Daniel Bryan, he was one of my favorites when I was a teenager and to get to see him finally wrestle again after 3 years of being told he'd never wrestle again made this match great to me even if I'm not a fan of Shane and wanted to see him wrestle even less after finding out he had Diverticulitis and a hernia. The question now is since Zayn and Owens have been fired and lost there one chance at getting rehired what will happen?
Raw Women's Title Match Alexa Bliss (c) vs Nia Jax: **3/4 Exactly what it needed to be Nia destroyed Alexa decisively but Alexa got just enough in that she didn't look weak in defeat
WWE Championship Match AJ Styles (c) vs Shinsuke Nakamura: ***3/4 I had money on Nakamura so I was surprised that AJ retained here. Regardless these 2 had a great match where AJ attacked Nakamura's leg to keep him from using the Kinshasa and Nakamura went after AJ's back to prevent him from being able to do the Styles Clash. This was a worthy follow up to the awesome match they had in the Tokyo Dome 2 years ago. After the match Nakamura presented the belt to AJ only to low blow him and knee him in the face. That was a turn I was not expecting but Nakamura is great as a cocky badass so I got no issues with it whatsoever
Raw Tag Team Title Match The Bar (Sheamus and Cesaro) (c) vs Braun Strowman and a mystery partner (I'm going to rate this as a segment rather than a match): Braun comes out and announces his partner will be a fan in the audience, he picks a random 12 year old named Nicholas (I'm guessing he was a boy given his name and the fact Braun called him "young man" but I really couldn't tell before that honestly) then Braun singlehandedly destroys The Bar in under 5 minutes. You'll either love this or you'll hate it it was cute and it was definitely an entertaining moment but at the same time a 12 year old is a tag team champion and I've always hated the idea of having non wrestlers be champion
WWE Universal Championship Brock Lesnar (c) vs Roman Reigns: ***1/2 I love hoss fights and this match definitely fit that description. This was just 15 minutes of 2 large men hitting each other and throwing each other around and that's what I love about pro wrestling, they even had Roman get busted open and blood was pouring out of his head. My issue was that the WWE has spent the past 4 years now building up Roman to conquer the beast and be coronated as the new face of the WWE only for him to get destroyed decisively by Brock Lesnar in the end. Had they had Roman win this would've been ****+ easily but instead it just felt like every other PPV Brock's been on this past year with him standing tall instead of the main event of the biggest show of the year
Overall thoughts: There was enough good (Bryan's return match, opener, Ronda's debut, AJ vs Nakamura) That I can give a mild recommendation to this show but if I were to tell you which show to watch just from this weekend alone I'd recommend the NXT show and ROH shows from last night and probably a few other Wrestlecon shows I haven't seen yet as well before I'd recommend this
