I’d say, overall, WrestleMania 37 was in the top third of all time.
Night One was excellent, and aside from the women’s tag match still going on, Night
Two was pretty good as well.
Apart from its first finish: where The Fiend lost to Randy Orton in 5 minutes via one RKO
because Alexa Bliss turned into a zombie queen.
NOT NOW ALEXA.
Which even a crowd that hadn’t seen in live wrestling for over a year booed.
But still we clung to hope.
Sure The Fiend was just beaten clean again by Randy Orton after a seven month feud when
he really should’ve gotten his revenge victory after, you know, being burned alive, but maybe
this was serving a larger supernatural epic story.
Was this new demonic force actually The Fiend’s star crossed lover.
Or was Aleister Black behind Bliss’ turn, setting up a new feud, purely because she
was sitting cross-legged.
Well on last night’s Raw, we got our answer.
None of those things.
Bliss just turned on Bray because she’s more evil now, and Orton’s finally moved
on.
Meaning it’s all building to a Bliss vs Fiend match, I guess.
And according to Sean Ross Sapp on Fightful Select, it’s because WrestleMania weekend
saw the feud’s original plans torn up.
Apparently as of last Friday, The Fiend was set to win at Mania Night Two, but it was
changed over the weekend to Orton beating him.
SRS adds that a Firefly Funhouse match was never planned, and the talent involved were
never given an “endgame” to the storyline throughout the entire feud.
It was Bruce Prichard and Vince McMahon who “were instrumental in the change and the
decision making associated”.
And although there was a “strong push among talent for Wyatt to win”, management “seemed
happy with the finish as it played out.”
What did you think of The Fiend vs Orton at WrestleMania?
Let me know in the comments because I’ll be replying to people FROM OUTTA THE FIEND’S
BOX SHAPED STRUCTURE.
As for Sheamus beating Riddle to win the United States Championship, Dave Meltzer is reporting
this was done because Riddle was never supposed to be champion in the first place.
It was reported a few weeks ago that Keith Lee was set to win the title in the triple
threat at Elimination Chamber, but was removed for health reasons and replaced by John Morrison.
That match was designed to get the belt off of Bobby Lashley so he could win the WWE Championship
from Miz on Raw the following week, but they couldn’t put it on Morrison because he was
involved in the Bad Bunny program for WrestleMania, so it was put on Riddle.
Speaking of Lashley winning the title...
WWE made Bobby look really great for about two weeks.
Too great, unfortunately.
He started to get over too much, so they broke up his popular Hurt Business faction and teamed
him up with Baron Corbin for a hot second to get the fans booing him again.
Both Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin have publicly critized the decision to break
them up, and MVP and Lashley reportedly petitioned to Vince McMahon to keep the group together.
And now Lashley has spoken with Ryan Satin on his Out of Character podcast that the split
left him “heartbroken” because Hurt Business was something “something very special”
and that, “In the wrestling business, it’s very seldom that really special things come
together and you see so many people get behind it.”
Thankfully WWE had a far better faction planned for Lashley.
Retribution.
I’ll get into that load of crap with my Raw review in a second, but first, please
subscribe to WrestleTalk and enable notifications to always on so you always know when the WrestleTalk
News goes live every day.
Almost a third of you aren’t subscribed right now.
And all those people did right now, we’d pass our 800,000 subscriber goal, and I’ll
have to dress up as Maki Itoh on top of all the ridiculousness that’s currently happening
on my head.
But now it’s time for my review of Raw… in about 5 minutes.
The episode opened on a clip from earlier in the day making Bobby Lashley look like
an absolute megastar, turning up backstage to be greeted by Humberto Carillo, Gran Metalik
and a producer they’d obviously just grabbed last minute to be an extra wanting an autograph.
Maximum effort.
Riddle interrupted him with generic stoner dialogue, leading to Lashley taking 98% of
their opening match and then winning.
This was a 10 minute squash match and completely derailed any momentum Riddle had following
his brilliant Mania match with Sheamus the previous night.
I try not to throw around the word ‘burial’ too much, but it certainly felt like one.
The Viking Raiders are back!
Or the Viking Express, as new lead play-by-play announcer Adnan Virk called them.
That’s right, we’ve also got a brand new Raw commentary team of Virk, Byron Saxton
and Corey Graves.
Who sound exactly like every other commentary team in WWE.
It was great seeing Erik and Ivar back together again.
They beat Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin in a decent match.
Charlotte Flair then made her return to piped-in Thunderdome cheers to cut an in-ring promo
that ended in her getting piped-in Thunderdome boos.
She weirdly said a lot of stuff about how she wasn’t ‘welcome’ at WrestleMania
and that it wasn’t her fault - without ever actually saying what had happened.
But she did seemingly shoot on the rest of the women’s locker room being happy she
wouldn’t be getting another title match there - potentially a reference to Andrade
saying the rest of the division is jealous of Flair.
Regardless of the odd shoot/work blend material, she’s much better as a heel.
Charlotte finished by calling out pretty much every other lady wrestler on the roster, including,
interestingly, ending her list on WWE’s other favourite blonde, Alexa Bliss.
I can definitely see them building to Bliss vs Flair around SummerSlam time.
But first, Flair’s got to beat everyone else.
Rhea Ripley and Asuka had a Mania rematch next, in a feud that actually has substance
now the title change beef exists between them.
I thought this match had a lot more intensity than the previous night, but Raw DQs on…
Charlotte booted them both in the face to throw the match out.
The OmniFlair.
Then Bliss confirmed in her Playhouse segment she did indeed turn on the Fiend at WrestleMania
- as she’s unlocked something far more evil in herself, some kind of puppet called Lily,
which spoke to end the segment.
I’m actually going to play a clip of it to show you all what it looked like.
Hopefully we don’t get copyright flagged.
“I’M LILY, LET ME IN.”
The Fiend kind of got to reply later on, with Mr Rogers Bray Wyatt making his return to
Raw in the Firefly Fun House, doing a preacher gimmick saying he’s reborn.
This didn’t really further anything, but was the best thing on an otherwise abysmal
show.
Like Miz in his pants pinning Damien Priest!
After a Miz, Maryse and Morrison segment was interrupted by Damien Priest so they could
all speak about how great Bad Bunny is - because whenever Bad Bunny isn’t on screen, all
the other characters should be asking ‘where’s Bad Bunny?’
- Miz and Morrison took on Priest in a handicap match.
Morrison vs Priest was actually really cool, but a stripped down Miz managed to roll up
Damien with his feet on the ropes thanks to Maryse distraction.
Priest already is just like every other NXT call-up you were excited for.
Destined for the lower midcard.
But even with all that, the worst came next.
I don’t know why the women’s tag division is what’s consistently broken me over WrestleMania
weekend.
The Night One gauntlet match, the Night Two title match that’s probably still going
on, and here, somehow the worst of them all, Mandy Rose and Dana Brooke getting yet another
match against Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler.
It was all based around Nia and Shayna making fun of Mandy for falling over, where Jax got
her comeuppance as she fell off the apron as she tried to get back in the ring.
Ha ha, her hole.
But then one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in wrestling happened.
Rose and Brooke should have taken advantage and finally beat the champs, right.
But they didn’t.
Instead, they walked out the match, backing up the ramp seemingly scared of an irate Jax
- the babyface challengers effectively running away - to take a countout loss.
While Byron, the babyface commentator, said they were sending a message as it was just
as good as beating them.
No it isn’t you absolute idiot.
Beating them is as good as beating them.
Everything in this promotion is absolute nonsense.
Truth is a construct.
Morality is inconsistent.
Trying to cling onto any remnant of sense is futile.
This company is so incredibly inept.
I don’t know why this, of all things, is the booking straw that broke my back.
But f*** WWE.
F*** them so hard.
Not making much more sense, the New Day then cut a promo on Elias and Jaxson Ryker for
bringing shame on the tag division, despite Elias and Ryker not being in the tag division.
This show is an assault on brain cells.
Woods beat Elias.
And the main event saw Randy Orton vs Drew McIntyre vs Braun Strowman to become Lashley’s
No. 1 contender at WWE’s biggest show of the year, WrestleMania…’s Backlash.
It was a fun main event, particularly any Orton vs Drew parts, with a fantastic finish
of Randy RKO’s Strowman, for Drew to break up the pin with a Claymore on Orton’s head
to win.
Which is good.
Of all the uninspiring, repetitive stories WWE have booked for the Raw After Mania, a
Drew vs Lashley rematch is actually one I really want to se-OH GOD DAMMIT RETRIBUTION.
T-Bar and Mace, still in their stupid, failed Retribution gimmicks attacked McIntyre after
he won, aligning themselves with MVP and Lashley.
Meaning WWE broke up the Hurt Business and Retribution factions, realised they needed
factions, so smushed the biggest boy remnants together for McMahon’s personal wank collage.
This was actually pretty close to working, too, if they just debuted them as Dominic
Dijacovic and Dio Maddin, saying they’ve left their Retribution stuff behind because
MVP has taken them on as clients.
But no, they’ve still got stupid names.
It’s like WWE really went out of their way to make this show suck as hard as possible.
What did you think of the Raw after Mania?
Let me know in the comments down below, and vote in our Poll on a Pole match on the community
tab, where 71% of you went for ‘Mandy & Dana sent a message… to viewers to stop watching.
The Raw after Mania is meant to be the show that sets up the new season for WWE.
Debuts, returns, fresh stories, big angles.
Yet we got no Tag champs with AJ and Omos.
No US champ with Sheamus.
As NateFV put it on our live reactions, “This show is made for Nobody… staring Bob Odenkirk.”
This show is so, so bad.
Here’s the moment Mandy and Dana walking out broke me on last night’s reactions:
The Raw after Mania, for the first time ever that I can recall, is 0 out of 5.
And to make things worse, you all raised a grand total of £20,626 for the mental health
charity CALM over WrestleMania weekend - 206% of the original target - meaning not only
do I have to shave off the rest of my hair on tomorrow’s episode of QuizzleMania.
I also have to shave off my eyebrows.
It’s me, vs Luke, vs Pete, vs defending champion Sean Ross Sapp, while I become the
first dual challenging and shaving competitor at QuizzleMania BYEBROWS.
Screw you all.
What are the 10 biggest takeaways from Chris Jericho’s interview with Stone Cold Steve
Austin?
Click the video on the right for Adam Blampied’s latest list!
And watch my review of WrestleMania Night Two by clicking the video below that.
I’ve been Mr Davis, Jam that Jam.