Wrapping Up: Wrestlemania 37

When I wrote the “Is Professional Wrestling a Sport?” article, I may have had an ulterior motive. Now everyone who read that knows what it was. I really wanted to spout off opinions about the WWE, why I am in love with it, and hate that I watch it. Specifically, Wrestlemania happened this past weekend. For those of you who may live under the largest of rocks, Wrestlemania is the biggest, most popular wrestling show in the world. Once a year the world of sports entertainment stops on a dime to check in with the WWE and see what the premier name in professional wrestling is up to. This tends to lead to some of the highest highs and lowest lows in the business. However, I sit before you basking in the glow of what was one of the most surprisingly good Manias ever. 

This year Wrestlemania was being classed as one of the worst built ones of all time. Every single feud going into this was either three weeks old or so underwhelming in terms of story-telling that almost no one cared. Then the actual matches took place. Wrestlemania 37 had a bad omen when Night One began with a forty-minute rain delay. Once the matches started though, it was off to the races. 

Night One, Saturday

Drew McIntyre got the entrance he deserved. For pretty much the duration of the “Pandemic Era” of wrestling, Drew put the Raw team on his back and carried them to success. Drew wrestled every week, cut fantastic promos throughout, and never gave less than everything he had to the company. His wish was to be the first wrestler to get an entrance in front of the first live crowd. He got his wish. Drew McIntyre would take center stage against Bobby Lashley in the first match of Wrestlemania 37. Lashley would come away with the win in what could best be described as two mammoth dudes smashing their giant muscles together in the most wonderful of ways. It was a great tone-setter for what was easily the best night of this two-night Wrestlemania. 

After a baffling and lackluster women’s tag team gauntlet title eliminator match, (my God what a preposterously long name) Cesaro and Seth Rollins decided to absolutely belt each other into oblivion. Seth Rollins is probably on a trajectory to being one of the greatest wrestlers of all time so a loss here does nothing to hurt him. For Cesaro however, this win, and the showcase he put on, can be the launching pad for his rise to the stardom every fan has wanted him to reach for almost ten years. Cesaro has been one of the WWE’s best workers for a decade and it is long overdue for him to be treated as such. 

Cesaro was then followed up by his “Da Party” teammate Xavier Woods and The New Day taking on AJ Styles and Omos. This one hurt a little bit. The New Day is my favorite tag-team/stable in WWE history and they felt a little like transitional champs. They were never going to win this, as Vince McMahon seems eager to “Great Khali” Omos to the top of the card. One cool wrinkle from this match though is that AJ Styles became a Grand Slam champion with the attainment of the Raw Tag-Team Championship. The New Day will be more than fine as they remain fan favorites and one of the most fun duos to watch wrestle but the match was a little bitter-sweet. 

I don’t care about this stupid Braun Stroman and Shane McMahon storyline and you can’t make me care. You also can’t make me write more than two sentences about the match, even if it wasn’t half bad. 

Fifty-year-old men nearly dying aside, Bad Bunny did a wrestle. He did a good wrestle. Bad Bunny and Damian Priest have been embroiled in one of the best-built feuds of the past four months. The feud has been with The Miz and John Morrison. The match was awesome. Priest and Bad Bunny hit stereo Broken Arrows (look it up) and Bad Bunny hit a Canadian Destroyer on Morrison. Look that one up too. It was so cool and I get that Morrison did most of the work but Bad Bunny gave what was, to me at least, the second-best celebrity wrestling match of all time. 

Then came the main event, the glorious main event. Sasha Banks and Bianca Belair put on a show. They displayed emotion, athleticism, and precision for the duration of their seventeen-minute match. The match should have been twenty-five minutes and I will not hear otherwise. Sasha Banks did nothing more than prove that she is one of the WWE’s three biggest stars, male or female. Whereas Bianca Belair made sure that everyone watching knew that she is the future of the women’s division. 

The main event was momentous, and not just because it was the first time two Black wrestlers went head-to-head in the main event of Wrestlemania, regardless of sex. This main event showed that while the WWE is perpetually stuck in the past, and struggling to get out of the “Attitude Era” way of doing things, they know what their future probably should look like. Whether it was Bianca Belair, Damian Priest, or Cesaro, the WWE does sometimes know how to capitalize on the ridiculous amount of talent it possesses. Night one looked like it was going to be just fine on paper. What we got was something that could go toe-to-toe with almost any Wrestlemania that came before. 

Night Two, Sunday

Well, it wasn’t all going to be rainbows, kittens, and stiff DDTs, was it? Why can’t the WWE get The Fiend right? He is easily one of the best unique character creations the company has seen since “The Dead Man” and all they do is flip their fans the bird at every turn. The Fiend gets a brand new look but in the hokiest way possible. Fine, I can accept that because the mask looks dope. Does Alexa Bliss have childish face makeup around her eyes? That’s okay because Alexa Bliss has been doing some of the best character work I have ever seen. This match between a seemingly impervious to pain supernatural monster and “a dude” is lasting longer than three minutes? Well sure it's stupid but Randy is giving it his all and maybe there's some story set-up happening here. 

Then we get one of the coolest visuals I have ever seen on live television. Alexa Bliss emerges from this giant jack-in-the-box that Bray Wyatt (The Fiend) made his entrance from. Alexa is sitting there stone face with a crown of thorns that is gushing this black blood-looking liquid. The Fiend, who was about to put Randy away with the Sister Abigail, is mesmerized. He drops Orton and takes a few steps towards Alexa. Then the whole fucking thing is ruined by a stupid RKO that allows Randy to get the pin. Which by the way, The Fiend immediately pops up from. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the lights immediately came up on everything after the bell rang and it just looked so dumb. This most stupendously moronic of finishes just shit right in the Cheerios of my night and tainted the rest of Night Two for me. This had the potential to be so bonkers and brilliant from a horror storytelling perspective. All of the pieces were sitting right there. The WWE just decided to throw those pieces into a cement mixer and see how they stuck, then hand the chunk of cement and puzzle pieces to us asking if we "thought it was pretty." This whole thing made me irrationally angry and, as you can tell, I still am. 

Nia Jax and Shayna Bazler beat Tamina and Natalya in a match that I did not care about in the slightest. Then Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn brought my spirits back up by just being two of the best to do it. Except that the match right before it ran close to eight minutes long so these two absolute monsters only got nine minutes to put on a show and I am once again angry at the WWE taking all of its best toys and just shoving them in a poop-filled toilet right in front of my eyes. Logan Paul did eat a Stunner which made me smile.

Then Sheamus and Riddle had a very good match. It was fun and had a fantastically precise finish but the match just had no build and does nothing truly very positive for anyone involved. Apollo Crews does get a new gigantic man to be by his side as he now enters his Intercontinental title reign. Hopefully what this did was give Apollo the title his new character deserves and free up Big E to go after the Universal title. Big E should absolutely have a rocket strapped to his ass as he heads for the main event. He is main event-level talent with a build that should make Vince McMahon swoon. If Big E doesn’t establish himself as a Universal title contender before Money in the Bank this whole thing will be for naught and I will go back to being a very grumpy hippopotamus. 

Rhea Ripley and Asuka had a good match. Rhea deserves to be champion and should get time to establish herself as dominatrix over the division which could be very intriguing. Asuka was the women’s MVP during the pandemic and deserves nothing but admiration. Hopefully, she gets a little bit of much-deserved time off and comes back with a kick-ass new storyline to give her all to. 

As for the main event, it was perfect. Back to back perfect main events. Roman Reigns got the win over Edge and Daniel Bryan by literally pinning both men at the same time. It was a twenty-one-minute brawl that saw all three men have moments of peril and hope. There were spots to write home about strewn throughout this match. If you haven’t seen it please find a way to watch it. Roman Reigns powerbombs Daniel Bryan through the announce desk off the bottom half of the steel steps, only to be speared from atop those steps by Edge. Edge and Roman Reigns speared each other at the same time clashing shoulders. There was also a spot involving a metal bar, two cross faces, and a bunch of headbutts. This match was insanity in the squared circle and lived up to every ounce of hype with some to spare. 

The main thing to emerge from this match was Roman Reigns’ stardom. The man, if he wants to, will be a headliner/main eventer in the WWE until the year 2030 and beyond. Roman Reigns is not just a superstar, he is a megastar. He is the heel-face of the company and no one will be able to dethrone him from that position regardless of what title belt he holds. 

Wrestlemania will always be a mixed bag. Even X-7 has a dud or two on it. However, what this Mania showed everyone is that even when the WWE does everything it can to bury a build six feet deep, the sheer amount of talent on the roster will be the thing to triumph. The WWE has the most insane amount of depth on its roster. So much so that Bayley, one of the five best female wrestlers in the world, basically had nothing to do over the weekend. 

To be honest I have been getting a little burnt out on wrestling lately. For roughly 7 months now I have watched all three main shows every week, and every single pay-per-view. It can be hard not to get burnt out with so much content, especially for someone with some pretty distracting ADD. (My writing style makes a little more sense now doesn’t it?) However, what the WWE does better than any form of entertainment in the world is find a way to make a huge event feel like a gargantuan event. They make the biggest stage feel even bigger than the biggest stage. When that happens, particularly at the four big pay-per-views, it’s magic in a bottle. At the end of all of this, what this Wrestlemania did was reinvigorate my love and infatuation with the squared circle. What more could you ask for from a Wrestlemania?