On Sunday night in America (Monday here in Australia), the ATandT Stadium in Dallas, Texas hosted the WWE wrestling extravaganza that is WrestleMania.
Totalling a crowd of more than 101,000, many couldn’t be blamed for initially thinking that the show was an overall success. However, although there were many positives to take out of the show, there were probably an equal amount (if not more) of negatives.
So without further ado, here is Part 1, the Highs of WrestleMania 32.
Highs
Zack Ryder gets his moment
The Intercontinental Title Match was featured, yet again, in a seven-man, clustered Ladder Match.
Although I was originally not so thrilled on the Intercontinental Championship being contested in a multi-man match (seeing as a Owens versus Zayn rivalry match for the belt was ripe for the taking), the man did end up being a decent, energetic way to open the show.
The real highlight though, came when Zack Ryder stunned everyone to become the Intercontinental Champion.
It was nice to see WWE finally giving Ryder his WrestleMania moment after all his years of hard work (despite the fact that he lost the title the next night on RAW).
The Women’s Championship Match
The Women’s Championship(finally!) match was contested between the defending Divas Champion Charlotte, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks. And while everyone was expecting to see either Becky or Sasha holding the title at the end of the match, WWE threw us all a curve ball and kept the belt on Charlotte after she made Becky tap out to her Figure-Eight leg lock.
Despite the underwhelming result, the match was still a quality performance from all three women and could easily be argued as the match of the night.
There was hardly ever a dull moment in the match and the amount of false finishes added to the suspense of who was going to walk out as champion.
The legends make an appearance
After the match between The New Day and The League of Nations, which the latter won, the four men stood in the ring stating that “there’s no three men who are better than us.”
That’s when Shawn Michaels’ music hit, and the crowd went nuts noticing he was in his ring attire. Next thing they knew, both Mick Foley and ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin were also out and making their way down the ring alongside HBK.
The three men then waltzed into the ring, and took care of business with each of them displaying their finisher moves.
As it usually does when Austin is ever in the ring now, the three finished off the segment sculling beers and putting their middle fingers up. A fantastic moment that fans are only able to see at WrestleMania.
Baron Corbin wins on debut
If you’re an avid wrestling fan like me, you’ll probably be a huge supporter of the development show of WWE, NXT. NXT performers are widely considered better than the main roster technical wrestling, but lack skills in other parts of entertaining such as on the mic, and creating solid, appealing gimmicks.
As it was last year, a superstar from NXT was given the honour of competing in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, and it was refreshing to see Baron Corbin, a veteran of NXT, get promoted to the show.
It was an even more amazing to see him actually win the match, last eliminating Kane. Despite the fact it wasn’t a real good showing from him in terms of wrestling, it was still fantastic to see him win and see WWE showing some faith in their development stars.
Shane McMahon the Daredevil
One of the most anticipated matches on the card was the bout between The Undertaker and Shane McMahon in Hell in a Cell.
McMahon was battling for control of Monday Night RAW, while The Undertaker had to win in order to keep his WrestleMania career alive.
The match overall was quite disappointing. It was slow, didn’t feature much use of weapons as you would expect in Hell in a Cell, and there was no surprises in determining the winner.
However the one spot that stopped fans’ hearts all over the world, was when Shane McMahon scaled the side of the cage to the top, before leaping off, 20 plus feet off the ground, with the intention of smashing The Undertaker through the announce table.
The Undertaker moved out of the way just in time, and Shane McMahon exploded through the table, which ultimately lead to his defeat. Despite an overall disappointing match, the spot performed by Shane will go down as one of the greatest in WrestleMania history, and this generation’s moment.
So that’s the Highs of WrestleMania 32, stay tuned tomorrow for Part 2 featuring the Lows of the show (and FYI, there’s a lot of them).
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