Irrelevant But Awesome

Vince McMahon is back at it again except this time, he claims the XFL will listen to their fans and take their considerations under review. Now, if you've been a fan of WWE over the past few decades or so, it was probably difficult to read that first sentence without passing out from laughing or you've become so angry that whatever screen you were reading this on is now smashed. Today, Vince McMahon made it official, the XFL is coming back and even though he's pouring $100 million into it, this will probably the last time we'd see him in regards to XFL. The press conference was amusing to watch, especially since I had just finished watching the "This was the XFL" documentary but it seemed like Vince was addressing all the ways the new XFL will not be like the original. Matter of fact, this almost seems like this will be the exact opposite of the original XFL as McMahon numerous times emphasized that they're not trying to reinvent th...

Joel:  I really enjoy this WrestleMania, but I’ll admit I have a soft spot for this one because it’s the event that brought me back to watching wrestling on a consistent basis. Rewatching it though, I can easily see why others might not be so high on this show as I am. The Diva’s match is a big problem, and I think this may have been the weakest Money in the Bank match to date. I don’t think the World Heavyweight Championship match was terrible, but I think both Chris Jericho and Edge are capable of having a better match than the one they have here. And I know we have to address the Bret Hart issue. Let me say, hearing that Bret Hart was back in a WWE ring, that’s what got me to watch more than anything else. Seeing him face off with McMahon to address a story that started over a decade earlier, that’s what I was really looking forward to. And I’m glad it happened, and when it was live I think I enjoyed the fact that I was watching the match, more that actually enjoying the ...

Joel:  I gotta say, these WrestleManias were not meant to be watched back to back to back like this. I mean we’re currently in the longest streak of quality WrestleManias that there is, and I’m enjoying all of the shows, but I really don’t care to see another montage clip show of how great the institution of WrestleMania is. Once a year, I get it, but two or more in a week and they start to get really repetitive.  Anyway on to the specific show of WrestleMania 23, we finally get Money in the Bank as the show opener, really a great place for that match as it crams a lot of exciting moments into the first match and sets the tone of WrestleMania as a “big deal.” Of course the very next match was Kane vs. The Great Khali, but I think the fact that I was still excited about the rest of the show after that says a lot about how vital an exciting kickoff match can be to a good show. While WrestleMania XXII was a show with a lackluster main event after several stellar mid ca...

Joel:  This WrestleMania marks the fifth time in a row that Triple H has been in a championship match. And in four of these past five WrestleManias, he was in the final match on the card. Even without watching all of the other Pay Per Views in these five years (not to mention Raws and Smackdowns) it’s easy to see where Triple H gets the burying reputation from. And that’s not to say that Triple H’s matches haven’t been good, or that he hasn’t been good in them, (his match here with Cena may have been his best WrestleMania match yet) but still, that’s been a lot of Triple H. All in all though it was a really strong show. Like Triple H, Vince McMahon has his best WrestleMania match to day, though it helps that he’s in the ring with Shawn Michaels here. The triple threat for the Heavyweight title was impressive as well. But the match of the night has to go to Mick Foley and Edge. This for the most part is Foley’s swan song when it comes to real, all out, full intensity hardcore...

Joel:   Let me say up front that the title X-Seven for seventeen is dumb. It has that feel of doing it cause the kids will think it looks cool. It was strange back then, and it’s just as bad now a decade and a half later. Also, the intro video felt off. The past few video packages that started off WrestleMania have been about the history and the prestige of the event itself, and have made the show feel like a big deal. The “Celebration of Life” video package that goes with this WrestleMania feels strangely disconnected from the rest of the show. But other than those two, very small complaints, this WrestleMania is a pretty perfect example of what WrestleMania can be when it reaches its full potential.  This is a moment in wrestling history where the stars aligned just perfectly, and one of the greatest events of all time was pulled off. Rock and Stone Cold, two of the most successful men to ever wrestle were both at the top of their game. TLC had just been introduced ...

Joel:  Honestly the biggest issue that WrestleMania 2000 has is something that can’t really be helped, and the same thing can be said to some extent for WrestleMania XV. But rewatching these past two WrestleManias, the biggest reaction I had to them was “This just isn’t WrestleMania X-Seven.” That feeling hit especially hard during WrestleMania 2000 watching the “Triangle Ladder Match” knowing that we were going to get a much better version of the exact same thing in the next show. I’ve tried to keep X-Seven opinions at bay while reviewing WrestleMania 2000, as we’ll be addressing that show soon enough, but even standing on it’s own, WrestleMania 2000 is a bit of an overbooked mess. On a card with nine matches, only one of them was a singles match, and that was the Women’s Catfight match that still had a special guest referee that was a wrestler, and was still less than three minutes long. Every other match was crammed full of wrestlers. We had three different tag team mat...

Joel:  I remember Vince McMahon and The Cooperation being a big deal during this time period, but I don’t think I realized just how central The Cooperation was to pretty much every storyline that was going on in this show. Of the ten matches on this card (nine if you don’t count the brawl for all match) five of them have were centered around a feud with a member of The Cooperation or The Cooperation itself. This included the last three matches of the show which were the most high profile matches on the card. While I get that it did a lot to elevate those storylines and feuds, for the handful of matches that had nothing to do with any Cooperation storyline, it made them feel that much more irrelevant and forgettable. Because of this it really takes a while to get to the matches that feel like they matter on the card. Even though it won’t be their best WrestleMania match, and even though I already knew the outcome of the match, I couldn’t help but get excited at the beginnin...

We've been keeping up with it for the past couple of weeks so we really should see this out through the end. In what may end up being his last night ever on Monday Night Raw, Punk delivered not one but two great promos to both open and close the show. You can find the both of them below so that you too can understand why WWE needs to keep this man employed. 1st video: CM Punk opening the show with a promo and the aid of a megaphone. Videos 2 and 3: Punk and Vince McMahon have a live contract negotiation in the ring, to end the show.

For those keeping up with the CM Punk storyline right now, Punk was suspended after his amazing promo (monologue) at the end of the show last week. This week continued the drama with Cena demanding an explanation from the Chairman of WWE, Vince McMahon. A lot of the minor stories were also touched on throughout the night, but for those who really just care about the Punk story, here is the final segment of last night's show where McMahon came out to address the audience.