Irrelevant But Awesome

By the arbitrary rules established in the previous episodes, Super Show-Down was technically a PPV, so we give it the somewhat traditional post show rundown , notably Triple H and Undertaker fighting for the last time ever ever, please ignore the fighting they're doing next month. 

Joel:  I remember really enjoying this WrestleMania when I was watching it live, but rewatching it this time around I spent the first hour or so of the show wondering how I could have possibly liked any of this. The Daniel Bryan match with Sheamus bothered me a little bit watching it live, but it frustrates me so much more now, knowing that Bryan will only ever have two singles matches at WrestleMania and this is one of them. Honestly there are only three really good matches on the card, and they’re good enough to make this a good WrestleMania on a “thumbs up/thumbs down” scale, but  these three matches are all in the last four matches on the show. Undertaker and Triple H more than make up for their so-so match from WrestleMania 27 with this Hell in a Cell match. It’s nice to see the end of this era go out with Undertaker standing tall rather than having to be carted away like he was the previous year. And I feel like bringing Shawn Michaels in as the referee nicely t...

Joel:  At this point, WWE has pretty consistently delivered good WrestleManias since WrestleMania 17, maybe before that depending on how you feel about the earlier Attitude Era WrestleManias. So it’s kind of strange that their first real misstep in almost a decade is WrestleMania 25, on they should have been pulling out all the stops for. But apparently somebody back there thought that “all the stops” meant Kid Rock. This whole show feels messy, which isn’t a way that I would have described any of the last ten or so WrestleManias. But this one felt a lot more haphazard, and sloppy. I know that there had to be buildup to these matches because I saw video packages, but the entire first half of the show felt like after each match the just grabbed whoever was closest to the entrance and sent them out there to take up some time. Seriously, I can’t think of anything worth watching that went on before the Undertaker match. But then we get Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels. This match...

Joel:  There’s no real question about it, WrestleMania 24 is a good show. It’s got several high profile matches and thanks to the pageantry, the fireworks, and the video packages, most of the matches feel like they are a big deal. I don’t have anything bad to say about WrestleMania 24, but the interesting thing is that I don’t have that much good to say about it either. Yes, pretty much all of the matches are good, but nobody has a career defining match on this card. We’ve seen almost everybody do better at another WrestleMania. It feels like WrestleMania 24 is going through the motions a little bit and making sure all of the boxes are checked. There’s a title match for each of the three brands. Check. There’s a money in the bank match. Check. A celebrity match? Check. A Smackdown guy vs. a Raw guy match? Check. A diva’s match that lasts less than five minutes? Check. I’m sure that it was fantastic watching the show live. It feels like WrestleMania 24 delivered on everything...

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:  The whole WrestleMania goes Hollywood theme of the evening gets a little closer to the feel of WrestleMania IX than I would like but it never quite makes it to the level that the whole Roman Toga Party got to on that one. It doesn’t really add anything to the show, and makes the whole thing feel a bit more silly and less grandiose than it should, but I’m willing to let it off with a warning here. It doesn’t hurt that XXI has a much better card than IX did. We get some pretty fantastic matches here starting right out of the gate with Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio. It’s kind of a bummer that Eddie went from winning a championship title last WrestleMania to being on the opening match for this one, especially since this will be his final WrestleMania appearance, but it’s a fantastic match, and really a good example of using a big match to get things started in a big way.  We also get our first ever Money in the Bank ladder match which, it’s nice to see, was a gre...

Joel:  It took twenty years, but it seems like WWE has finally figured out how to make a good WrestleMania. Not that this is the first good Mania or even the best one so far. The three before this one all all probably better quality than XX was itself, but up until this point WrestleMania quality seemed to vary wildly from year to year. If we take WrestleMania X7 as an example (which at this point is still the best WrestleMania we’ve seen so far) watching that show, it feels like all the stars had to align just so and everything had to happen exactly when it did for the show to come out as good as it was. It’s finally starting to feel like WWE has figured out what makes a good and a bad WrestleMania as a whole and aren’t relying so much on hoping things work out. WrestleMania has been good for a few shows now and that streak of WrestleManias are more good than bad is going to run till about WrestleMania 27. The incredibly long runtime on this particular WrestleMania can m...

Joel:  There are plenty of disagreements as to when exactly the Attitude Era started. Some say it was before this WrestleMania. Some say it was at some point later down the line. Some get so precise as to say that specifically the match between Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold here was the kickoff moment for the Attitude Era. I’m not going to get as specific as all that, but i will say that this show very much feels like an Attitude Era WrestleMania. DX is in the main event. Undertaker is feuding with Kane. At the end of the night your champions are Stone Cold and The Rock. Everything on the show that was related to Sable in any way. This feels Attitude Era. And it’s a good show. The Battle Royale to kick off the show was messy, but at least it felt like a big deal kick off moment instead of just whatever happened to be the first match on the card the way openers of previous WrestleManias have felt. There were also more good matches than bad matches on the card, something tha...

Joel:  I forget sometimes, when it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, just how good that Bret Hart and Stone Cold match really is. I think that the hype surrounding that match is making me remember it as a better match than it actually way. But then, when I watch it again, It blows me away every time. This match is near wrestling perfection. Everything about it just clicks into place. The double turn is something that should be close to impossible to effectively pull off, yet these two guys do it is a way that is so smooth and natural, the entire thing feels like a seamless part of the match and the storyline. This is, without a question the best WrestleMania match that we’ve seen so far in this series. Unfortunately, that match pretty much had to carry the entire rest of the card. No other match stands out in any positive way. At best we get moments like seeing Rocky Maivia and knowing that guys going to be a big star in a few years, but as far as his actual performance at W...