3.30.2010

Wrestlemania: The First Hand Review


As some of you may know and most of you will probably be fascinated by, this past weekend I attended Wrestlemania XXVI in Phoenix with Mustacheer "Broph" and a few other friends. Now, I know Bill Simmons just wrote a running diary of the event, so this might be a little redundant if you've read that, but it's kind of like 'Nam, he doesn't know man! He wasn't there!

The surprises started early when we showed up to tailgate in the parking lot and ... there was barely anybody there. We were expecting a football-style tailgate crowd but nope, it was a pretty sad scene. No rowdiness, no drunkenness, no talk about nephews and whether or not they'd be attending any more games. The lack of atmosphere didn't stop us from sitting around and drinking for the next few hours, however, and when showtime rolled around we were in the only level of consciousness in which grown men can legitimately enjoy a live wrestling event.

I'm sure all of you watched Wrestlemania live on Pay-Per-View, so I won't really need to delve into results; instead, I'll just touch on some things that were interesting in person.

-The Hitman match was painful. I wanted it to be good so badly, but right from the start it was a mess. The whole thing was just a glorified beat down of Vince, and it was excruciatingly boring. At one point Hitman even sat down in the ring which made it seem like he was bored too. The atmosphere in the crowd was basically one of sadness. Everyone realized that we all probably would have been better off if Hitman had never come back, and that sucked.

-There were a few Jericho supporters near me and we all went nuts when he surprisingly won, which led to multiple, vigorous high-fives. It was kind of like being a fan of the road team.

-Batista vs. Cena was a lot of fun to be in the crowd for. I decided to back Batista, mostly because of how lame Cena is. This lead to me having a way too much fun argument with a little kid in a Cena shirt and me overreacting every time anything bad would happen to Batista. (Don't worry I didn't swear at all, and the kid's parents were laughing) Anyway, the match was better than I thought it would be, although anytime Cena makes someone tap I get very annoyed.

-I was surprised that most of the people around me were rooting for Taker over Michaels. I tried to plead Michaels' case to all of them, but most of them weren't having it. I'm not sure anybody there really believed it would be his last match, so when it ended I think the ovation wasn't quite what it could have been.

All in all, it wasn't a great Wrestlemania, but it was a lot of fun to be at.

HIGHLIGHT: Other than the obvious Taker/Michaels match, it was Jericho winning.

LOWLIGHT: Originally I thought it would be realizing that this song actually said, "Yeah this is our night," instead of "It's a see-saw night," which had been a long-held belief of all the Andersen bros. But after Sunday it was Hitman's match. Which is too bad. However, the boringness of it did lead to me doing an impression of Hitman giving an excruciatingly bland, rambling promo that lasted about 20 minutes on the ride home. I would have stopped sooner, but Mustacheer Broph's friend Matt wouldn't stop laughing. Even if only one person's liking a joke I feel like you have to run it into the ground. It's sort of like writing a post even if you're pretty sure only one person will read it, which reminds me, I hope this was a good read Finn!

6 comments:

Mr. F said...

Great read! In fact the only problem was my disappointment after clicking the read more!

There was no more :,, (

Pete said...

Just because we don't always comment doesn't mean we're not reading.

Bobby said...

wheres the baseball preview thread

Erik said...

Oh it's coming Bateman, believe you me, it's coming.

... Just as soon as Fortune gets on board.

Mark said...

Wrestlemania has to be one of the lamest sporting events ever to emerge in our great country.

I would like to take this opportunity to announce to all you loser Mariners fans on this sorry excuse for a blog, that the Oakland Athletics, the so-called class of the AL West, dominated the M's again today. That gives the A's a 3-1 series win, and let's be honest with ourselves here, we all know it should have been an A's sweep (tough 9th inning error in the 1st game saved the lowly M's from total humiliation).

I know it is sad to see your favorite team be a doormat, again, but please do not lose heart. I'm sure the M's will spend ridiculous sums of money just to hover around .500. Luckily, that will still be good (or should I say bad) enough for last place in division, thus ensuring the M's a high draft choice. They can then turn around and trade that pick for the rights to Chien-Ming Wang, who by M's standards is pretty damn good.

On second thought, is Brett Boone or Edgar available? Griffey would love to have some company in the 'I'm not viable but I used to be' section of the clubhouse.

Mark said...

your mom said it was average.