Pro Wrestling Chronicle

It’s that time of the year again… Wrestlemania, the biggest professional wrestling event of the year, is this weekend. And for the life of me I cannot figure out why I’m supposed to be excited.

I became a wrestling fan right before Wrestlemania 1, so I’ve seen the hype for them all. When I was a kid Wrestlemania was a huge deal. There was months and months of building to matches, with Wrestlemania being the pay off. Wrestlemania was one of the few places to see the big matches, as there were no more than 4 WWF PPVs a year for the first six years Wrestlemania existed. TV was filled with squash matches, with the exception of the Main Event and Saturday Night Main Event specials.

But, it’s no longer 1987, it’s now 2007. Long gone are the days of the jobber matches. PPVs have gone from being quarterly to monthly, with some months having more than one. The only thing that hasn’t changed is that Wrestlemania is still treated as being the one show each year that you absolutely can’t miss. Personally I think every PPV should be treated like that, but that’s a whole different rant for some other time! But, does this year’s Wrestlemania really live up to the hype? We’re gonna take a match by match look at the card to see how it stacks up.

Before I even get to that I notice one of the biggest differences… when I was younger, I could run down pretty much entire Wrestlemania cards off the top of my head because the card was that big of a deal. To run down this card I need to head over to wwe.com to make sure I know the entire card. Not off to a good start here!

United States Champion Chris Benoit vs. MVP
I understand that a lot of the talent from the Smackdown brand is in the Money in the Bank match, but does anybody truly care about MVP?? A lot of guys have been heavily pushed going into Wrestlemania, getting big wins over name opponents. MVP’s push towards the #2 title on the Smackdown brand has been a series of wins over no name talent. Like I said above, that worked great 20 years ago, but in the age of there being main event level matches on every show (and sometimes more than one) that’s how they chose to build him up and they expect me to take this match seriously?

Kane vs. The Great Khali
WWE should be paying me $49.95 to watch this, not the other way around! I could understand Khali being on the PPV for the big Hogan slam spot, but in a match against Kane? Not so much. And we won’t even touch on some of the great build they did to this one. Ugh…

Women’s Champion Melina vs. Ashley
Your PPV T&A match. Usually I’d care about this in some way, but not this year. They lost me on this one the minute they tried to sell me on the fact that Ashley being in Playboy was a big deal when I’d seen the previous set of Playboy pictures of her. The fact that women like Victoria & Mickie James, who are both 1000 times more talented than Ashley, will be outside the ring as “Lumber Jills” just makes it that much worse.

ECW Originals vs. New Breed
I thank Vince McMahon for giving the ECW Originals a payday and the first shot for most of them to be in a Wrestlemania match up. It’s the least he could do considering the way he’s crapped all over them and the ECW name in the last year. But, why should I plop down my hard earned money to see a match that just aired for free on TV a few weeks ago?

Money in the Bank Ladder Match
The Hardys, Edge, Randy Orton, King Booker, CM Punk, Mr. Kennedy, and Finlay all in ladder match? Sounds fun! The first 2 Money in the Bank matches have not only had amazing spots, but the winner has ended up cashing in his title shot at the most opportune times and winning the title. I’m a fan of the Money in the Bank title shot and WWE has done good things with it in the past, so I’m really looking forward to this one.

Battle of the Billionaires
The hype for this has been solid. They’ve gotten a ton of mainstream press and that’s what they wanted. And the fans really want to see Vince lose his hair, so what they’ve done has worked perfectly. I hate the fact that the ECW Title and the Intercontinental Title aren’t being defended at Wrestlemania this year though. I don’t have any real expectations for the Lashley/Umaga match itself, but this one isn’t about the wrestling. The interaction between the “billionaires” along with Steve Austin stirring things up as referee should make this whole thing entertaining. Not something that has me wanting to sacrifice $50 and 4 hours of my time, but entertaining.

WWE Champion John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels
This is the only match other than the Money in the Bank that I am really looking forward to. HBK always brings his “A game” to Wrestlemania and will drag Cena to the best match of his career. The build up has been good with the inevitable happening this past week on Raw when Michaels laid Cena out with Sweet Chin Music. Unfortunately, if they were trying to do it to help get Cena cheers and cement him as the babyface for the match, I think they failed miserably. Everybody knew HBK would turn on him. Edge and Orton even showed him footage of HBK turning on pretty much everybody he’s ever associated with. And yet he still let himself get into a situation where it happened to him. I was hoping they were going to swerve us and have it be a straight up face vs face match without Shawn ever turning, just so Cena wouldn’t go into Wrestlemania looking like a moron, but that’s just one of many differences of opinions I have with WWE creative. The only other negative thing I have to say about this match is that since they are still tag champions, we’re not getting a tag team title match at the “grandest stage of them all.”

World Heavyweight Champion Batista vs. Undertaker
This one just doesn’t do it for me. I know Taker’s undefeated streak at Wrestlemania is on the line and Batista is supposed to be a monster as champion, but I just don’t see Batista as that dominant force that he was before his injury. Part of that is due to poor booking and part of it is just due to losing all of the momentum he had going then. The build up for the match hasn’t been bad, but there really hasn’t been anything that has drawn me in and made me want to pay to see it.

So, that’s the entire card. 4 out of the 9 titles from the 3 brands are being defended. WWE wants us to believe that the titles are important, but when they can’t even find room for more than half of the titles on their biggest show of the year, how important can those titles really be?

I’ve been negative going into Wrestlemania cards in the past and been pleasantly surprised afterwards. The lineups may not always be the strongest, but the Wrestlemania atmosphere can really help make things more enjoyable, as no matter how bad the show, the crowd is usually into the entire card from top to bottom. Of course if I was paying the insane prices to attend the show live I’m sure I’d make sure I enjoyed myself by any means necessary. But looking at this lineup, if this is supposed to be the biggest show of the year, I just don’t see much to be optimistic about from WWE for the rest of the year. The good should outweigh the bad enough to make this an enjoyable show, but it’s just not enough to get me to spend the extra money or waste 4 hours of my time, when I could just as easily pop in a new ROH release, save a ton of money, and watch professional wrestling instead of sports entertainment.