{"id":7030,"date":"2012-04-04T21:41:02","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T11:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7030"},"modified":"2012-04-07T13:56:45","modified_gmt":"2012-04-07T03:56:45","slug":"tv-show-round-up-wrestlemania-xxviii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7030","title":{"rendered":"TV Show Round Up: Wrestlemania XXVIII"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There are times when a great wrestling match can be tempered somewhat by a lousy crowd that’s too quiet or disinterested.\u00a0 Equally there are times when a terrible match is made entertaining by a boisterous crowd who come up with amusing chants or make their own entertainment.\u00a0 Wrestlemania XXVIII<\/em> was an unusual pay per view in that it had instances of both.\u00a0 It was a show with both soaring highs and terrible lows.<\/p>\n

It started off with an absolutely horrific first hour which is best forgotten but may well have longer term ramifications for the company.\u00a0 With everyone in good spirits and wanting<\/em> to enjoy themselves, the WWE mysteriously chose to open the show with the World Heavyweight title match and had the Royal Rumble winner and challenger Sheamus defeat Daniel Bryan in eighteen seconds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was an extraordinary and head-scratching move from the company that, in a single kick, derailed the start of Sheamus’ title reign and devalued Daniel Bryan, the Royal Rumble and the World Heavyweight title.\u00a0 It sounds like an obvious thing to say but every successful promotion needs to have titles and competitions that have some measure of importance and value to them.\u00a0 WCW’s death knell came when their heavyweight title was won by D-grade actor David Arquette.\u00a0 For the longest time, the WWE was great at sustaining this sense of prestige.\u00a0 Until the late Nineties, their four major belts (Heavyweight, Intercontinental, Tag Team) all were held by major performers, many who would become household names that transcend wrestling itself.\u00a0 Since 1993, the Royal Rumble has been a competition to determine the main eventer for Wrestlemania.<\/p>\n

In 2012, Sheamus won the Royal Rumble, which in of itself, isn’t necessarily a bad decision.\u00a0 The decision only starts to fall down when it gets reported that Chris Jericho was intended to win until a last minute decision to switch to Sheamus was made to ‘swerve the internet fans.’\u00a0 They had no real plan for Sheamus and it showed.\u00a0 Wrestlemania stories for Royal Rumble winners have historically been told in a grand fashion.\u00a0 Shawn Michael’s boyhood dream, Randy Savage’s blood feud with Ric Flair, Steve Austin defeating his corporate boss in the culmination of a year long feud.\u00a0 These are all Wrestlemania moments that are easily remembered by even a casual wrestling fan.<\/p>\n

It’s less than a week after Wrestlemania and I can’t remember Sheamus’ story leading into Wrestlemania.\u00a0 I’m pretty sure he didn’t have one<\/em>.\u00a0 He just smiled and thumped his chest a lot.\u00a0 And his rewards for winning the Royal Rumble was to curtain jerk Wrestlemania in a match that got less time than a backstage commercial for Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch<\/em>, a celebrity match featuring a reporter from The Today Show<\/em> and a truly godawful rap performance from some guy called Machine Gun Kelly.<\/p>\n

The interesting thing is that the intention behind the booking was to put over Sheamus as an unstoppable babyface who destroyed his opponent in record time.\u00a0 Instead the crowd began to chant ‘bullshit’ which audibly came across in the next backstage segment immediately after the match.\u00a0 During the next match, Randy Orton versus Kane, there were continous chants for Daniel Bryan.\u00a0 Randy Orton is supposed to be the #2 face of the company and the crowd was more interested in chanting the name of the heel who just lost the opening match.\u00a0 Chants for Bryan and his trademark catchphrase ‘YES!’ continued throughout the show.\u00a0 The WWE likes to have a pop-up on their show whenever a WWE-related topic trends on Twitter.\u00a0 They had to stop for almost an hour during Wrestlemania because the number one trend was ‘MORE DANIEL BRYAN.’\u00a0 Both the live audience and the internet audience was giving direct feedback to Vince McMahon that he screwed up.<\/p>\n

Orton and Kane competed in a bland, forgettable encounter which Kane surprisingly won…for no reason that I could tell other than it was the opposite of what people expected.\u00a0 No one cared.<\/p>\n

This was followed up by an equally forgettable match where The Big Show beat Cody Rhodes to ‘finally get his Wrestlemania moment.’\u00a0 This comes back to what I was saying earlier about no one caring about the Intercontinental belt.\u00a0 It certainly didn’t feel special despite the commentator’s best efforts to sell it as such.\u00a0 The crowd certainly didn’t care either.<\/p>\n

Maria Menounous and Kelly Kelly beat Beth Phoenix and Eve in a match that ended with a roll up pin, the way every single women’s match has ended in the last five years.\u00a0 The most notable moment of the match was Menounous delivering a stinkface to Eve and getting her makeup on the posterior of her white pants.\u00a0 This lead to the crowd chanting ‘skidmark.’\u00a0 It must have been audible to Menounous as she later tweeted<\/a> to clarify that she didn’t actually shit her pants.\u00a0 Really.<\/p>\n

It was an incredibly deflating and dreadful first hour.<\/p>\n

Things picked up dramatically with the Triple H vs Undertaker match.\u00a0 It was their third such encounter and as everyone guessed, they threw the proverbial kitchen sink at each other with roughly five million chairshots, fifty pedigrees, five chokeslams and a tombstone piledriver.\u00a0 There was some pretty hammy acting from Shawn Michaels as ref who teased ending the match a couple of times but to be honest it was pretty fucking great.\u00a0 The match really drove home how old these dudes are now though and that they are both pretty much in semi-retirement.\u00a0 I’m actually surprised Taker is still going.\u00a0 One more Mania maybe?\u00a0 The Undertaker’s winning streak at Wrestlemania is one of the few things that the WWE has managed to not screw up and have the diligence to build up effectively over the years.\u00a0 It’s what makes those moments so awesome when Michaels superkicks Taker straight into Triple H’s pedigree and you think for one split second that he might finally lose after a TWO DECADE LONG STREAK.\u00a0 Now that’s some effective long term booking.<\/p>\n

Team Johnny defeated Team Teddy to my great delight.\u00a0 So long, Teddy!<\/p>\n

CM Punk and Chris Jericho had to work pretty damn hard to re-engage a crowd that was still clearly burnt out on cheering the Hell In A Cell match.\u00a0 And as you’d expect, they had the skill to do it.\u00a0 This is exactly the type of match I wanted out of these guys.\u00a0 They got twenty minutes, there was plenty of back and forth and the match ended in a crazy flourish of holds and counterholds.\u00a0 This was the match I hoped Daniel Bryan could put on also.<\/p>\n

Next, Vince decided to add one of those skits that make you super embarassed to be a wrestling fan.\u00a0 He inexplicably had Brodus Clay and a bunch of racially caricatured black women with gigantic prosthetic asses do a dance for five minutes.\u00a0 Goddamit, Vince.<\/p>\n

Lastly, The Rock defeated John Cena clean in a match that was pretty decent but made all the more enjoyable by a thoroughly partisan crowd that loved The Rock.\u00a0 Interestingly enough, the following night on RAW, they brought closure to the feud.\u00a0 It appears that at least on this front, the WWE have conceded defeat and accepted that they will never get John Cena to be as popular as The Rock and aren’t going to try and put him over in a series of matches.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The RAW following Wrestlemania was notable for two things.\u00a0 Firstly, Daniel Bryan is the most over performer with the crowd.\u00a0 They constantly chanted his name and ‘YES!’ throughout the night.\u00a0 So much so that it interrupted seperate promos for The Rock and John Cena who both had to acknowledge the chants.\u00a0 Naturally, Bryan himself was given about ten seconds of airtime and no actual mic time.\u00a0 Conversely, Sheamus was booed mercilessly by the crowd in his first appearance as champion.\u00a0 So lacklustre was his support that his first challenger as heel, Alberto Del Rio, appears to be a defacto face because fans are pissed about the fashion in which Sheamus beat Daniel Bryan.\u00a0 It’s can’t be understated just how badly the WWE booking borked Sheamus’ first run as a babyface champion.<\/p>\n

Secondly…Brock Fucking Lesnar returned to the WWE for the first time in eight years to F5 John Cena at the end of RAW.\u00a0 It appears Cena has been so dominant of the current roster that the only thing left for him to do is to job to a bunch of returning WWE legends in special exhibition matches.\u00a0 I’m okay with that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In summary, a Wrestlemania of mixed quality.\u00a0 But an intriguing follow up on RAW means I’ll stayed tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are times when a great wrestling match can be tempered somewhat by a lousy crowd that’s too quiet or disinterested.\u00a0 Equally there are times when a terrible match is made entertaining by a boisterous crowd who come up with amusing chants or make their own entertainment.\u00a0 Wrestlemania XXVIII was an unusual pay per view …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[495,93],"class_list":["post-7030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-tv","tag-wrestlemania","tag-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7030"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7096,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030\/revisions\/7096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}