WWE WrestleMania 34 (2018)

Wrestlemania 34 will go down as one of the most bizarre wrestling events ever. The card was incredible (probably the best card of all time), but the event didn't meet expectations. The first match (triple threat for the IC title) was the best match; after that it started falling apart. There were way too many things ruining the show... Jinder Mahal becoming US champion, only to lose the title to Jeff Hardy two weeks later (Rusev was the most popular guy involved in the match, but the WWE hates the idea of giving the fans what they want).The Undertaker returning to the ring for a squash match against Cena (2:46 seconds). What was the point of all this? Didn't Taker retire at Wrestlemania 33? What was the point of him leaving his coat / hat in the middle of the ring the year before?Braun Strowman making a joke of the whole tag team division (specially The Bar, The Revival and Gallows&Anderson, who weren't even book for the show), after chosing a 10 year old to be his tag team partner. Probably one of the most stupid things I've seen. Roman Reigns vs Brock Lesnar in the worst Wrestlemania main event EVER (fans chanting "this is awful" the whole time).In sum: this was the Wrestlemania where nothing made sense, where they decided to insult the intelligence of the fans and where they proved to the world they are at least a decade behind the times. The level of stupidity and laziness was so high that not a single chair / ladder / table was used in any match; not a single backstage moment / interview took place. On top of all that, it lasted 7 hours (2 hours on the pre-show + 5 of the main show), which made it very hard for the European audience to watch live.

WrestleMania. The show of shows. The greatest night in entertainment. The night when everybody is supposed to deliver their all. Unfortunately, it did not.I am very easy to please with what WWE does. In this case, I reacted almost as bad as someone who loves NJPW. Right away, the show (including the kick-off show) equalled 7 hours. So much exhaustion and burnout can happen in even a shorter span. I know WWE wants Mania to stand out as more epic and more important, but it should be much shorter like in years before. Because of its length, fans were burnt out which diminished the qualities of some of the matches. I will always voice this complain until changes are made!First off was the Andre the Giant battle royal. I am a sucker for battle royals and Bray returning to align with winner "Woken" Matt was cool, but this wasn't as great as I was expecting. But good nonetheless. 7.5/0Next was Mustafa Ali against Cedric Alexander for the vacant cruiserweight championship. The long lasting tournament had better matches in it than this. Seemed more like a decent match on 205 Live. Cedric won and rightfully so. 7/10Last of the pre-show was the Women's battle royal. A little dull like the men's but the booking was bad. Naomi hasn't been seen in almost the whole match and returns at the very end to win? Makes no sense. 6.5/10First on the main card was Miz defending the intercontinental title against Finn Balor and Seth Rollins. I really, really wanted Finn to come out in his demon paint (it's wrestlemania for god's sakes!) but the match was pretty good. Seth won and is now a grand slam champion. 8/10Smackdown women's champion Charlotte goes against the unbeatable Asuka. Asuka was the winner of the first women's royal rumble and jobs out to Ric Flair's daughter. Made no sense. It pissed me off. Not that Asuka's monumental streak came to an end or that it was Charlotte that did it, the rumble suddenly became irrelevant and Charlotte has nothing to gain out of it. Why not hand it to a diva who needs a revival or an NXT girl? This good match sunk because of the booking. 6.5/10Next was for the US title. Jinder Mahal bested Randy Orton, Bobby Roode and Rusev. Although I do think Jinder's hatred by people is a bit much, I do agree he was not a good pick. Why doesn't WWE just admit their Jinder experiment flopped? Anyway, the match was good. 7/10"Rowdy" Ronda Rousey makes her WWE in-ring debut in a mixed-tag team match with Kurt Angle against Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. Two REAL fighters against a one-match-a-year wrestler (Triple H) and a BUSINESSWOMAN (Stephanie, the boss's daughter!) did not jell together very well in my book. I've never been one for mixed tag team matches, but this was different. Since WWE does not do inter gender matches, they usually try to treat mixed tag team bouts like two matches in one. But this seemed like they wanted to make it a normal tag team bout. Ronda did shine, but I blame Hunter and Stephanie for the match not being as good as the others. 6.5/10For the Smackdown tag team titles, Usos went up against New Day and Bludgeon Brothers. Before the match even started, New Day came out with little people in pancake outfits. The idea was for laughs. It was downright offensive! Just goes to show WWE's hypocrisy with bullying. Bludgeon brothers won in a short squash match. I don't mind squash matches, but a triple threat tag team?? 5/10Undertaker finally accepts John Cena's challenge. Throughout the night, the camera kept cutting over to reactions to Cena in the audience as a fan (a big flaw of the night). After Cena took care of Elias who took advantage of the situation, Taker came out and he looked great! It was short and John botched a boot to the face, but I was a sucker for this. 8/10Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn were against Shane McMahon and a returning Daniel Bryan. The latters won with great emotion in a nice match. 8/10For the Raw women's title, gigantic Nia Jax beat her former best friend Alexa Bliss. Like the last few Manias, the build-up wasn't good. But the build up for this was excellent. And the booking made sense! 8/10Raw tag team champions, The Bar, went up against Braun Strowman and a kid (referee John Cone's son) Nicholas whom he seemingly randomly picked from the crowd. It was funny, but they should have used Braun's mystery partner as the way to bring back Lashley like they did tonight on Raw. Made better sense that way. But I'm not upset. It was kinda nice to see this kid shine. 7/10Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar closed the show. Brock has made the universal title irrelevant and meaningless. Plus he doesn't deserve to have held it for over a year. Not to mention his matches are one-sided with him doing 15 German-suplexes with an F5. Their first Mania match was a dud, but this sucked! The tired crowd bashed it. Coming from someone who saw it fresh, it certainly did suck! Brock did 2 moves (sometimes he did belly-t-belly, but it is still nearly the same thing) and Roman also did two! Roman always does more moves! Brock miraculously added a third move by the end (elbow strikes) which busted Roman open. Brock won. I would have been all for Brock winning if I knew he would show up more than a couple times a year. Put all that aside, the match was awful. 3/10Total: 6/10

This was kind of a loaded show, but I went in with low expectations and I think they kind of reached them.The Ronda Rousey tag was wild and a WWF throwback with all the chaos, but it wasn't exactly a good match.AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura had a classic in Japan, but this one was just okay.And we need a break from Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns in the title picture.

WWE pay per views over the past few years have had the habit of being hugely mixed bags. They tend to be a royal crapfest with sprinklings of decency and Wrestlemania 34 was the same thing.I usually break these things down but its 5am and the main event was so bad it's given me a migraine so I'll merely summarise.Quality of wrestling, below par. And considering it included the in ring return of Daniel Bryan and a match between AJ & Nakamura that's pretty astounding.Outcomes? A combination of logical, to stupid to mind blowingly moronic.So what came out of the ppv that was actually good? Well Ronda Rousey proved her critics wrong and actually delivered a really good performance! The main event though dire had a very unexpected outcome that put a smile on my face and the whole thing wasn't as predictible as expected.Regardless this was Wrestlemania, the showcase of the immortals and had absolutely no excuse for being quite as much of a mess as it was.The Good:Ronda RouseyUnpredictible (For a change)The Bad:Bray Wyatts anti-climatic returnCruiserweight finale embarassmentConstant John Cena reactionsAdverts during matchesRecord number of announcer botchesSome of the booking decisions were bizzare and highly illogical3D graphics were dumbPointless Elias sectionKid Rock couldn't even be bothered to show upBrauns partner, really!?Things I Learnt From This PPV:When you do a tournament for a title and it culminates at the biggest show of the year and nobody cares about it.........you know you have problemSaying that two wrestlers know one another intimately is maybe a bad callBooker T saying Cedric Alexander may be the most talented person in the locker room is the dumbest thing he's said yet, and he talks a lot of crapFuture of music, really?!?!If you want to know the state of the WWE just remember Kid Rock is in the WWE Hall Of Fame and THE Rock isn'tShane needs to stop wrestling, he's an embarassmentI can't be the only one who wanted Braun Strowman to turn on his partner, right?