A Note From Jon: I was originally set to join Brock for this review, but needed to prioritise other content for the site. Finite time and no sleep = some reorganisation!
As WrestleMania 33 enters the history books, it will undoubtedly divide us all. Some will see it as a fun show full of memorable moments, while others will pour scorn on it as another shining example of everything wrong with the current product. What did Brock think of the 2017 Show of Shows? Read on to find out!
WWE Cruiserweight Championship: Austin Aries vs Neville (c)
Result: Neville retained via pinfall following a Red Arrow
I’ll save my thoughts on WrestleMania 33 as a whole until the end, but I will say that I was one who really liked the show. One of the reasons for that was the placement of the matches. I was originally bummed to hear that this match wouldn’t be on the main card but, after seeing the reaction of the fans and how well the match primed the crowd, I was glad it was placed where it was. There may have been no other match better suited to kicking off the night than this high octane thriller.
I really liked this match. Was it the absolute classic I was hoping it would be? No. But it delivered in a way I think few fans were expecting, including myself. This match wasn’t about Austin Aries or Aries’ long rise to the top. This match was all about establishing the Cruiserweight division, which I think they did very well here. This was, in my eyes, the best CW title match in WrestleMania history (not that there have been a million of them), and one that put the division on notice. The others on the 205 Live roster need to either step up to the level of Neville and Aries or just get out of the way. I was surprised that Neville won but I don’t think I should have been. Aries just debuted, after all, on the 205 Live roster. If you’re trying to establish a brand like the Cruiserweight division the worst thing to do is have the “King” drop the title to a guy (no matter how great) who just debuted. This made sense to go on first and it made sense to have Neville retain. Beyond all of that, it was a helluva match.
Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal
Result: Mojo Rawley won, last eliminating Jinder Mahal
I’m going to get heat for this but I have to say this was one of my favorite matches of the night. Now before you close out the article or come looking for my head, let me explain that what I liked most about this match were the constant swerves. Going in people assumed it was Braun, Big Show, or Ziggler, or somebody featured prominently on TV already that would walk out with the trophy. However, aside from Big Show the trophy has gone to a talent that needed the rub and deserved the attention a big win would give him. Keeping that in mind it now seems ridiculous to think that Braun or Big Show or anyone like that even had a chance to win the match and perfectly logical for Mojo Rawley to be selected to carry the gimmick for the next year. On top of that, SmackDown Live is only two hours. There is much more room on RAW to establish mid-card talent than there is on SD Live, especially when you consider that Mojo’s been without partner Zack Ryder due to injury. I liked the Gronk spot and at once thought back to Kevin Greene who, despite his lack of natural wrestling ability, respected the “sport” and respected those he watched on TV. Greene was never an embarrassment to wrestling because of his passion. I feel the same way about Gronk even if I loathe the New England Patriots for humiliating the Pittsburgh Steelers yet again in the AFC title game (I’m still recovering from 2004, thank you very much Mr. Brady…). Of all the Andre the Giant battle royals thus far, this is by far my favorite. I hope they continue this trend of swerves in the future with this match.
WWE Intercontinental Championship: Baron Corbin vs Dean Ambrose (c)
Result: Dean Ambrose retained via pinfall, following Dirty Deeds
I don’t know about this match. I honestly expected this to open the PPV not close out the Kickoff pre-show. This was one of the only times during the event that I felt bad for the talent involved and their placement on the card. Corbin and Ambrose had a very high profile angle going in and it seemed likely that they would be highlighted during the event and that just didn’t happen. These two guys deserved a spot on the main card. As for the match, it just didn’t click with me the way I thought it would. Both guys delivered a fast-paced match but in the end it felt more like a SD Live match than a big WrestleMania showdown.
AJ Styles vs Shane McMahon
Result: AJ Styles won via pinfall following a Phenomenal Forearm
I really liked this match. Aside from Bret/Owen at WrestleMania X I can’t think of another WrestleMania opener that was as big or as good as this. Sure Shane’s punches and kicks looked like dog poo, but we already knew that. What this match proved, unequivocally, was that AJ Styles is the absolute best in WWE right now. Hands down. As much praise as Shane should get for this match, and he deserves it, AJ Styles made this match the classic it became. It wouldn’t become apparent until later that its placement on the card was more to spread out the “street fight” matches and not burn the crowd out. I think it worked. It was a helluva way to kick off the PPV.
WWE United States Championship: Kevin Owens vs Chris Jericho (c)
Result: Kevin Owens won via pinfall following an Apron Powerbomb (NEW CHAMPION)
I loved this match. There was enough drama and swerves along the way to genuinely keep the outcome in doubt. The current crop of talent in WWE doesn’t get the same attention for the details the guys in other eras get but the attention to ring generalship is just as good now as it’s ever been. Owen’s knuckle on the bottom rope is a spot I’ll never forget and was a not so subtle reminder to just how great KO is. My “fear” is that this match will get lost in the shuffle of WrestleMania 33 and be easily forgotten, especially if the rematch (as the ever reliable *cough* Meltzer says won’t happen) doesn’t happen. For the moment and for the night this match delivered and was a great way continue the show.
Raw Women’s Championship: Fatal 4-Way Elimination Match
Result: Bayley retained, last eliminating Charlotte Flair following a Top-Rope Elbow Drop
By this time in the show one got the impression that WWE wasn’t fooling around tonight. It’s rare that three main event quality matches open a big show (I can’t remember the last time it happened, if ever, to be frank) and even rarer that those match deliver. While I think this match delivered what it said it would, it felt a bit off to me, as if it were nothing more than a very high quality RAW main event. The suplex Nia took was just incredible, as was the triple powerbomb that eliminated her. Though I picked Charlotte to win the match (let’s just not talk about my predictions, okay? I got crushed…) I’m glad Bayley got her WrestleMania moment. Aside from the few botches, or not so few depending on your POV, this match was another winner in my book, though, like I said, it felt more like a MOTY RAW main event. They may not have stolen the show the way they did last year but the women of RAW proved again that they are just as good as the men.
Raw Tag Team Championship: Fatal 4-Way Ladder Match
Result: The Hardy Boys Defeated The Club, Enzo Amore and Big Cass and Sheamus and Cesaro via belt retrieval (NEW CHAMPIONS)
What can I say about this? One reason I love wrestling so much is that it gets my heart pumping like nothing else on the planet. Well, at least with my pants on. Trust me, Potter has a zinger for the ages lined up for that one that I’m soon to hear. The New Day fake out was as good as it gets, but the rush that I and every fan watching got when the Hardy’s made their return was what wrestling is all about. The match was also a great little ladder match as well, featuring a number of great spots and classic moments. Jeff Hardy, as if I need to say it, is a lunatic. That swanton off the what, 80-foot ladder(?) literally took my breath away. It’s a shame the Broken gimmick can’t be used as I imagine Vince McMahon would want to, but I’m sure we’ll see it someday.
John Cena and Nikki Bella vs The Miz and Maryse
Result: John Cena and Nikki Bella won via pinfall following dual Attitude Adjustments
This match was awful. For my money this was the only dud of the night, and for a WrestleMania that’s incredible. Clearly the focus of the match was Nikki & Cena and the proposal that EVERYONE (yes, EVERYONE) saw coming. This match was sold as a death match by nearly everyone in WWE. “These two teams just don’t like each other,” JBL would say. Whatever. There was as much heat to this match in the moment as a cold dog doo. Maybe that’s just me.
Non-Sanctioned Match: Triple H vs Seth Rollins
Result: Seth Rollins won via pinfall following a Pedigree
Well, for those who’d never seen a “dad” motorcycle, here ya go! I think the less said about Triple H’s entrance the better. It wasn’t exactly flattering for Stephanie, either, and it made Triple H look less like a warrior and more like a whipped husband and soft dad (not that being a softy for your girls is a bad thing, mind you). This was the closest thing to an old school wrestling match that we got all night. Though we didn’t get any blood or old school violence the way we would have years earlier I thought this match delivered on the heat and hatred between the two.
I’ve held off ranting for the entire time. I can’t help it this time. RANT: The one beef I’ve had with WWE TV as of late is the Authority angle. Begun in the summer of 2013 the Authority angle has lasted longer than the nWo lasted in WCW with no real end in sight. Back when it was Vince doing his thing with Austin the end game was clear, the two would fight at some point and Vince would either screw Austin or get his ass whipped. Now the main antagonist of RAW is Stephanie McMahon. In 2017 and the hyper SJW culture we live in in the U.S., who’s going to step up and slap Stephanie or get into any kind of fight with her? Without the closure of a physical showdown, in wrestling terms (at least in my eyes), there lacks any real resolution to the story. Once a year Stephanie gets puts put through a table (this year) or speared (by Reigns last year) or tossed out of the ring (by Rousey at WM 31) or taken out with a suicide dive (as Bryan did at WM XXX) only to return to do the same angle again and again… and again. Stephanie may love her father and may want to prove to him that she is every bit as good as he is/was at drawing heat, but trying to be the same exact character as Mr. McMahon isn’t working for me. I’m not going to play psychiatrist and speculate about anything beyond the ring, but Shane McMahon is Shane McMahon on TV, not a cheap caricature of his father. It might not be so bad if the gimmick was consistent but it’s not. But that’s another rant altogether.
Judging by what happened on RAW I’m guessing that WrestleMania 34 in New Orleans will feature Kurt Angle versus Triple H after months of either slow heat building between Stephanie and Angle or Angle falling in love with Stephanie again. Either way we’re sure to see Stephanie getting put in the ankle lock at some point in the next 12-months.
WWE Championship: Randy Orton vs Bray Wyatt (c)
Result: Randy Orton won via pinfall following an RKO
This one played out much the way I thought it would, but it was far more entertaining than I figured it would be. The projections over the ring were one of the highlights of the night for me and added an element to the match that was sorely lacking in respect to Wyatt’s character for the event. My one problem with the Wyatt/Orton angle since Fastlane has been the lack of development of the Wyatt character. Wyatt lost his family, his shanty, and the rotting corpse for a sister, sure, but where was his power, his growth? Why should Wyatt have been seen as a threat to Orton if Orton so easily ruined Wyatt’s world and Wyatt showed virtually no progress as a character, how could he be a threat to Orton? That part of their story bugged me from the start. But the projections and the mind games from Wyatt worked well for that one reason. If anything fell flat for me in this one it was the finish itself. Overall, though, I thought it was a better match than it was going to be. I’m looking forward to seeing what these two do in the future, if there is a future for these two with the coming “shakeup”. Anything can happen, right?
WWE Universal Championship: Brock Lesnar vs Goldberg (c)
Result: Brock Lesnar won via pinfall following an F5 (NEW CHAMPION)
The energy in this match was epic. As opposed to Wyatt in the previous match, Lesnar showed his progress as a character in the weeks leading into this match. In fact we began seeing the growth as early as January in the “Royal Rumble”. The outcome was never in doubt, but the way they built this story from the start was great. I wished we had seen a bit more wrestling from Lesnar, a new move or two, but it is what it is by now. The days of the great wrestler Lesnar are gone, I guess. Either way, I thought this match, like nearly all of the matches for WrestleMania 33, delivered. The fans who booed this match early were cheering by the end, a testament to the skill of both men as pro wrestlers. As an avid boxing fan I know the “big fight feel” well, and this had it in spades. It will be some time before I feel the “big fight” feel in a WWE ring again, I think. Part-timers or not, this was a big fight. However, after seeing how the match ended I knew there was no way it could have main evented. It was a great ride while it lasted, though.
SmackDown Women’s Championship: 6-Pack Challenge Match
Result: Naomi won via submitting Alexa Bliss (NEW CHAMPION)
I felt bad for the SD women for being out in this spot. I’m not sure what other match could have filled the gap, but I also felt they deserved a better spot on the card more fitting of their progress as a whole. I thought we might get a different kind of match than the one we got back in September at Backlash but we didn’t. With all the talent in this match I thought we’d get more interaction with all the ladies at once and not the same-old, same-old but we got the same-old, same-old in spades in this one, complete with Nattie’s duel Sharpshooter. These ladies should have had a more wipe open match to show off their ability and not be handcuffed with the musical chairs routine WWE can’t help implementing in this kind of match. I was also surprised to see Naomi win only because the hometown girls and boys usually lose in WWE. Naomi deserves to pick up where she left off and she deserves a nice run with the title. The former Funkadactyl has come a long way. She deserves whatever success comes to her. So, while the match didn’t quite click with me, it was by no means a dud and somehow kept the crowd hot for the main event which is no easy task. Kudos to the women of SD Live.
Roman Reigns vs The Undertaker
Result: Roman Reigns won via pinfall following multiple Spears
I was certain after Goldberg/Lesnar that there was no way WWE would end WrestleMania 33 with a Reigns victory over The Undertaker. Then I heard the sudden stipulation change (“No Holds Barred”), saw Taker walk to the ring, his hip clearly causing him pain, and the trouble Taker was having just doing the bare minimum of his repertoire and I knew the Reigns victory was all but certain. Just seeing Undertaker in the shape he was in I’d never hoped more for a Taker win at WrestleMania than on Sunday night. Something told me that even if Taker won there was no way he could carry on much longer. I just didn’t know the end was happening right before my eyes.
First, the match. The match was good for what it was, but wasn’t anywhere as good as it could have been had Undertaker been healthy. The story of the match was obviously how far Reigns would go to win and just how much Taker could take before finally giving out. Through the botches and the stumbles the little things made this match work. The moment of the match for me, the key element to the story, was the “lost” look on Undertaker’s face when Reigns bounced off the ropes for the final spear. In the end Undertaker was as helpless as Triple H had been in the “End of an Era” match, or Shawn Michaels at WMs 25 & 26, when Reigns stood on the chair looking down at the old dog. It was a poetic end to the match that spoke volumes about what we were about to see… The tables had turned. It wasn’t Undertaker’s yard anymore.
When a character dies in a movie or TV series we know it’s over. We can “grieve” the loss knowing there will be no more to the story, that the end has come. In wrestling that kind of moment doesn’t happen very often if at all. We weren’t certain Edge was done for good or that Daniel Bryan would never EVER wrestle again when they made their announcements. We weren’t sure that WrestleMania VIII was the end of Hogan in the WWF or that HBK would ever find his smile in ’97 or leave for good after WrestleMania XXVI. Rarely do we fans get to live in the moment when the end truly comes, especially the end of arguably the greatest career in the history of the WWF/E. Rarely are we able to put our cynical nature aside long enough to just feel a moment as it unfolds in front of us, allow it to open us up and take a bit of us with it. But that’s what happened.
I wasn’t sure what I was watching Sunday night. I was numb. I’ve been watching Undertaker since his debut in 1990 when I was 9 years old. I’d been through all the matches, feuds, caskets, body-bags, symbols, blood lettings, and wars. I never truly thought the end would come. I thought it would never end. But then, right there in the middle of the ring at WrestleMania, an event Undertaker helped make one of the biggest in the world, “The Undertaker” came to an end. And I didn’t know what to think. It was poetic and beautiful and moving, but I was numb; in disbelief. All day Monday I thought about what I’d seen and what I’d felt, and about just what had happened the night before. Later I watched it back, and I cried. Flashes of those great moments and matches, the promos and the evolution of the “Dead Man”, they came flooding back. This didn’t feel like it usually does. This felt real. This felt like the true end of an era. As if we witnessed a death; the death of the character that was Death for so many years in WWE. Make no mistake about it, I’m no “fanboy”. I don’t root for one wrestler over another anymore, I outgrew that in high school. I watch for the wrestling, that’s what got me hooked to begin with. But after Sunday night wrestling just isn’t going to be the same anymore. We’ve lost something now. Something that can never be duplicated or re-imagined. I can’t even begin to think of the WWE without The Undertaker much less a WrestleMania. In this final act The Undertaker didn’t just leave it all in the ring, he took a piece of all us with him when he descended into the deep. And, for me at least, “Thank You” just isn’t good enough.
Closing Thoughts
They hyped this event as the “Ultimate Thrill Ride” and boy was it! From the Hardys to Taker’s final stand this WrestleMania will go down as one of the best, most important shows in company history. At 7-hours and 10-minutes the show is, as far as I can tell, the longest wrestling show in history in this country. By the end, however, unlike last year, fans were still with it. The fans still cared. You can say what you want about the card and the stories and all the rest of it, but the WWE delivered in a huge way Sunday night. You could skip the mixed tag match, but I would suggest to anyone who missed the show to watch it. You won’t be disappointed that you did.
You can read my Throwback Thursday articles at WrestlingDVDNetwork.com, as well as find all the latest news and buzz on all things WWE Home Video. You can also check out my Kayfabe Commentaries DVD reviews.
A final note on the delay of this article. Aside from some confusion on my end, I’ve been very busy the last two days and I would like to apologize to Jon Potter and any of the great readers of WNN expecting the review sooner. The delay, however, let me formulate my thoughts a bit better on key aspects of the show, so it’s not all bad.
What were your thoughts on WrestleMania 33? Let us know in the comments section below!