Best/Worst WrestleMania Weekend Moments

Jeffrey Lyles April 9, 2018April 10, 2018 0 Comments AJ Styles, John Cena, Johnny Gargano, Kurt Angle, Ronda Rousey, Seth Rollins, Tommaso Ciampa, Wrestlemania, Wrestlemania 34

Whew. After somewhere around 110 hours of wrestling during WrestleMania Weekend, I’m finally caught up. Until RAW, which is on as I write this…

There’s spoilers if you didn’t watch Supercard of Honor, NXT TakeOver and WrestleMania beware.

Best WrestleMania Weekend Moments

Heels that know how to be heels

Tomasso Ciampa is such a bastard even smark fans respect him enough to boo him like he was in the 80s. He’s on another level and his feud with Gargano is showing how effective heels can be when they’re not playing to the crowd. Cody, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn were also entertaining. Just so it doesn’t come off like I’m always hating on Triple H and Steph, they play their roles well every time. Bully Ray and Nakamura’s heel turns were very effective and should make their respective shows a lot more interesting with them playing the aggressive roles.

Rumble win does not equal victory

More so for Nakamura than for Asuka, but I liked that the champions were able to hold off their Royal Rumble challengers. There was going to be nothing left for Asuka had she beaten Charlotte. Now she’s got a goal to beat the one person ready for Asuka. AJ Styles staving off Nakamura ensures this feud continues with respect out of the window. That’s a big win for fans.

Undisputed Era makes Strong addition

With Bobby Fish on the shelf for awhile, the Undisputed Era didn’t need their momentum ditched either. Adam Cole winning the North America title confirmed the UE wasn’t heading up to the main roster anytime soon either. It made a lot of sense, which we don’t always see a lot from the WWE, to have Roderick Strong join up with his ex-ROH pals. With Pete Dunne looking for revenge and the UE likely using the Freebird Rule, NXT is going to be very interesting.

Active Fans

This wasn’t the case all weekend, but at times the fans deserved a bow. The guy who had the ‘I don’t even like times new Roman’ sign won the weekend. The NXT fans were great and were the few who were engaged in matches throughout. The chants all weekend were on point from Ciampa getting the ‘you deserve it!’ after getting powerbombed on the concrete to ‘this is awful’ during Reigns/Lesnar.

Johnny Gargano vs. Tomasso Ciampa

Gargano is the one guy I’d put in the conversation with AJ Styles, Okada and Kenny Omega as the best wrestler in the world. His last six months have been as good as anyone.

Gargano and Ciampa frequently had some of NXT’s best matches so it probably wasn’t a shock this one delivered too. If anything this match surpassed the high expectations. I’d easily call this match the new standard of former best friends clashing in a heated war. It was so good on every front.

I was almost rooting for Ciampa so Gargano can just go to SmackDown and start up a legendary all-time feud with AJ Styles. How good were these guys? They managed to avoid the modern wrestling mid-match lull and kept the fans invested the entire match.

Matches Fit for a WrestleMania Moment

With so many big shows we were bound to get some great matches besides the Match Of The Year Candidate in Gargano/Ciampa. In no particular order, here’s the ones worth tracking down:

Ladder Match: Young Bucks vs. So Cal Uncensored (ROH Supercard of Honor)
Kota Ibushi vs. Adam Page (Supercard of Honor)
Ladder Match: Killian Dane vs. Lars Sullivan vs. Adam Cole vs. The Velveteen Dream vs. Ricochet vs. EC3 (NXT TakeOver)
Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Tournament Finals: Undisputed Era vs. Pete Dunne & Roderick Strong vs. Authors of Pain (NXT TakeOver)
NXT Title Match: Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas vs Aleister Black (NXT TakeOver)
WWE Women’s Title: Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka (WrestleMania 34)
Mixed Tag Match: Kurt Angle and Ronda Rousey vs. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon (WrestleMania 34)

Now let’s check out the other side of this weekend.

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