Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: recaps, Wrestlemania, wrestling, wwe

In Triumph for WWE, WrestleMania Night 2 Exceeds Low Expectations

Another WrestleMania is in the record books, and if there's one thing we can definitively say about "the most stupendous two-night WrestleMania in history," it's this: it wasn't as bad as we expected. Sure, it was a low bar. WWE as a company in general has been at an all-time creative low point while at the same time the company's business decisions, including dealings with the Saudi Arabian government, treatment of "independent contractors," and mass layoffs, have bordered on intolerable. So going into WrestleMania, I was prepared to hate everything about it. But when all was said and done, there were some parts I really enjoyed amongst the many I didn't care about, and none that I outright hated. For a WWE event in 2022, that's actually pretty damn good.

I already shared my thoughts on WrestleMania Night 1, pointing out that Cody Rhodes' debut, Becky vs. Bianca, and Stone Cold vs. Kevin Owens were the high points and everything else mostly forgettable. WrestleMania Night 2 followed a similar pattern. Edge vs. AJ Styles was delivered on the promise of a "dream match" between two of the best to ever step foot in the ring, even if it lacked a meaningful build. And despite that lack of build, the outcome, which saw Damian Priest interfere to help Edge win, created a new stable and new storyline possibilities for the future. This was the best match of the night, as most probably expected it to be.

Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar fulfilled its promise of an acceptable WWE heavyweight main event match, nothing we haven't seen before. Was it particularly good? No. But it wasn't offensively bad either. It was just there, a means to an end. Reigns had to cheat to gain the upper hand on Lesnar, hitting him with a low blow and a belt to the face, but that's practically a clean win by WWE standards. Reigns as lone champion, presumably appearing on both shows, will add some star power to Raw and present the opportunity for some relatively fresh matchups while simultaneously making the championship seem more important. I'm not sure how long the unified titles will last, and I assume not for long, but in the short term, it will be a nice change of pace.

In an unexpected twist, both celebrity matches on WrestleMania Night 2 were, dare I say it, entertaining. Johnny Knoxville defeated Sami Zayn with much crowd-pleasing interference from the Jackass crew, including the use of multiple wacky devices, such as a giant hand machine that smacked Sami in the fact, a machine for kicking Sami in the balls, a table covered in mouse traps that Sami got tossed through, and a giant mousetrap that was used to pin him. It was goofy and ridiculous and Sami Zayn jobbed to a skinny, grey-haired celebrity, but it's not like Zayn had a ton of credibility before the match anyway, so that was no big loss.

Meanwhile, Pat McAfee put his insane athletic skills on display once again in his match with Austin Theory. But the real fun came after McAfee got the win, as Vince McMahon soon stepped into the ring and had a match with McAfee. Yes, much suspension of disbelief was required to buy into the offense from the 76-year-old McMahon, but that's the great thing about wrestling in 2022: everyone knows it's fake, and under the right circumstances, are more than willing to go along with something like this. Lots of people on the internet owe Dave Meltzer an apology for mocking his reporting this match would happen months ago, and the whole thing made a lot more sense than it did on paper because as soon as McMahon took his shirt off and got in the ring with McAfee, the ultimate end result was obvious: after McMahon pinned McAfee, Stone Cold Steve Austin came out once more to drink some beers and give the Stone Cold Stunner to Theory, McMahon (who botched it, but again, 76), and McAfee. Obviously, everyone loved that, and there will never be a time that people don't love Stone Cold Steve Austin giving the stunner to Vince McMahon, no matter how implausibly old either of them are.

Even the stuff that wasn't great on WrestleMania Night 2 was at least inoffensive. The Raw tag team titles may be meaningless, but it's nice to see Randy Orton having fun with RKBro, and after they retained the titles against the Street Profits and Alpha Academy, the Profits and RKBro invited Gable Steveson into the ring to celebrate with a toast, which led to Steveson getting to suplex Chad Gable. The women's tag team titles may be even less meaningless than the mens' (and that's saying something), but it was still nice to see Sasha Banks and Naomi win them because Sasha, arguably the most popular horsewoman, doesn't normally get the same level of push that Becky and Charlotte do. And for the stuff that was outright bad, at least it was over quickly. Bobby Lashley vs. Omos was never going to be a good match, but at least Lashley won in about six minutes. Likewise, nobody wanted to see New Day vs. Sheamus and Ridge Holland (or probably to watch Ridge Holland wrestle again for a very long time), but at least it was over in under two minutes.

In the end, WrestleMania Night 2 was a more solid show than Night 1. If you eliminated the filler and just had one night of WrestleMania with Reigns vs. Lesnar, Belair vs. Lynch, Charlotte vs. Ronda, Austin vs. Owens, Edge vs. AJ, Rhodes vs. Rollins, and I guess the celebrity matches since it's WrestleMania after all, you would have had an above-average WrestleMania. Stretched across two nights with so much filler, it was still bloated, lacked a compelling creative build, and nearly put me to sleep in several places, but you have to grade WWE on a curve since it's been so incredibly bad for so long. In that context, this years' WrestleMania was a triumph that, at the very least, has me interested in seeing WWE Raw tonight instead of viewing it as an unavoidable chore for the first time in a long time. Sure, I'll be back to being bored out of my mind by everything WWE does within two weeks, but the bottom line is that WWE exceeded expectations with WrestleMania this year. And that may be the nicest thing I've ever said about them.

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