Views from the Hard Cam: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of WrestleMania 36
A Mania that should’ve been one night
We, as fans of sports, are in a weird period in history due to the COVID-19 outbreak. There’s no Saturday night and Sunday afternoon NBA showcase games, no March Madness, hell we don’t even have baseball. All we have is wrestling.
There’s a saying in show business that “the show must go on,” which is why Vince McMahon and company decided to tape their biggest show of the year WrestleMania and air it over two nights amid a global pandemic. There’s no point in arguing about whether the show should have even happened. Vince McMahon wasn’t going to postpone it, let alone cancel it. There were also talks that Vince wanted to run Mania in Raymond James Stadium like planned but with NOBODY in attendance.
The one thing that we can do is look at the product that we received and judge it based on its merits. There are no brownie points for the “at least they’re giving us something” argument here. WrestleMania is a show that was taped WEEKS in advance. WWE could’ve fixed any misfires that they had.
The Ugly
Let’s start with the worst parts of the show, shall we? WWE likes to call the time from the Royal Rumble event up to WrestleMania, The Road to WrestleMania. Instead of driving on the autobahn, WWE took us down a random old town road that hasn’t seen a facelift in years. Outside of the build between Randy Orton and Edge, everything else felt okay at best. Most of these matches came together a mere week or two going into the tapings. Some of them didn’t hit their stride until WWE started taping everything in advance. You can put together the best match card in the world, but if you fail to make it feel important or that there are actual stakes, then why should one care? There’s a reason why you get trailers before movies or documentaries drop. You have to build anticipation for people to tune in.
The world title matches were atrocious, and that’s the best way to describe them. WWE’s two biggest titles had the spotlight on separate nights featuring different stars in each match, but you wouldn’t know that given how they booked the bouts. The Universal title match had to be changed last minute due to somebody coming to work sick and Roman Reigns deciding that after two battles with Leukemia, it was in his best interest to protect himself and his family. So what do you do? You put a 50-year-old Goldberg in the ring with Braun Strowman and have them spam their finishers for five minutes. You ever watch two people play Mortal Kombat, and they both only know one move? That’s what that match was.
You would think that Brock and Drew would put on an entertaining 10–15-minute performance, given that it closed Mania. Nope? They followed the same formula to the tee. Watch both matches side by side, and you’ll see. We expected that from Goldberg and Braun. Brock and Drew not giving us a solid hoss fight or car crash to close Mania is disappointing. Was this match changed because it was at the performance center and not in front of a crowd? Sure, but so was everything else on the card.
The Bad
The whole point of taping something in advance is so that if there are any mistakes, you can either edit them out in post-production or reshoot them. Nobody at WWE was aware that they could do that. There were several spots throughout the two nights that clearly could’ve been reshot or edited. Need proof? There’s a prominent shot from Edge and Randy Orton’s match of Orton strangling Edge with a cable from a weight set. Not the best time for that spot, given that this just aired. There’s also Alexa Bliss landing a moonsault of Kairi Sane’s ankles when she aimed for her body. All small things that if they happened live wouldn’t be as much of an issue. When you pride yourself on being the worldwide leader in sports entertainment, and you taped a show in advance, you should be aware of these things.
Wrestling in front of no crowd takes a huge element out of the equation. It removes the ability for wrestlers to adapt on the fly and react to the crowd. Specific moments that would get a reaction from the crowd, now get nothing. The lack of an audience hindered this WrestleMania. The triple threat ladder match would have been exponentially better with fans to react to all of the spots. Imagine the pop at the end when Morrison dies on the ladder and then rolls off like a bug falling off a windshield. Although, hearing Uso tell Kofi Kingston that he was going to flatten his face like a pancake is priceless.
If not having fans in attendance didn’t take away from the matches, having them end out of nowhere definitely did and would’ve killed even the hottest of crowds. Shayna Bazler spent the past two months as a credible threat to Becky Lynch after attacking Lynch and single-handedly nerfing everybody in the women’s division, only to be beaten by a fluke roll-up literally out of nowhere. If it seemed familiar, it’s because Becky beat Ronda Rousey at last year’s WrestleMania with the same random roll-up. The Raw Tag Team titles and the Intercontinental title matches both ended with pins out of nowhere right as both were starting to build to a crescendo.
The Good
Professional wrestling has always been goofy and never taken itself too seriously. Look at some of the more popular wrestlers from the 80s and 90s. For crying out loud, a grown-ass man walked around carrying a 2x4 and yelled “ho” and was over like nobody’s business. There was also an Elvis impersonator. Go ahead and tell me how wrestling and its fans take themselves too seriously.
WWE decided to embrace that side of things with arguably the two best matches of the weekend in the boneyard match featuring The Undertaker and the firefly funhouse match featuring The Fiend. There’s something to be said about embracing the campiness but not overdoing it. Being able to execute two distinctly different cinematic style matches is impressive. Nobody had high hopes for The Undertaker’s match going into it, but yet WWE was able to deliver us the best performance from The Deadman since WrestleMania 29. The FireFly Funhouse match is such a masterpiece in long term storytelling that you have to watch it to appreciate it fully. For reference, imagine Sam Raimi and Quentin Tarrantino took you on a twisted ride throughout John Cena’s wrestling career.
Finally, one of the best things to come from WrestleMania is that Vince finally let individual wrestlers do what they do best. Daniel Bryan and Sami Zayn went out and delivered a beautifully told story that showcased the best of both characters and their in-ring skill. The triple threat between John Morrison, Kofi Kingston, and Jimmy Uso for the tag team titles allowed three of WWE’s best athletes to go out there and showcase their abilities. When WWE doesn’t overproduce matches and let their talent do what they do best, they often end up with some of the best in-ring work.
WrestleMania is just like everything else in life; good, bad, and ugly. While WWE should receive some praise for putting on a show during this time as a way for people to find entertainment, there’s no letting them off the hook for producing a product that doesn’t meet their standards or the raised standards of WrestleMania. All WWE can do now is learn from putting on a pay-per-view with no crowd and use it for their next show, which will likely be another empty arena.
WrestleMania 37 is 356 days away. If WWE wants to erase this year’s WrestleMania from memory, then they have to start working toward next year. If you don’t learn from your past, then you are doomed to repeat it.
