It is currently: May 14, '24, 9:20 pm |
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prophet wrote:How was the match? Wikipedia tells me they went 20 minutes?
prophet wrote:How was the match? Wikipedia tells me they went 20 minutes?
Everlong wrote:And it wasn't like Shane got carried -- he did very well in his own right.
Hanley! wrote:It's still almost certainly the worst pay per view singles match Styles has had in over a decade.
KaiserGlider wrote:Hanley! wrote:It's still almost certainly the worst pay per view singles match Styles has had in over a decade.
lol, what? We're counting TNA right?
The match definitely exceeded my expectations. I was very concerned when I found out they were going to keep it as a normal match and not a hardcore match, but the first half of the match before the ref bump was pretty good in terms of how it was paced and how well Shane hung in there. He deserves just as much credit as AJ for that performance. I was more impressed by Shane than AJ during that match.
Hanley! wrote:Yeah, I'm counting TNA. There might be a couple of exceptions if I went back and checked. But as bad as TNA were in terms of booking, he generally had a higher caliber of opponent there than Shane McMahon. Pacman Jones notwithstanding.
I just came into this match with a different mindset than many people. I never wanted to compare it to other Shane McMahon matches, because he's the guy who shouldn't have been on the show in the first place. For this match to justify its place on the card to me, it had to compare favourably to other Styles matches instead. And it wasn't up to his usual standard.
What's more, in the context of the entire show I think this match looks like a mistake now. We didn't that 4+ star match on this show. And when the audience started to flag later on, they could have really used a great, balls-to-the-wall AJ Styles match to get them fired up again. The absence of that sort of match later in the show hurt the entire thing, and Styles would have been a great candidate to deliver that match.
Considering how Cena's match and the WWE title match disappointed also, it seems even more obvious in hindsight that this should have been Styles vs Cena for the title.
Hanley! wrote:I'm not devaluing the match because Shane is a non-wrestler, but because it wasn't all that great. And you say that it got Styles more exposure than his matches at TNA, and that's true. But that's because of the show, not the opponent. If Styles had a 4.5 star match against a great wrestler at Wrestlemania, that would have been better exposure than a 3 to 3.5 star affair against Shane McMahon. And better for the show as a whole.
Michaels vs Vince was a better match than Styles vs Shane too. Partially because they added more smoke and mirrors. There were plenty of weapons and run-ins and all of the stuff you'd expect in a match featuring a non-wrestler. Just as importantly though, Vince was always a much better character than Shane. People cared more about him. That makes a difference.
Wrestlemania isn't a time for a wrestler to give us a performance that's below average for them on pay per view, and I hope we can agree that this was at least below average for Styles on pay per view. It was a problem elsewhere on the show too, but it was particularly noticeable here due to Styles reputation: wrestlers weren't put in the position to really steal the show the way they usually would be.
This isn't a match that many people wanted to see. It received a lot of heat coming up to Wrestlemania. Fans obviously wanted something else from Styles, and no longer seemed interested in seeing Shane wrestle at all. With all of that considered, I just don't think the match itself was as good as it needed to be to justify its existence.
Headlesspete wrote:What we got was an older legend putting over a star who's gonna be needing a rub for the coming year, and that can only be a good thing.
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