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Ranking interest level in each WM match

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Ranking interest level in each WM match

Postby The Legend » Mar 31, '19, 6:44 am

Ranking my interest in each of the announced Mania matches from lowest to highest one week before the big show…

The two battle royals – I have to lump these two matches together at the bottom of my interest. The WWE has barely acknowledged the existence of the women’s battle royal and the men’s battle royal is just an excuse to get some celebrity involvement with Braun Strowman. The winners get a trophy and nothing else, certainly no storyline push to follow if history of these matches continues.

Cruiserweight Championship: Buddy Murphy vs Tony Nese – I hear lots of places that Murphy has done an excellent job as champion and Nese is doing strong work. They also have a backstory as friends turned rivals. All of that is nice, but I can’t get excited for a match that has transpired entirely on the Network. I simply don’t have time in my week to watch all of WWE’s network programming, so this one loses out a bit for me.

Retirement Match: Kurt Angle vs Baron Corbin – Why? Let me repeat that: WHY? How could WWE think that Baron Corbin was the right opponent for Kurt Angle in his retirement match? I mean yes they have history from about six months ago that went largely unresolved, but nobody in the audience was clamoring for a conclusion to that story that has cooled down incredibly. When you look at the loosely formed heel stable, Corbin is the bottom of the barrel of that stable. I think they could have booked nearly anybody else on the roster for Angle’s final match and I think it would have been a better choice and for heaven’s sake don’t make Angle job to Corbin in his last match.

Women’s Tag Championship: Boss N Hug Connection vs The IIconics vs Phoenix and Natalya vs Jax and Tamina – I was actually really excited for the women’s tag championships to get introduced. Then the WWE went and booked the belts horribly from the very beginning. Bayley and Sasha shouldn’t have been first champions, they should be chasing the belts into this match at Mania. Jax and Tamina are terrible first rivals for Bayley and Sasha as the two teams are just too different and it’s hard to sell Bayley and Sasha being able to beat them. Nobody was clamoring for a Beth Phoenix return and the IIconics are more of a dogdays of Summer challenger when little is going on. Make matters worse and one of the top teams is being broken up in Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville. This match does so little to excite me.

No Holds Barred: HHH vs Batista – Batista’s assault on Ric Flair was great, unfortunately everything since in this feud has been cartoonishly over the top and cringeworthy. This one will be what it is, which is a brawl between two old guys that can’t go anymore and will have plenty of rest points. That said, it should have some good violent spots as well.

United States Championship: Samoa Joe vs Rey Mysterio – Joe has finally been given the ball in terms of a title belt and he is running away with it. He’s done a great job as champion taking on all challengers and looking strong. Mysterio is a great foil for him at Mania and they’ve built a nice rivalry built entirely on their in-ring competition and the match should be strong as well.

Intercontinental Championship: Bobby Lashley vs Finn Balor – I’ll give Balor, Lashley and Lio Rush credit, they’ve done a really nice job of telling a simple and almost boring story interesting. They played hot potato with the IC belt to do it, but I don’t mind short bursts of hot potato with a belt on occasion to sell a story and make a belt seem more hotly contested over. Certainly not the top of my list, but a good enough job nonetheless.

Universal Championship: Brock Lesnar vs Seth Rollins – There’s nothing to this story, just like any other Brock Lesnar match. I am excited that we may finally have reached the end of the Brock Lesnar reign of terror, but that’s about it. Rollins will turn in another fantastic performance.

A.J. Styles vs Randy Orton – Credit to WWE they’ve taken what could very easily be a throw away match between two guys that the company had nothing better for them to do at Mania and built a nice story around it. Orton has taken offense to Styles calling SmackDown the house that AJ Styles built since Orton has worked SmackDown far longer than Styles. The two veterans have traded jabs in one-upmanship and they are also building this as a bit of Indy vs WWE and a legacy guy in WWE vs a guy that had to get there the hard way. I’ll be interested to see how this one plays out, hopefully Styles gets the win, but it should be solid work either way.

Roman Reigns vs Drew McIntyre – Reigns has come back and is riding waves of good emotions from the crowd and there’s been better booking of the Big Dawg since his return as well. Drew McIntyre is right at the top of the best heels in the company right now and this feud has been built beautifully as a brutal rivalry. McIntyre has worked his way through the Shield starting with Ambrose and now dealing with Reigns, Rollins as champion might just be next.

Falls Count Anywhere: Shane McMahon vs The Miz – No story in WWE outside of Kofi vs Bryan has as good of emotion as this one. Miz is playing the best face as his career, he’s sympathetic and easy to get behind. Shane is playing the classic McMahon character perfectly against the Miz from humble beginnings and this one should be a fantastic brawl.

Women’s RAW Championship: Ronda Rousey vs Becky Lynch vs Charlotte – This story is full of pitfalls and flaws, what they’ve done to Becky is terrible, shoehorning Charlotte into this match instead of having her face Asuka in a WrestleMania re-match is stupid. The way they’ve booked Ronda is the least imaginative way to have turned her heel. All that said, this match is historic and should be filled with great action, which is why it is still very high on my list of most anticipated matches.

WWE Championship: Daniel Bryan vs Kofi Kingston – This story proves the WWE creative, Vince and HHH still have it in them. They can book a great story that is naturally developing and progresses in a logical way. Simply put, this story has been basically perfectly written and is easily the story I’m most looking forward to, it’s had a fantastic face story with a decent heel story that’s good foil for the face.
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Re: Ranking interest level in each WM match

Postby Headlesspete » Mar 31, '19, 5:11 pm

Roman Reigns vs Drew McIntyre
- Not to sound like a heartless dick, but irrelevant of Roman’s personal time off, he’s still someone I can’t find any energy to enjoy watching. And as much as I had high hopes for Drew, his start/stop push has killed any enjoyment I get from seeing him. The reason this is last is simply because the winner is so obvious, and feels like a Raw match I’ve seen a 1,000 times.

Intercontinental Championship: Bobby Lashley vs Finn Balor
- This suffers from the above match in that I feel like I’ve seen it a 1,000 times, only in this case I think I might be close! The only reason is goes above the Roman/Drew match is seeing the Demon Balor at Mania should be a cool sight. But other than that, I couldn’t care less.

Retirement Match: Kurt Angle vs Baron Corbin
- For the sole reason and hope this is a 10 second squash, I can’t put this above the others. But make no mistake, if this goes above a few minutes its gonna be truly hard to watch. There isn’t one logical reason why WWE went with this, Corbin has to be one of the all time worst when it comes to being interesting, and watching Angle have his final match in such a shitty feud really kills any joy I would have had watching him wrestle one last time.

Cruiserweight Championship: Buddy Murphy vs Tony Nese
- So the other 3 matches were all negative vibes and so were placed below, this sits in the middle of being completely devoid of interest good or bad. I’m sure it will be a good match, but no way anyone will are to see it.

Andre Battle Royal
- There’s the hope Strowman eliminates every single person, or that a surprise entrant from NXT enters and wins. Other than that, who gives a shit? WWE haven’t cared about this match for years beside the first one, so why should we?

Womans Battle Royal
- Asuka enters and kills everyone, and throws them out one at a time. That’s the only way this match feels in any way like it needs to happen. Naomi won last years…..look what it did for her…

No Holds Barred: HHH vs Batista
- I always liked the matches were legends would come back and do battle one final time….Brock/Goldburg, Undertaker/Triple H, Michaels/McMahon…..but those were feuds that I cared about when they first took place. I never cared for Batista, and Triple H outside of his promos’s is so dull. I expect lots of smoke and mirrors to hide both means flaws, and the match will be “fine”, but god help us if it lasts the usual Triple H 30 minute show.

United States Championship: Samoa Joe vs Rey Mysterio
- Now we move into the matches I actually look forward to! This should be good, and if given time verge on great. Rey has a lot to prove since coming back and Joe is always one step away from having a blow away match. My only concern is the use of Reys son leading into the build, I smell a Russo style blunder coming!

Women’s Tag Championship: Boss N Hug Connection vs The IIconics vs Phoenix and Natalya vs Jax and Tamina
- I flat out admit it, I like almost all of the participates here. Banks/Bayley make for great inaugural champions, and IIconics are great characters who get better all the time, and I was a huge fan of Beth back in the day. Plus, hate her all you want, but Nia brings so much to the table others don’t. And when Beth powerslams Nia, its gonna get a huge pop. If booked right, this could be way better than anyone expects.

A.J. Styles vs Randy Orton
- Simply put, AJ can have a great match with anyone, and Orton when given the right partner and motivation can knock it out the park. I fully expect this to be a long running angle so I can see it not blasting on all rockets, but its gonna be a great start and hopefully shows Orton still has it.

WWE Championship: Daniel Bryan vs Kofi Kingston
- Look, I really really like this story, and I am a HUGE Kofi. But…the booking for this has left me cold. WWE should have tried to build this up long before they were forced to act on a whim when Ali got injured and replaced in the Chamber. The Rumble would have been ideal for a random over mid-card act to win and prove ANYONE can win the Rumble, and Kofi was that guy.

Anyway, the match I expect will really go down well, and because Kofi is so damn likeable the crowd should be hot. The result seems 50/50, making it one of the few matches where the finish should be really exiting too.

Universal Championship: Brock Lesnar vs Seth Rollins
- No question, the build up as per a Brock match has been dire, and good god if Seth losses I may lose all hope of WWE every riding the Lesnar train for every penny. That being said, this match is going to be unreal! Brock’s matches with smaller guys always deliver, and Seth at Mania will want to blow away every other match. If the Woman’s 3 way doesn’t win match of the night, it will be this one.

Falls Count Anywhere: Shane McMahon vs The Miz
- Maybe I’m on my own, but remember when WrestleMania used to have a solid build of feuds that spanned sometimes months and months in advance, with a conclusion at Mania? Well…here’s the only match that has that this year. Miz and Shane aren’t gonna win anyone over if you hate them simply because of who they are, but there’s no denying the story they built all the way in October to now has been beautiful.

On top of that, Shane’s gonna do something insane and Miz is gonna get a career win. This is ideal.

Women’s RAW Championship: Ronda Rousey vs Becky Lynch vs Charlotte
- Its all about the hype. Years and years of wanting to see WWE use the women in a way that shows just how much better than they are treated.

The story has been ripped apart and lose almost all the elements that made it work, and the random adding of Flair, the Smackdown woman’s title, the Ronda heel turn and the constant adding/removing Becky has really cooled the reaction it should have got. But all three of these woman are capable of something magical, and come Sunday I expect them to steal the show.
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Re: Ranking interest level in each WM match

Postby Hanley! » Apr 06, '19, 11:06 am

Headlesspete wrote:Women’s Tag Championship: Boss N Hug Connection vs The IIconics vs Phoenix and Natalya vs Jax and Tamina
- I flat out admit it, I like almost all of the participates here. Banks/Bayley make for great inaugural champions, and IIconics are great characters who get better all the time, and I was a huge fan of Beth back in the day. Plus, hate her all you want, but Nia brings so much to the table others don’t. And when Beth powerslams Nia, its gonna get a huge pop. If booked right, this could be way better than anyone expects.


There's a joke about what Nia brings to the table that I'm not going to make.

Bless your optimism though, Pete. This is going to be a train wreck. Half of the participants of this match are terrible. Tamina could be the worst wrestler employed by the company. The Iconics (I can't even bring myself to add the second I) are sloppy and their gimmick has go away heat with me. And Nia Jax is dangerous and terrible.

I guess we'll agree to disagree though. When it comes to Nia Jax, you see the glass as half full, whereas I can't see the glass at all, because it's broken and in my eyes.
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Re: Ranking interest level in each WM match

Postby Messiah » Apr 06, '19, 2:10 pm

You know, I was going to say how I couldn't care less about any of the matches outside of Kingston/Bryan (the sole reason I subscribed back to the Network) and Lynch vs Rousey vs Charlotte. And that is 100% true. There is nothing else on the show that interests me beyond a, "hey, I like one or two of the performers in this match". As far as stories goes, this has got to be one of the worst WrestleMania's. Only the two aforementioned matches seem to have any depth to them whatsoever. By all accounts, Rollins/Lesnar is miserable. They have only interacted once since the Rumble from what I have seen. It feels like nobody even really cares if Rollins win but rather people are just praying Lesnar finally loses and fucks off to the point it wouldn't matter who beat him. Which is a damn shame because everyone talked about how much momentum Rollins had last year.

But I'm actually looking forward to this show a lot in spite of that. Unlike some previous WrestleMania's, this doesn't feel as bloated with matches between part-timers or bad performers. Every match has someone I can easily get behind even if the story sucks and/or nonexistent. Especially compared to last year where there were several matches where I struggled to find someone to root for (the United States title match, the triple threat tag team title match, Undertaker/Cena, Jax/Bliss, RAW tag team title match, and Lesnar/Reigns). So my plan is to get piss drunk and hopefully it'll be a good show, if not long as hell. And so here is my order, not so much of matches I care about but in order of which wrestlers I'll be backing the strongest at Mania.

If they lose, I'll actually be pissed off

Kofi Kingston
Becky Lynch
Seth Rollins

I don't watch Raw/SmackDown, so these are the only wrestlers who could lose that would actually get me to the point of being agitated/pissed off. LIS, it isn't so much about Rollins winning as it is Lesnar losing. I'd probably be rooting for Hornswoggle at this point. And I don't have to say much about Lynch or Kingston. Nothing against Bryan, Charlotte, or Rousey... but come on now. They can't win.

This is what scares me the most about this show though. Are all three of them really going to win? They should, but for some reason lately WWE has been less about having WrestleMania's leaving you with feel-good moments. All three of these faces should win. All three should have their moment. If I had to choose, I'd much rather have Kingston and Lynch win than Rollins. Lesnar is bad, but it is whatever at this point. I don't watch Raw so it wouldn't phase me if the show kept sucking without its champion. But Kingston and Lynch are literally the only two reasons I'm going to watch WrestleMania.

Rooting Hard For

Batista
Finn Balor
Samoa Joe

Batista is a bad-ass and screw Triple H. It's not gonna happen because Triple H ain't retiring but damn it would be awesome if Batista won, even if HHH didn't actually retire. Lashley has been entertaining from what I've seen since his heel turn, but Balor is that dude even if he's been mismanaged to hell. Nobody deserved a WrestleMania match more than Joe and there's really no sense to having Mysterio win the match.

Rooting For, but "Meh" if they lose

A.J. Styles
The Usos
The Revival

Orton is as stale as it gets, so obviously I'm rooting for Styles. But I mean, if he loses, it's whatever. Styles is already a superstar so it won't make much of a difference. I love The Usos, but every team in that match is really freakin' good even if Black/Ricochet is random as hell... why is Black in a tag team anyway?
Nakamura/Rusev is random too I suppose, but there isn't much else for them to do. And I get what the WWE is trying to do with Ryder/Hawkins, but they shouldn't beat The Revival. I don't know why it is so damn difficult for the WWE to book The Revival. They are one of those wrestlers who can get over solely through putting on top-level matches. They have been screwed up so badly that I wouldn't get mad if they lost, but it shouldn't have gotten to this point.

Rooting for them, but only because I'm making myself choose

Sasha Banks and Bayley
The Miz

What the WWE has done to Banks and Bayley is criminal. A 10 year old could have booked their story arc better than the WWE did. If anything, by the time we got to WrestleMania, they should have been having their grudge match, not teaming up with each other. But they are 10x better than the other teams. And who cares about a Shane McMahon match? I heard The Miz has done a good job as a face and I don't doubt it, but it still feels wrong to me for him to be in that role.

Rooting for them out of sympathy

Kurt Angle

It's a shame Angle's retirement match is against Corbin (which I don't see them going through with - how could they?), but at the same time... I don't really blame the company too much either. I'd rather Angle not have a retirement match and instead we just assume he's retired, because the dude freakin' sucks. And it hurts me to say that because everyone knows how much I love Angle but he's horrific in the ring nowadays. I hope he can get this over with without injury or embarrassing himself.

I can't bring myself to root for anyone involved

Reigns vs McIntyre

I'm with Headless on this one. I want to preface this by saying it obviously has nothing to do with the man himself, who deserves a lot of respect for what he's been through. However, and I hate to say this, but I get the feeling the WWE is going to use his cancer as even more of an excuse to put absolutely no effort into developing his character. In the past, you just didn't want to see Reigns win (unless it was against Lesnar because what is the alternative?) because of how hard he was being pushed. Now it's more like whatever. There is just nothing to him. And I don't really care about McIntyre either. Not that he's bad or anything, but he's always just been... there for me. This is the only match where I probably won't care enough to root for either guy, other than the irrelevant battle royales.
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Re: Ranking interest level in each WM match

Postby prophet » Apr 07, '19, 4:19 pm

I’ll do this quick because the show is starting.

Battle Royales
Cruiserweight
RAW Tag
Women’s Tag
Lashley v Balor
Roman v Drew
Joe v Rey
Batista v HHH
Kurt Angle Match
Smackdown Tag
Rollins v Brock
Elias Concert lol
Becky fucking Lynch
Kofi fucking Kingston
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