WrestleMania 26 Recap & Thoughts - March 29, 2010

Super Bowl Sunday for me has come and passed. WrestleMania 26 is now in the books and I really enjoyed the show. One judge on that the show was good was me looking at the clock and thinking how I was surprised to be that far along in it. WrestleMania has become the only PPV that I buy every year. I have to say that the build to this WrestleMania has been better than most in recent years. Really strong lineup and there wasn't any match on this show that I didn't like. I had one finish that I didn't really like and no, it isn't the one that you'd expect. LOL. The official attendance at the University Of Phoenix Stadium was 72,219. The building looked amazing and started with there being sunlight outside as they had the roof open.

The show opened with American Idol season three winner Fantasia singing America The Beautiful. This is always amazing and then we had the military flyover during it. The opening video was greatly produced as always and a good pyro opening. Show opens with the unified tag team title match with ShoMiz taking on Morrison and R Truth. It's interesting to see who they let open the show every year cause that is an important spot to be put in. Wow, I think they upped the pyro for ShoMiz. Really cool entrance by everyone involved. This was a really short match. The champions retain as Morrison goes for a springboard but is caught by a Big Show knockout punch. Miz pins Morrison and the champs retain. Pretty good pop from the fans when it happened. Next is the triple threat match with Orton vs. Dibiase vs. Rhodes. Solid match and predictable. Dibiase and Rhodes did have separate entrances. Doubleteam for a while and then Dibiase went for the pin. Cody was going for a moonsault at the time. Cody jumped off the ropes to break it up. The two end up in a brawl to the floor. Orton starts to get up and both start paying attention to it. Attention goes back to Orton. Orton gets on the offense including hitting a double DDT off the middle rope which looked really cool. Big pop from the crowd on it too. Orton started to go for the RKO on Cody but then changed his mind. Orton nails the punt kick to Cody. Dibiase tries to sneak up and hit dreamstreet from behind but Orton counters it into a RKO for the win. After the match, they lowered the screen from above which had the RKO graphic on it as Orton posed. They did this throughout the night for various superstars. Funny segment backstage promoting Slim Jim. Basically, it was a comedy segment where Santino would snap into the Slim Jim and the person next to him kept changing. It started with it being Mae Young who kissed him, turned into Mean Gene in a dress, and then turned into Melina who he walked off with. Glad to see the injured Melina getting on WrestleMania even if it was just for a cameo. That brings us to the Money In The Bank match with all of these participants: MVP, Christian, Drew McIntyre, Shelton Benjamin, Matt Hardy, Kane, Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger, Kofi Kingston, and Dolph Ziggler. Lots of wild spots in this one as you would expect. The ladder sandwich on Swagger with the others climbing was a new and fun spot. Bourne of course did all sorts of nasty spots, airbourne off the ladder and also took a nasty hiptoss from Hardy off of a ladder. I liked the spot with Dolph climbing Kane as he went up the ladder to get over him. Kofi walking the broken ladder as stilts to climb up was really cool. The finish had Christian and Swagger up on the ladder. Swagger nailed Christian with the briefcase and won the match. The Hall Of Fame class was brought out next with after an excellent ceremony recap video. I definitely enjoyed seeing Bob Uecker and Dibiase on the same stage again thinking back to WrestleMania 4. They were introduced by Howard Finkel. Next was Triple H vs. Sheamus. Solid match for sure. Sheamus hit the big kick on Triple H but he kicked out. Triple H later got hit with another one but Sheamus couldn't capitalize on it. He then went for the celtic cross but Triple H escaped and hit the pedigree to win the match. That was the finish that I didn't like. I thought Sheamus should have gotten to kick out of one pedigree if Triple H is kicking out of his stuff. Triple H wins. Next is Rey Mysterio vs. CM Punk accompanied by his crew. If Rey loses, he has to join Punk's group. Fun match. The finish had Rey going for a 619 but Serena stopped it. Gallows then blocked it on the other side. Rey then took out Gallows and hit the 619 on Punk followed by the springboard to win the match. Next was Bret Hart and Vince McMahon. The video package before this match was awesome. Vince announced that he had bought himself some lumberjacks and a special referee. He brings out the the entire Hart Family and they all are supposedly against Bret. Bret talks to them saying that the Harts always get paid up front and how annoyed he was. However, then he said that the Harts had let him in on what was going on. The Hart Family was united against Vince. Bruce was the referee. This match was Bret beating Vince up for about ten minutes or so. Vince didn't land anything. He took a hard slap from Natalya. The family would throw Vince back in the ring after beating him up on the outside. Bret hit him a chair at one point at my count of eleven consecutive. He then pounded him more with it. Vince tried to pull a tire iron out from under the ring but Bret got a hold of it and used. Bret teased a sharpshooter which got the crowd up on their feet. He went back to using the tire iron on Vince. Then, he hooked the sharpshooter for the tap out victory. The Harts all celebrated together after the match. The World title match was next with Chris Jericho and Edge. Crowd was kind of settled down for the first half of this match. I wondered if the squash booking of the last match kind of brought them down or if they just needed a break. They had been hot to this point. Jericho went for the walls and that got the crowd up and they were up for the rest of it. Jericho went for a spear but got a kick to the face. Edge's spear attempt landed in a codebreaker. Edge then had his achilles tendon worked over by Jericho. Jericho grabbed the belt at ringside and went to use it. The ref got in the middle of it and Edge accidentally knocked the ref down. Jericho nailed Edge with the belt but Edge kicked out of the pin attempt. Jericho then nailed the codebreaker and won the match. Jericho started to work on the injury once again on the ring post but Edge made a comeback. A furious Edge put Jericho on the table. Edge ran off of the other table and speared Jericho through the barrier at ringside. Looked awesome!! Next was the ten divas tag match. Mickie James, Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim, Eve Torres, and Beth Phoenix against Maryse, Michelle McCool, Layla, Alicia Fox, and Vickie Guerrero. I was wondering how active that Mickie would be in this match. Then, she planted a nasty DDT on Michelle and I got my answer. Vickie kept screaming whenever she'd be in trouble which was funny. Michelle took out Beth after the divas were hitting move after move on one another. They set up Kelly for Vickie. Vickie hit a bullfrog splash as it was called. Vickie gets the pin although it was an awkward one. She celebrated after it doing a Eddie dance which was fun to see. WWE title match was up next which meant that Shawn and Undertaker was closing the show. Batista had a cool entrance especially with the lights all set after the sun had set outside the building. Cena had a military entrance with the troops which was really cool. Mixed reaction here. Lots of anti-Cena signs right in the way of the main camera. Punch exchange between the two really showed the mixed reaction from the fans. Cena's five knuckle shuffle attempt got turned into a spinebuster which got a big reaction from the Batista cheering section. Cena would later hit that move off the top rope. The finish had Cena getting nailed with the a powerbomb after Cena jumped off the top rope again. Batista went for the Batista bomb but Cena countered it into the STF and Batista tapped. John Cena is the new WWE champion. That leads us to the final match. Streak vs. Career. Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels. Big entrances and this match had such a big fight feel to it. Undertaker went for old school early and hurt his knee early on. Shawn went right for it. Lots of fun spots in this one. A kip up into a chokeslam from Undertaker. Shawn went for a dive off the middle rope on the floor and Undertaker caught him and hit the tombstone on the floor. Shawn countered the last ride and hit a nasty superkick. His second superkick was countered into a last ride. Both kicked out of each other's moves. Undertaker looked to do damage to Shawn on the table on the floor. Shawn countered and superkicked Undertaker on to the table. Shawn then did a moonsault off the top rope on to the table which looked incredible. Shawn hurried to get Undertaker back in the ring to pin him but to no avail. Undertaker would hit another tombstone and Shawn would kick out. Undertaker got very frustrated at this point seeing that Shawn wouldn't give up. Good commentary as I believe it was Striker that said that Undertaker is now realizing and looking at his greatest opponent ever. Undertaker pulled the strap down and started to do the throat slash. He saw Shawn getting up and Undertaker looked at him in amazement telling him to just stay down. Shawn then did the throat slash back at him and slapped Undertaker. That fired up Taker and he hit a nasty tombstone that left you thinking that was definitely the finish and it was. Undertaker wins and is 18-0 at WrestleMania while Shawn's career is over. Undertaker pulled Shawn to his feet and the two faced off. Undertaker offered a handshake and Shawn accepted. Really cool moment. Undertaker walks off and Shawn gets the ring to himself. Standing ovation for Shawn from the fans and he walks out paying tribute to the fans and of course bowing before God and thanking Him for everything. Interesting that the show closed with Shawn walking off instead of the traditional music video.

Other notes from WrestleMania. The match placement was interesting on this show. They had big matches leading off the last three hours. Like I said, time flew by watching this show. It did not feel like I had watched four hours of wrestling. Shawn's finale was great with the tribute at the end. The two put on an amazing match and it will be hard to top it for match of the year. Like I said, the only finish that I wasn't crazy about was the Sheamus/Triple H match. I would have been better with it if Sheamus had to have gotten to kick out of at least one pedigree. The entrance order and length was interesting to watch of the Money In The Bank match where you got to get a feel of where they ranked. McIntyre got the last entrance which showed his position within the company. Love his entrance but not crazy about him. Matt Hardy still gets that great pop from the fans. Anyone else shocked that Flair got mentioned during that figure four from Triple H? I figured his name would be ignored for now. Great to see Mickie get to work after the serious staph infection that she got in her leg which was going to have kept her off the show. I felt bad for Swagger when it took him forever to get that briefcase undone. That few seconds felt like an eternity especially thinking of it from his position. Lots of heat on CM Punk. He had a lot of anti signs in the crowd. He has turned into possibly the biggest heel in the company. Rey continued his tradition of dressing up for WrestleMania as this year he had an Avatar outfit. Did you see that his entrance got messed up? Some sort of malfunction there. Wow, that Bret Hart beating on Vince went on forever. It went about as it could cause you can't have Bret taking hits cause of his physical problems. That was really all anybody wanted to see was Bret beating up Vince so it was fine. With that beating, Vince SHOULD be off of TV for a while. WWE is going to Atlanta next year for WrestleMania at the Georgia Dome. How long of a drive is Atlanta? LOL. Vickie's outfit was hilarious with "excuse me" written on it. I thought the divas match was fun. Cena and Batista was a match that I was surprisingly excited about. Great build to this one and I think Batista is probably doing the best that he has ever done. He has been a really good heel. Kudos to WWE for the great build in this match. Undertaker's entrance was cool with him rising up on the stage. Shawn definitely had an extra bounce in his step for his entrance which had me wondering if this was it for him.

Like I said, I really enjoyed the show. Best build by WWE to a WrestleMania in quite some time. WWE has been really good lately for the most part. With Wrestlemania behind them, it will be interesting to see how their motivation is following it.