WrestleMania XXVII Recap and Thoughts - April 4, 2011

Last night was the super bowl of wrestling, WWE WrestleMania XXVII. I thought it was a solid show. There was some of the booking that left me scratching my head but overall I enjoyed the show. Over 71,617 fans were in attendance at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. It was sold out and looked packed. First, the dark match. This got a lot of people angry. The Daniel Bryan/Sheamus U.S. title match was bumped from the PPV to the dark match due to time. The match then turned into a battle royal. Fans were not happy to see that title match live as the dark match. Definitely got a negative reaction from the live crowd.

WrestleMania went on the air with America The Beautiful sang by Keri Hilson. We go right into the introduction of The Rock. Huge ovation for Rock as he did an in ring promo to open the show. First time ever for WrestleMania to start with an in ring promo like that. Good talking from the Rock setting up his plans for the night. We go into the awesome as always video package starting the show. Pyro goes off and we're into the action. Are you kidding me? The World title match was first. I was not expecting that!! Crowd was into the match. Edge gets the win after hitting the spear. Good reaction from the crowd. I was anticipating a Del Rio win and/or a Christian heel turn. After the match, Edge and Christian go about destroying Del Rio's car. Solid match and the crowd was into it. Next match was Cody Rhodes taking on Rey Mysterio. Captain America look for Rey this year at WrestleMania keeping with his superhero tradition. This match surprised me. It was a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be. I have not watched Rhodes in a while so I was impressed with him. Crowd was split in this match which was fun. Quite a few fans cheering for Rhodes. How impressive was that standing superplex? He held him for a while with that. I actually thought that pulled more fans over to his side in cheering for him. Cody wins with the crossrhodes. I liked the back and forth with the mask against the knee brace. Backstage segment with Snoop Dogg and Teddy Long auditioning people for his tour. Goofy segment but some of it was fun. I always like a Piper cameo. It ended with Hornswoggle rapping (yes, he was talking) with the Bella twins. The next match had me thinking, wow, just how short of time are you on this show? The 8 man tag team match with Show, Kane, Santino, and Kofi (replacing Kozlov where an angle was done at Axxess where the Corre took him out) against The Corre. Wow, this match was a blur as The Corre got squashed in no time. Sure didn't do them any favors. Wow. Backstage to Rock and Eve. This was a fun segment with Rock telling Eve he would make a WrestleMania moment with whoever walked around the corner next. That turned out to be Mae Young. Funny stuff there. The best was the slap by Mae at the end and Rock's face to it. Then, he makes the same offer and he turns to see Stone Cold Steve Austin. That was awesome to see the two of them on camera together again. Just felt right. On to CM Punk and Randy Orton. I liked this match. I liked the finish. Punk had Orton hurt and where he wanted him. Orton stumbles on the kick. Punk regroups but then has to avoid a RKO. Punk was sitting laughing at how he now had the upper hand. He goes for the springboard move and lands right into a RKO. Fun finish. Another Rock segment in the back. Pee Wee Herman. I think seeing Mean Gene in the Cena gear was enough for me to like this segment. Hall Of Fame introductions are next. Great to see everyone. Sunny looks great and just looks happy. First time I've seen her in a year probably. Poor Drew Carey gets booed again. Yes, he got booed badly at the Hall Of Fame ceremony too. Shawn Michaels gets the big moment at the end. Great stuff.

Into the second half of the show. Next is Cole against Lawler with Austin as the referee. Loved having JR getting to do commentary. Booker T joined him and Josh Mathews. Swagger's entrance was stopped by Austin driving the four wheeler to the ring. That was great stuff. Swagger having to jump out of the way was funny. Loved Lawler coming out in the old school AWA outfit. Great stuff. The match itself was what it was. Funny moment with Lawler pulling Cole's face right into the Cole Mine wall. His face was hilarious. The match had Cole on offense for too long and the crowd started a boring chant. Lawler got on offense and Swagger tried to throw in the towel. Austin took the towel and wiped his sweat with it not allowing for the match to be stopped. Austin stuns Swagger. Cole puts his hands on Austin and the ohhhh reaction was hilarious from the Atlanta crowd knowing that Cole was about to get his. Austin sends Cole right to Lawler for more offense. Lawler hits the fist drop but won't do the pinfall. Austin laughs and lets it continue. Lawler uses an ankle lock submission and Cole is tapping. Austin won't signal for the bell as he continues to ask Cole if he wants to give up. Lawler wins and Austin calls for the bash. If you watch Lawler, you will notice that he did not drink one of them. The reason being is that he doesn't drink. Good for him on that I say. Booker T hits the ring and does a spinarooni to get in on the action. Austin lets him join in the bash as well but eventually gets a stunner too. Then, the GM noise kicks in. Mathews reads it which says that Lawler was DQ'd due to Austin stepping over his boundaries as referee. Austin and Lawler are furious and Austin nails Josh with a stunner taking out the messenger. Lawler then joins JR to call the rest of the show. LOVE that! Now, we get into the match of the night. Triple H vs. Undertaker. Awesome entrances. Triple H does a combo entrance of Metallica's For Whom The Bell Tolls and his usual Game music. Undertaker walks out to Johnny Cash. Just so visually impressive were both of these entrances. The concern for a while has been Undertaker's shoulder. It is not in good shape at all and we are likely seeing his career getting near the end. So, what does a guy that has a bad shoulder in such horrible shape do? His normal dive over the top rope. Blew my mind. Then, Triple H puts Taker through the table a few seconds later. You knew that this was going to be a big time brawl and it was. Lots of big moves hit by both guys and kickouts. Awesome moment where Undertaker had the pin and had his tongue out anticipating the win only for Triple H to kick out. A frustrated Triple H finally went to a chair to get business done. The last one was one to the head. My first thought was I thought we weren't doing chairshots to the head anymore. On about the third replay, I finally saw that he did get his hand up to block it. Great job by Undertaker. He did it so quick that you could hardly tell. Taker still kept kicking out. Triple H hits a tombstone and I sat up with my blood pressure going up on it. I thought it was over. He's going to lose the streak on his own move???!! Undertaker kicked out. Whew. Undertaker looks destroyed. Triple H goes for the sledgehammer and goes to use it. However, he ends up right in the choke submission move. Triple H ends up dropping the sledgehammer. I loved the build of it with you knowing that if he can find that sledgehammer, things are going to change. Just a great moment wondering what is going to happen. Triple H finds it and goes to use it. However, the submission is too much and he drops it. Triple H taps slowly on Taker's shoulder. 19-0 for Undertaker. Huge amount of pyro while both guys just lay on the mat. What a match!! Just incredible. Triple H gets up first and just has this look of amazement and frustration on his face. Undertaker is helped up by officials. Great, great match. Time for the mixed tag match. Morrison, Trish, and Snooki against Ziggler, and LayCool. Trish looked really good on offense here and I enjoyed the back and forth with her and Michelle. One spot for Morrison in the match as he dives over and takes out Ziggler. Tag in for Snooki. She hits a handspring elbow on Michelle to get the pin. Crowd booed Snooki when she tagged in but I think she won a lot of them over with that move cause it did look good. Main event time. Miz defending against John Cena. That video to Hate Me Now for Miz was awesome. No pun intended. Great video and it just made me cheer for him when he came out. I loved the tie in to his younger days and showing old clips of him. He had a great entrance. Cena then had his video play hyping up his story and had a choir singing. I felt bad for the choir cause there were boos. Boos weren't for the choir. They were directed at Cena who came out in his new t-shirt color of red. I thought about and the last time that Cena wasn't booed bad at WrestleMania was WrestleMania 21 in Los Angeles. The match was just kind of there. I kept watching the clock thinking they don't have much time especially knowing Rock was going to get involved. Big size of the crowd booing Cena and cheering Miz. The two end up on the floor battling and end up over the barricade in the crowd. A double countout. Seriously?? I knew it wasn't going to stand but it just strange. Rock hits the ring. GM thing hits and Rock starts to read. He then throws it to the floor. He announces that the match is going to restart and have no DQ or countout rules. Cena then hit the fireman's carry quickly. I thought you have got to be kidding me that it is over for Miz now. Miz kicks out which got a big pop from the people cheering for him. Myself included who sat up quickly clapping. LOL. However, Rock was standing right behind Cena. Rock bottom to Cena which allows Miz to get the pin and retain the title. Miz stumbles around celebrating. Rock then hits the ring and takes out Miz with a people's elbow. Rock poses to close the show.

Overall thoughts. Ok, the booking of the main event just wasn't too my liking. I don't like crazy booked finishes for WrestleMania main events. If they were going to do this finish, I wish they would have let Triple H and Undertaker close the show. It just didn't have that big feel of a close to the super bowl. It is obviously going to set up more going forward beginning tonight with Rock on Raw. I was bummed that the 8 man tag got such a short amount of time and that the U.S. title got bumped from the broadcast all together. It's not like they could pull some other things out of it. They ran two match build video packages all night. One with Triple H and Undertaker which needed to air. The other for Punk and Orton. That could have been pulled but what is two minutes going to help? They ran the WrestleMania week package which needs to air cause it shows all the big things that go on during the week. They went off the air at 9:59. How close is that??!! I think some time could have been pulled from Cole/Lawler cause that went on too long. Kind of like Bret and Vince last year where we just watched Bret beat up Vince for an eternity of ten minutes. LOL. Felt kind of bad for Michelle getting pinned by Snooki. It gives WWE the highlight stuff on the various entertainment shows which is good for them for publicity. I would have liked that match to get a longer time. Triple H and Undertaker was the big thing of this show. It was great. They just pounded each other and it was all about survival. They kept you guessing on who was going to win. Rock was fun. Austin was fun. Overall, I enjoyed the show. I thought it could have had more and the booking wasn't as good as I would have liked. I enjoyed it though.

There is plenty more to discuss from the weekend including the Hall Of Fame and more but I'll save it for the next List which will also cover tonight's Raw. Hope you enjoyed the WrestleMania recap. Take care and God bless!!