Over the Weekend, WWE put on the biggest show of the Wrestling Calendar with Wrestlemania 42. Emanating again from the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Night One was set to be the larger card hosting 7 of the 13 matches, & definitely having the more controversial Main Event due to the looming presence of Pat McAfee. And generally facing increased fan criticism of Celebrity Involvement, Ticket Prices & creative decisions so there was a mountain to climb from the moment John Cena welcomed us to Wrestlemania.
Opening the show, we saw the Six Man Tag Match, pitting The Usos & LA Knight against The Vision & IShowSpeed. Speed has had some wrestling training in the past, under none other than Randy Orton. And that training shows as he wasn’t left completely outclassed the entire time he was in the ring combined with his naturally gifted athleticism. However ultimately it proved not to be enough as, following accidentally shoving LA Knight into Logan Paul and taking him out of affairs entirely. LA Knight managed to likewise use Theory to take out Speed before hitting a BFT for the victory. Following the match, as you could expect with Logan Paul he quickly turned on Speed blaming him for ruining The Vision’s moment. An ongoing post match assault was stopped by The Usos/Knight, and Logan Paul got a taste of his own medicine from years passed, as this time around it was Speed who hit a massive Splash off the top rope through the Announce Table where of course this has usually been what Logan Paul would do, recording the moment for a viral moment.
Next, we saw the Unsanctioned Match between Drew McIntyre & Jacob Fatu. The hostility between these two has been extreme in the build-up to the Showcase of the Immortals. And the two men showed it, throwing as many weapons as they could get their hands on at each other to try and put the other in the past once and for all. Drew also for the third year running managed to have his fun moment of making a post on Social Media in the middle of his Wrestlemania match. However in the end, Fatu had the last laugh, ultimately putting Drew down with a toolbox to the head (no doubt giving him flashbacks to Bad Blood when a blow to the head from CM Punk caused him heavy bleeding) and hit his signature moonsault through a table to secure a massive win setting the Samoan Werewolf up perfectly to go into the new year of wrestling strong.
Next we had the 8 Woman Tag Match for the Women’s Tag Team Championship, seeing the Irresistible Forces (Nia Jax & Lash Legend) defending their titles against Alexa Bliss/Charlotte, Bayley/Lyra Valkyria & what was supposed to be The Bella Twins. However Nikki Bella ended up not being medically cleared to compete on the night, so instead of Nikki, Brie Bella instead teamed up with a returning Paige to a thunderous cheer from the crowd. Paige of course has history with WWE having played a big part in the ‘Women’s Revolution’ in 2015 as the leader of one of the core 3 factions of the time “Team PCB”, and even initially was forced to retire from Wrestling while still a part of WWE due to a neck injury in 2018. The first time Paige debuted on the main roster, she secured Championship gold on her first night shockingly beating AJ Lee to win the Divas Championship the day after Wrestlemania 30 and is still to this day one of the youngest women to have ever won a Championship in WWE, having only been 21 years old at the time. History repeated itself as Paige & Brie Bella secured the victory and immediately on return Paige has already shot herself back into the conversation almost as if she never left.
Speaking of AJ Lee, her match was next up defending the Women’s Intercontinental Championship against Becky Lynch. As discussed in my Run In article for Night One, AJ has been a thorn in Becky’s side ever since she initially returned to WWE last year. And Becky has been humiliated multiple times by AJ in recent times. As has also been a pattern in recent times tensions were high between Becky and WWE official Jessika Carr, and here tensions finally boiled over as Carr at one pointed shoved Lynch after months of an ongoing heated rivalry of sorts between these two. Despite this, Lynch eventually managed to pull Carr into the path of a charging AJ Lee briefly knocking her out, in this brief moment she was able to take advantage of an exposed turnbuckle & hit a Manhandle Slam to finally get one over on AJ Lee, and get her Women’s Intercontinental Championship back, and looking at an interview in the Wrestlemania post show, seemingly sending AJ Lee into an extended break which given the recent passing of hers & CM Punk’s dog Larry, she may really need.
We then saw the bout between Seth Rollins & Gunther, which simply put was a bout to see who was the better man which sometimes is all the reason you need for a good brawl. And both Rollins & Gunther are really talented/skilled competitors so as you can imagine or possibly saw, the match quality was really high with both men following up a pre match brawl with consistently being able to keep up with eachother and neither man being able to keep a period of dominance for too long. The deciding factor in this match proved to be Bron Breakker, who returned mid match with a devastating spear to Rollins, leaving Gunther free to lock him in a Sleeperhold to make Seth pass out for the victory. Breakker hit another spear following the match, making it clear that he is still not finished with Seth Rollins after The dissolution of the OG Vision.
Penultimately we saw the Women’s World Championship on the line with Stephanie Vaquer defending the title against Liv Morgan. Despite the hype leading into this match, including cries by many for this match to main event over Cody Rhodes & Randy Orton, this ended up being the second shortest match across the two nights, not even reaching 7 minutes. Now seems as good a time as any to mention one criticism many have expressed is how much time throughout the two Nights were dedicated for ads. From my own personal experience, I can still hear segments of the upcoming Hulk Hogan documentary on Netflix playing through my head due to how many times that was advertised across the two nights, and many felt these adds took up far too much time and a majority of the matches felt too short as a result. And this match, where Liv Morgan with aid from The Judgement Day was able to defeat Vaquer and become Women’s World Champion has become the biggest example used to demonstrate this point.
Before the Main Event, John Cena as the host of Wrestlemania announced the night’s attendance which is of course a yearly tradition but normally wouldn’t be important to mention. However surprisingly following the announcement, Bianca Belair finally returned to our screens almost 1 year to the day she had to take a hiatus to recover from injury and after we hadn’t seen her since she served as the Special Guest Referee for Naomi & Jade Cargill’s match at Evolution. However it’s likely this was a one time occurrence and she will again go on an extended hiatus as she’d come out to reveal that she was deep into a pregnancy and will soon be having a baby.
The Main Event of course saw Cody Rhodes defending the WWE Championship against Randy Orton alongside Pat McAfee. Though McAfee to many’s delight was quickly taken out of the equation before the match even got started, getting beaten down by Cody Rhodes & put through the announce table by Jelly Roll, getting any potential celebrity involvement in the main event taken out of consideration before anything properly got started so the match could truly be a One on One, mentor vs mentee match. Throughout the match, Cody showed a competitive streak that we haven’t really seen before as he was clearly targetting Orton’s back which he was clearly having issues with during the match and has historically delt with back issues in the past often. And after the ref was accidentally taken out by Randy Orton with an RKO blinded by an eye rake from Cody, he even hit a low blow on Orton before being caught by a mid air RKO from an attempted Cody Cutter. With no official, McAfee came back out with a neck brace & referee shirt to try and count the pin for Orton with Cody kicking out at two, at this stage Orton clearly had run out of patience/couldn’t put up with McAfee anymore hitting him with an RKO, however this brief moment of distraction gave Cody the opening to hit one more Cross Rhodes & finally keep Orton down for the 3 to retain his championship.
Following the match, as Cody was celebrating ridding the WWE of McAfee once and for all, Orton quickly one again dipped back into that 2009 version of himself, striking Cody with the title and hitting him with the dreaded Punt Kick. Orton’s Punt has a history of being one of the most dangerous moves to be hit with, at least in more modern times. And despite occasional attempts throughout the years, Orton has not successfully hit the move on anyone since the the Thunderdome Era. And the damage showed as you could see following the match Cody’s eye completely swollen shut & we’ve since learned he’s suffered a serious injury to the orbital socket. So despite his victory, Cody’s night ended in disaster as the feed ended with Orton standing tall with the title.
That covers everything that happened on Night One, coming soon will be my coverage for Night Two, which has definitely gone down critically as the better of the two shows (which really is what you want to leave a lasting sweeter reminder of affairs overall).
