Another article that’s a little later than I usually do, but long weekends and a day job means I need to sleep. So if you listened to Pod Is War, then you’d know my general disdain for the build to WrestleMania 34 and lack of faith in this one being positively memorable. Now the next logical step is for me to say, LET’S FIND OUT! But wait, wait, let’s summarize NXT Takeover NOLA, since that was generally received well.

NXT Takeover: NOLA

NA Championship 6 Man Ladder Match: Adam Cole vs Killian Dain vs Lars Sullivan vs Ricochet vs Velveteen Dream vs EC3
Winner: Adam Cole
Rating: *** 1/4

NXT Women’s Championship: Ember Moon (c) vs Shayna Baszler
Winner: Shayna Baszler
Rating: *** 1/2

NXT Tag Team Championship Triple Threat: Roderick Strong & Pete Dunne vs Author of Pain vs Undisputed Era (c)
Winner: Undisputed Era
Rating: ***

NXT Championship: Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas (c) vs Aleister Black
Winner: Aleister Black
Rating: **** 1/2

Unsanctioned Match: Johnny Gargano vs Tommaso Ciampa
Winner: Johnny Gargano
Rating: *****

So there we go, it was a damn good Takeover, not the best ever, but damn good. Now, we can get to the point of getting to WrestleMania 34.

Humongous Wonder #8’s Royal Battle

It’s a battle royal for a trophy that hasn’t matter since it became a thing.

I mean, what’s to describe. Midcarders and jobbers got eliminated, then it comes down to Matt Hardy, Mojo and Corbin. Wyatt appears and helps Hardy eliminate the other two, they embrace, pose in the middle of the ring, and that’s that. The EXPEDITION for Gold, is off to a WONDERFUL start.

Winner: Matt Hardy

Rating: ** 1/2

Cruiserweight Championship: Cedric Alexander vs Mustafa Ali

The stalwart of the Pre-Show, Cruiserweight matches!

Now all of us who watched the 205 Live tournament, have noticed that the in-ring work has gone up. However, the characters are still cookie cutter and not focused upon, so the stories aren’t tangible. That being said, this match was a good match, but nothing surprising, except for Cedric nearly losing his balance and dying twice.

Not the best match of the tournament, and being the second match on the Pre-Show, it wasn’t even supported by a decent crowd. Cedric wins, and now hopefully they can learn how to balance characters to appeal to casual fans, while keeping decent work rate.

Winner: Cedric

Rating: ***

Inaugural Women’s Battle Royal

Same as the men’s, literally no one cared.

It seemed like the crowd eventually work up when Sasha and Bayley had their moment, but then Naomi apparently not getting eliminated and then sliding in at the end, killed things. The crowd popped hard for Bayley and then we got swerved. This was the beginning of a common theme in Mania this year.

Winner: Naomi

Rating: **

Intercontinental Title Triple Threat: Seth Rollins vs The Miz (c) vs Finn Balor

This match opened the main show, and it was what everyone expected. We had a lot of action, Miz showed a lot of guts by telling the Miztourage to go to the back and fight his own fight. Miz really was the star of this match, he had a lot of old school heel moments and scouted both men well, resulting in countering an Enzugiri by Finn Balor, into a Dragon Screw over the top rope.

Seth and Finn had the big flashy spots, break ups, springboards and Seth even pulled off a double Blackout (since we don’t call it the other thing). Thanks to the afore mentioned spot, Seth was in perfect position to hit one more Blackout on The Miz, and pick up the pinfall victory. So Seth is now a Grand Slam Champion, the last on The Shield to get it, but hey they’re handing those out like free water ice on the first day of Spring. So I guess we’re supposed to care, right?

Winner: Seth Rollins

Rating: ****

Smackdown Women’s Championship: Asuka vs Charlotte Flair (c)

Well it’s the prestige of the Flair name versus the mystique of the streak.

In a hard hitting match, that had a lot of back and forth, it did mostly live up to the hype. Charlotte is spotty with her match quality, and Asuka occasionally just out ranks the opponent too much, so the dynamic looks awkward. This was even, and the Figure 8 is still a legitimate finishing maneuver.

Our owner Greg Demarco went lone wolf on the Charlotte train, and good on him. I didn’t want them to break the streak yet, but there really isn’t another woman who could reasonably do it.

Winner: Charlotte

Rating: *** 1/2

United States Championship: Rusev vs Jinder Mahal vs Randy Orton (c) vs Bobby Roode

This match had a long build since Jinder had wins over Roode and Orton, but Rusev getting added was random.

We saw a match that was, well odd. There was a lot of pairing off, not a lot of team work, and then a finisher spamming party. So Jinder was the last one to hit a finisher, so he picks up the win over Rusev. So we have a NEW America hating foreign heel, US Champ (somewhere Greg Demarco rejoices).

A little surprised that Rusev didn’t get the win, purely, to placate the crowd. But Jinder will be a good champion, even if it’s possibly short lived.

Winner: Jinder Mahal

Rating: ** 1/2

Ronda Rousey & Kurt Angle vs Stephanie McMahon & Triple H

This match had most people’s curiosity since Ronda wasn’t really impressive these past few weeks.

Kurt and Trips started things off, with Kurt looking better than Survivor Series, but still very slow and old. This was all just leading up to Ronda getting the hot tag, and wow, she came out like a house on fire.

Ronda started off too hyped, but fell into rhythm nicely. This was her coming out party and she was amazing. Throwing hands with Triple H, breaking up a pin attempt and getting across the point that she’ll use a cross armbreaker as her finish.

Easily the most entertaining match, maybe it wasn’t technically amazing, but it was fun, exciting and the high point of the show.

Winner: Ronda & Kurt

Rating: *** 1/2

Smackdown Tag Team Championship: Bludgeon Bros vs The Usos (c) vs New Day

The Usos finally get on the main card, but can they stop the sledgehammer wielding behemoths?

This match began the downward spiral of disappointing matches. If we were still in the PPV age, I would’ve said this one had time cut from it. Weird spots, Luke Harper chillin on the turnbuckle for a few minutes to unveil a new Super Powerbomb finish.

And in less than 7 minutes, we have new champions, who dispatched of the two top teams from 2017.

Winner: Bludgeon Bros

Rating: ** 3/4

Undertaker vs John Cena

Elias came out as a distraction for Cena making it seem like it wouldn’t happen. Then when Cena was about to leave, the lights go out, the hat and coat appear and then disappear in the middle of the ring…and the gong hits.

This match was supposed to showcase Undertaker’s new hip. His hair was the correct length, he pulled off and Old School, a leg drop, sat up mid 5 Knuckle Shuffle for a fun gif and wins after 1 Tombstone.

I guess this match was the physical embodiment of “be careful what you wish for”, since Cena got squashed.

Winner: Undertaker

Rating: **

Shane McMahon & Daniel Bryan vs Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn

I have no Earthly clue what this match was to be fair.

Daniel was picked off early by the heels before the bell, so he languished on the outside for 10 minutes while a sick, freshly off of surgery, not even wrestler, took out 2 main event players. Yes it can be argued that Zayn hasn’t really reached that height, but we’ve got a nearly 50 year old man taking on two full time wrestlers.

Then, Bryan makes a big save and it’s Shane’s turn to play dead for a while. Cheap pops,and Daniel getting his stuff in was academic, but Daniel and Shane win, so now we’re gonna have weeks of Owens and Zayn pulling a Heath Slater.

Winner: Shane & Daniel

Rating: ** 3/4

WWE Championship: Shinsuke Nakamura vs AJ Styles

Now most fans should’ve tempered their expectations, but of course they didn’t. So welcome to another match that failed to really deliver.

The match was good from a technical and story telling standpoint since you knew something was wrong with Shinsuke, since he wasn’t his usual playful self. But in a match that was paced too slowly, never really grabbed an already tired crowd’s attention, this really suffered.

AJ Styles winning is perfectly fine, even though many wanted to see Shinsuke win. The only saving grace to all of this, is we got a well executed Nakamura heel turn. Anyone who liked Shinsuke in New Japan knows he began as a badass heel, and CHAOS was actually a heel stable before Nakamura went more eccentric.

Winner: AJ Styles

Rating: ***

Raw Women’s Title: Nia Jax vs Alexa Bliss

This match, was…what we expected it to be.

Alexa ran around, tried to take some short cuts, failed and Nia killed her and did some damage to Mickie James as well. Hooray, Nia wins, in probably the only ‘being bullied’ angle that absolutely no one cared about.

Winner: Nia

Rating: **

Raw Tag Team Championship: Braun & Nicholas vs The Bar

Braun literally walks through the crowd and chooses a child. I had flashbacks to the Power Rangers Turbo movie…and that was crap too.

Braun has single-handedly ruined the legitimacy of every current tag team. He beats The Bar by himself, the kid is technically the youngest champion in WWE history (sorry Rene Dupree).

So yes, I personally hated this, it took too long to find the kid and this is just a slap in the face to the story telling that it’s supposed to be even a little realistic. I’m gonna need to find Cornette’s reaction.

Winner: Braun & Nicholas

Rating: *

WWE Universal Championship: Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns

This match was really the only one they put effort into over the last few weeks. They also had a solid match at WrestleMania 31, so things were looking up.

Oh ya, but swerves and underwhelming is the name of this show. What was this match? 10 Suplexes, no real tension, no real intrigue, Roman just kicks out of 5 F5s or something like that.

This was what you decided to close a bloated 7 hour event with? I mean seriously, Goldberg vs Lesnar from ‘Mania 20 was a better match.

Winner: Brock Lesnar

Rating: * 1/4

WrestleMania 34, the show that peaked halfway through and ended so poorly that any of the good is immediately forgotten because of how bad, the bad truly was. Advantageously I became Trivia Champion at the Annual WrestleMania Party I go to. It came down to a last minute answer to force a Triple Threat lightning round. Triple Threat lightning rounds are stressful, let me tell you.

Yes I just expounded on a Trivia game, because that was overall more memorable and enjoyable than this show. Somehow, you take a bunch of high work rate wrestlers and still manage to screw it up. And people wonder why I drink…