Rate WrestleMania XL Night 1

[Injustice45]

6/10. Rhea vs Becky was solid given the circumstance of Becky being sick. The ladder match had some crazy spots and Truth and Waller winning felt good. I didn't care for the Rey/Andrade vs. Dom/Santos match, but the latter should've won. Dom would've gotten tons of heat for winning. Uso vs. Uso underwhelmed. Like, I expected a lot more tension and intensity. But, it was lame, and why would you fall for Jimmy begging for mercy, Jey? What a dumbass lol. The six woman tag was predictable. Naomi got so little offense, then Bianca was beating Damage Control by herself, and Jade only got a few moves in before the match was over. Sami vs. Gunther was good. It picked up in the end with Sami hulking up essentially. Gunther's reign ending at 666 days is kinda funny. The main event dragged for 2/3 of it and started to pick up in the end, just like the vast majority of Roman Reigns' matches in the last three years. The Rock did way more than I thought he would. He did a good job selling and taking bumps, plus he got in his classic spots. Everyone else was playing it safe since they got more to do the next night. Night One is where the entrances are better than the matches themselves.

[Ryushinku]

Hmm....maybe 7.

Rhea/Becky got there after an indifferent first half.
Tag ladder nothing too memorable but had some good bumps, and it was particularly nice to see Truth (and Miz) win gold at WrestleMania.
Rey tag okay.
Use fight a major bust, disappointing that one.
The six-woman tag was too short, though worked hard. And everyone looked so blazingly hot I thought the cameras would melt.
Gunther-Sami was the best of the night, really built and built.
Main event tag had a good last 15 minutes, it just too way too long to get there (like a Triple H classic, padded out). Ending was exactly what I hoped it would be.

So, I think 7 is about right. A fairly good night, just not a great one. Hoping Night 2 will deliver bigger.

[Zone Was Wrong]

5 and that's generous. Nothing outside of the Sami/Gunther match remotely stood out. The main event stood out at times but it was a great 20 minute match stretched out to 44 minutes. Becky/Rhea could have been better if Becky wasn't sick. The women's 6 person match was bleh. The LWO/Santos and Dom match sucked. The ladder match was pretty tame. The Usos match was terrible.

[Gravedigger's Biscuits]

I'd go for a 7.5.

There was nothing terrible (although the Uso vs Uso match was close) and nothing truly great (although the tag main event was close). The rest was decent to good.

Rhea/Becky and Gunther/Sami didn't quite reach the heights everyone might have expected, but still good matches. Tag Ladder Match I thought was very fun with exactly the right two teams winning. I missed part of the LWO tag match due to technical difficulties but I felt the NFL guys interference was a bizarre choice. Six women's tag was okay.

The Uso booking was totally bizarre and not in a good way. Both guys exchanging superkicks for what felt like 90% of the match, Jey actually believing Jimmy begging for forgiveness which made the face look like a giant idiot and then a really flat ending. HHH probably needs to have a quiet word with whoever the "producer" of this match was.

And then you have the main event, which some people felt was slow, but I really liked that. A slow build leading to a hot finish is the ideal main event to me, but I feel people have become too accustomed to the "non-stop finisher spam for 20 minutes" type stuff we've seen for the last 10 years.

I'm biased because I'm a huge Rock mark but I thought he looked great. Really enjoyed the main event.

[BRV]

7/10. It was good, maybe even very good, but is it wrong to say I wanted - and expected - more?

Becky Lynch vs. Rhea Ripley was exactly what I expected it to be: a very good, back-and-forth contest between two of the very best women wrestlers in the world. There's really not much more to say about it, because it's hard to find other ways to say, "It was as good as I thought it would be."

The ladder match was a fun car crash, the kind of match every WrestleMania should have. Everyone got their spots in, everyone looked good, and there were a few signature highlights that I'm sure people will be discussing for a while. I'm also glad R Truth was finally given his flowers after wrestling in WWE for almost two decades and never having a WrestleMania win to his name. It wasn't as out of nowhere as the Men's WrestleMania Showcase tag match last year, but that's because I think I anticipated this was going to be a good match, whereas the tag match last year was expected to be a bathroom break.

Rey Mysterio and Andrade versus Santos Escobar and Dominik Mysterio was fine, it just felt like it lacked ... something. I don't know what, but it just felt like everything wasn't all there. It almost felt like a really great house show match or a fun Raw match, but a notch or two below the caliber you'd expect out of WrestleMania. At this point in the show, the crowd also started to become noticeably quieter.

Jimmy vs. Jey ... man, what more needs to be said? What a dud that was. For a match built on intense family drama, it was about as bland as they could have made it. It was paint-by-numbers if all the colors in their palette were grey. It reminded me a lot of Randy Orton vs. Triple H at WrestleMania 25 - a rivalry built on heated, personal drama, but when they get in the ring, they just have a boring-ass wrestling match. This was a match that needed a Solo Sikoa run-in, it needed Rikishi showing up and telling the boys to squash their beef, it needed ANYTHING, but instead it had nothing. Easily the worst match of the night and hopefully the worst match of the weekend.

The six-woman tag match was really just a showcase for Jade Cargill, and she delivered. Pretty much everything up until she tagged in was a fine SmackDown match, but once she tagged in, the crowd woke up from its 90-minute slumber and she showed the star power she has. I'll be stunned if she isn't in one of the women's championship matches come WrestleMania 41.

Sami Zayn vs. Gunther, while outstanding and a potential match of the night, also felt like it could have used five more minutes to really build its drama. It just felt like the match skipped a beat in the story, going right from the opening back and forth to suddenly being in the "Gunther kicks the crap out of Sami and starts to put him away" portion of the match. It was like a story going from the rising action to the falling action without really having a climax. It was a great conclusion and an emotional ending to the greatest Intercontinental Championship reign of all time, but it could have easily been 4.5 or 5 stars instead of settling at a really good 4 stars.

The main event tag team match turned on a dime. The first 15 or so minutes were dreadful, with all four trying to build tension and The Rock and Cody Rhodes squaring up and settling their beef by ... starting in a collar-and-elbow tie-up? Shrug emoji. But after they got back into the ring following the brawl outside the ring, it turned up to a whole new level. All four delivered, and a tag match was the perfect showcase for The Rock to not have to do too much but still have enough of a presence to be the star of the night. It was an excellent match that told an even better story and its tendrils will be all over WrestleMania Sunday and the booking of Raw and SmackDown for months to come.

[Cyno]

I'll go with a 7. Mostly good though some really bad stuff stuck out. I'll also give the opener a pass because Becky was apparently working sick. Ladder match and the IC match were great. Women trios match was alright, though I wish it was a bit more competitive and Jade really needs an NXT tenure. Usos match was ass. Tag match with Rey and Andrade vs Santos and Dom was meh and I hate the Eagles so the Kelce and Johnson cameos did nothing for me. Main event was a great 15-20 minute match unnecessarily stretched out, though Rock looked a lot better than I expected.


As far as non-match stuff goes, commentary outside of Cole was horrendous. The atmosphere also didn't feel as Mania-ish as last year's.

[Lance Uppercut]

It was good, but I have a feeling that this is one of those years where night 2 will be way better

[simplydurhamcalling]

My opinion will reflect the fact I never watch live so get to skip all the promotional stuff between matches but overall I'd go a 7.

I thought the main event was excellent, could have been a tad shorter with that 5-10 mins given to Sami/Gunther but overall I really enjoyed it. They totally got me with the double pedigree near fall too. The crowd only split on Cody/Seth when The Rock was involved, he's just too entertaining of a heel to stay that way for long and it's been that way since 1999.

Sami/Gunther was great and after really struggling to get into the build they finally got me on the night with all of the work they did leading up to Sami's entrance.

Jey vs Jimmy I'm not as down as everyone else but it was pretty bad. Hate no-selling superkick trade offs like that (forearms are bad enough). At least the right man won but I don't think Jey is cut out for a main event singles run.

6 woman tag was a decent enough showcase of the babyfaces.

I don't think I could have cared less about the Mysterio tag match, skipped to the last few minutes and have no idea who those football players are. Would have preferred this end with a Carlito heel turn.

Tag ladder match was a good spot fest and R Truth is a gem, the hot tag and finally getting his moment in the sun, good stuff.

Becky Vs Rhea was a decent opener especially considering Becky's illness, yes I think they could do better when she's healthy again.

If you applied a rating to each match it would probably come in under 7 but a strong main event will always carry more weight for me.

Side note the WWE app was a disaster this morning with audio about 10 minutes out on the video stream. Thankfully they did not have spoilers on the app homepage at least.

[HMARK Center]

Apr 7, 2024 5:10:50 GMT -5 King Devitt said:

Overall I'll give it a 6. A very weak night one.
The problem I have with WWE shows is the WWE style. Most matches are the same, and people rarely get out of first gear.
I get excited about the "match-ups" but not the matches themselves.
The WWE style works for your Bron Breakker's and Tiffany Stratton's, but let people who can go...f***ing GO.
Especially at WM.

Can't comment for myself on last night's action, since I didn't see it, but I do see some people kind of saying that about the Uso match: it'd be one thing if the build to it was more like Bret vs. Owen in 1994 (Bret playing the "it's my little brother, I don't want to hurt him" role while Owen was in full "I HAVE to prove I'm better than him!" mode), which resulted in a mostly pure wrestling match that had some aggressive moments in it at Wrestlemania X, but the build to this one sounded like it needed to result in something more brutal and visceral...but instead they kind of had a normal match.

I said it the other day, but it's why I tend to have a tough time getting into a lot of long in-ring promo segments where it's more about one wrestler dropping a line that gets the crowd to go "ooooh!" at or whatever; if the promo doesn't shape the eventual match psychology/story/layout in some way, shape, or form, it just feels kind of pointless to me.

But I think it's a big reason why a lot of people's ratings in WWE PPV/PLE threads often seem to be heavily impacted by match outcomes - if the matches themselves aren't going to be wrestled too differently regardless of the story going into them, then the main thing that matters isn't how the match is wrestled, but more just who won or lost. Not saying 'who won?' can never be a factor in measuring quality, but it's just something that feels very distinct to WWE.

[polarbearpete]

Apr 7, 2024 15:40:36 GMT -5 HMARK Center said:

Apr 7, 2024 5:10:50 GMT -5 King Devitt said:

Overall I'll give it a 6. A very weak night one.
The problem I have with WWE shows is the WWE style. Most matches are the same, and people rarely get out of first gear.
I get excited about the "match-ups" but not the matches themselves.
The WWE style works for your Bron Breakker's and Tiffany Stratton's, but let people who can go...f***ing GO.
Especially at WM.

Can't comment for myself on last night's action, since I didn't see it, but I do see some people kind of saying that about the Uso match: it'd be one thing if the build to it was more like Bret vs. Owen in 1994 (Bret playing the "it's my little brother, I don't want to hurt him" role while Owen was in full "I HAVE to prove I'm better than him!" mode), which resulted in a mostly pure wrestling match that had some aggressive moments in it at Wrestlemania X, but the build to this one sounded like it needed to result in something more brutal and visceral...but instead they kind of had a normal match.

I said it the other day, but it's why I tend to have a tough time getting into a lot of long in-ring promo segments where it's more about one wrestler dropping a line that gets the crowd to go "ooooh!" at or whatever; if the promo doesn't shape the eventual match psychology/story/layout in some way, shape, or form, it just feels kind of pointless to me.

You’d have loved Sami-Gunther and Rock/Roman-Cody/Seth. Extremely good “story” matches.

[Hurbster]

An easy 8, great show. Nothing annoyed me about it at all.

[tafkaga]

Rhea/Becky was the peak of night 1.

The Usos and main event matches weren't great to watch but the story was good.

[Celgress]

7 out of 10, IMHO.