BRM Reviews WWE WrestleMania XXXIX: Sunday (great, but...)

[Big Red Machine]

WWE WrestleMania XXXIX: Sunday (4/2/2023)- Inglewood, CA


BROCK LESNAR vs. OMOS (w/MVP)- 1.5/10
Omos threw Brock around until Brock his some German suplexes, then won with an F-5. What is the purpose of Brock Lesnar at this point?

LIV MORGAN & RAQUEL RODRIGUEZ vs. SHAYNA BASZLER & RONDA ROUSEY vs. SHOTZI BLACKHEART & NATALYA vs. CHELSEA GREEN & SONYA DEVILLE- 6.5/10
Nattie must of have punched one of Steph and Hunter’s daughters full-force in the face. I can’t imagine that anything less would warrant the terrible punishment of being forced to interact with Shotzi on a regular basis and pretend to be her friend.
They did spots. Ronda made Shotzi tap after standing over her for a good thirty seconds, not doing anything. It’s always nice to see the right person go under.

UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN WWE2K23 PLUG- Today’s annoying entourage member is the dude in the floral burgundy jacket. Also, Nikki Cross.

WWE INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Gunther(c) vs. Drew McIntyre Sheamus- 9.25/10
Titus O’Neil was on guest commentary for this match. He was a lot of fun. But do you know what probably wasn’t any fun at all? Taking any of the strikes in this match. HOLY CRAP. Gunther pinned Drew to retain. We got a key spot where Drew pulled Sheamus off of a cover, so I assume Sheamus will turn on Drew soon and they’ll start feuding, with more awesome matches between them heading our way.

WWE RAW WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Bianca Belair(c) vs. Asuka- 8.25/10
Bianca Belair got a fancy entrance. My biggest question going into this match was how well their styles would mesh, and they proved that that wouldn’t be a problem. They had a great pace and lots of good reversals and put together a heck of a match.


THE MIZ vs. SHANE MCMAHON- no rating, idiotic segment
This was set up by a stupid segment with Miz and Snoop Dogg. As Shane did a leapfrog, Michael Cole proudly declared “Shane’s still got it!” Shane proceeded to injure his leg badly enough on the leapfrog that he couldn’t continue the match.
Snoop Dogg hopped into the ring and punched Miz in the face. He proceeded to somehow blame Miz for Shane injuring himself on a leapfrog, then punched Miz again. This second punch apparently knocked Miz out. Snoop did a People’s Elbow and pinned Miz… and the referee counted the pin.
What the f*ck is this sh*t, and why are we supposed to enjoy something this blatantly unfair and ridiculous? Grow some genitals and call the audible to have Miz be declared the winner, and now he’s got something to brag about for the next month.

HELL IN A CELL MATCH: Edge vs. Finn Balor- 6.5/10
NO MORE RED CAGE! But for any fans of bright red out there, fear not, for Edge grabbed a bright red chair to make up for it. Balor responded by grabbing a purple Kendo Stick. Balor no-sold Edge’s chairshot and beat him up with the Kendo stick.
Oh. Here are red Kendo sticks, too. And purple chairs. And purple tables! Why are the weapons color-coded? Edge hit Balor with one of the purple Kendo sticks but didn’t get disqualified, so there goes theory #1. Maybe they forgot to tell us that this match is sponsored by Very Berry Cap’n Crunch?
Demon Balor kept kicking out of things. Edge got a standard gray ladder. Maybe that’s for the referee? Well… Edge chucked it at Balor’s head, and it busted Balor open… and the referee demanded that Edge sit there while they opened the door to the cell and had medical people run in and stitch Balor up. IT’S A F*CKING HELL IN A CELL MATCH! If the cut is that bad, then end the match via referee stoppage or blood loss. If it’s not, BACK THE F*CK OFF!
While the match was being paused because the murder-cage got too violent, Edge got more weapons. They looked like normal Kendo sticks to me, but maybe they were painted… beige or straw or whatever that color is. After being allowed a bunch of time to recover, you’ll be shocked to hear that Balor recovered enough to take control of the match.
They traded weapon shots and other big spots. Balor climbed the cell wall to where he found an inexplicably-placed platform that he could jump off of to do a Coup de Grace to try to put Edge through a (brown) table, but Edge moved. Maybe if Edge puts Balor through all of the colors of table, he wins automatically? Edge hit a spear, then hit a Con-Chair-To with red chairs and won. This match was thoroughly ruined by whoever had the idea to color-code the weapons. Maybe I could look past Balor’s annoying demon no-selling and his and Edge’s goofy facial expressions without that (though it still would have been hard), but with the color-coded silliness, and the blood stoppage, the match died.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS BIANCA BELAIR- good
She cut a good babyface promo, then got a nice moment with the young dancers from her entrance.

Backlash is in Puerto Rico, and the event appears to be sponsored by Puerto Rico’s tourism ministry. Remember when that randomly because the Colon’s gimmick?

WWE UNDISPUTED TITLE MATCH: Roman Reigns(c) (w/Paul Heyman & Solo Sikoa) vs. Cody Rhodes- 8.75/10
Cody had his whole family at ringside. Other than Dustin, of course… although there was one AEW star who got featured. Young Brodie Huber, who Cody “presented his weight belt” to.
Roman got an entrance with no fewer than six pianists playing the intro to his music. The Usos did not come out with Roman. I guess they’re being punished for losing the tag titles, but I’m not really sure that that punishment doesn’t hurt Roman more than it hurts them, as he now only has two guys at ringside and not four.
The crowd is about fifty-fifty. Cody had control of things early on, which gave the opportunity for Heyman to give Roman an epic pep-talk. The shine ended via a chairshot from Solo Sikoa, and from there, we got… well…
I’m finally sitting down to turn my notes into thoughts about a week and a half after the show, so I have something of av advantage of having heard everyone else’s take first and being able to comment on them. I fall somewhere in the middle of the two camps, but I’m definitely more towards the “this was every other heel Roman Reigns world title match you’ve ever seen” side of things.
I will admit that Cody was made to look stronger than just about every other Roman Reigns challenger (maybe since Bryan), but my ability to believe that Cody would win here had a lot less to do with how he was presented in this match than the fact that it was WrestleMania and this felt like a real potential ending point for Roman’s title reign. The moment in the match that did the most to convince me that Cody might win wasn’t anything Cody did; it was Owens and Zayn taking out the Usos, which felt like a nice bow being tied around everything (though did they really have to come through the f*cking crowd when coming down the ramp would have been a million times less hokey?).
Yes, the crowd the night after Mania was a lot more pro-Cody than the crowd at Mania was, and he got a strong reaction the next week on Raw as well, but I don’t think that was a given at all. I myself found myself becoming more and more anti-Cody as this match went along. Yes, you might expect that from me more than others, seeing as how I wasn’t on the anti-Cody bandwagon so much as the anti-Cody bandwagon was my car that everyone started hopping into (go back and read my ROH reviews in 2017, or my stuff from AEW’s very beginning)… but I was also an advocate of WWE Cody long before many people were (check out my BRM Books Raw 1,000 and Beyond fantasy booking thread, where you can see me setting the seeds in 2012 for the storyline that would eventually result in Cody being a world champion way before most people talking about him as a potential world champion in the medium term). What I’m saying is that while what WWE did here seems to have worked out well, it very easily could have backfired, and you’d have had a cold Cody, and fans pissed about a f*ck finish in the main event of WrestleMania. The question of the match became “can Cody overcome all of the interference?” and the answer was that he didn’t. And that has been the case with so many others before, and none of them felt like bigger stars afterwards (and I’m including Sami Zayn in that count, as well as Drew, Owens, Brock, etc.), and some of those guys (Sami and Drew especially) were much hotter than Cody going into their title shots.

This was another great night of wrestling from WWE here on the Grandest Stage of Them All, but it was a much bumpier ride than last night was, and mostly due to things that should have easily been predictable and/or preventable (the colors ruining HIAC, Brock vs. Omos sucking, etc.). I have hope for WWE going forward (or at least I did before Vince ran Raw on Monday), and I really liked the two-night format again this year, but there is still a lot of baggage WWE needs to shed (Brock, the obsession with bad nostalgia acts like Shane, or pointless celebrity interactions like Snoop Dogg’s role both nights and the matches he made) before they can really start to be a top-notch product once again.