I enjoyed the show overall, though watching it in smaller chunks at a time probably helped. These PPVs are loooong man. That double shot to finish reminded me of those big inter-promotional Wrestlemania Dream Matches they'd run in the mid-00s.
Ronda Rousey v Charlotte Flair
So Rousey's 2018 is the best rookie year in wrestling history, right? It's sort of absurd how good she is considering this is, what, her eleventh match? That's Han/Tamura crazy. And she was awesome pretty much straight out the gate. I still like the Wrestlemania tag a bit more, but this was really great too and her best singles match so far. I love how scrappy and intense she is and those early tie-ups looked real gritty. When Charlotte shoved her you and I and everybody else knew it was on. I don't want this to be a creepy joshified love letter to Ronda because Charlotte was great here as well, but I loved basically every single thing Rousey did. Her selling and bumping is always so good and her grasp of the little things that really puts something over the top is outrageous. Everything she does feels like a fight, how she'll wildly fling herself into armbars or shit talk before a flurry of body shots. She works holds as well as anybody in wrestling because there's never any down time. There's no sitting there idle, she's never resting on her laurels and it more or less forces her opponent to follow suit. And Charlotte totally brought the violence on her end. It might be my favourite performance of hers and I bought her needing to step up big time, not just because she's in there with a badass, but because she's sort of being taken for granted in the wake of Becky's rise. She was the ace and now she's only on the marquee because the new ace threw her a bone. I don't know if the elbow to the mouth was intentional (it made for some visual either way), but in general she matched Ronda and plausibly hung with her every step of the way. They had so many cool moments, like the amazing transition where Ronda fucking headered the bottom buckle, the punch v chop battle that left Ronda's chest all purple, the GREAT nearfall off the spear, the fight over the Boston Crab, just lots of neat stuff. And while I fully expected a fuck finish, I didn't expect it to be an awesome one. That was an absolutely killer beatdown and Rousey took an almighty shit kicking, welts for days, cuts everywhere, bruised, bloodied, probably splintered to hell -- the sort of thing you can imagine the old-timers watching and saying truly solidified her as one of the family or some carny horse shit. What's the deal with that crowd, though? Have they been getting cold on Ronda recently or is this fallout from them wanting Becky and when they don't get her they'll shit over the next person down (kind of like they did with Bryan, I guess)? I'd probably rather Ronda/Becky for Wrestlemania, but the fact they've managed to create a scenario now where there are three women who feel like proper main event potential stars is cool. Rousey staring folk out post-match unamused was great, btw. She's gonna be unfuckingbelievable if they handle the eventual heel turn properly.
Brock Lesnar v Daniel Bryan
This felt like one of the true dream matches left in wrestling. Like, how long had people been clamouring for a Lesnar v Bryan match? A few years ago it looked like a real possibility...then Bryan retired and a bunch of folk got sick of Lesnar and I guess we all just assumed the moment had passed and it'd be thrown in the same pile as Bryan/Eddie or Kobashi/Hashimoto or whatever. They've so far whiffed on Bryan's return so it was never going to be as huge as it would've been had they run it during the peak of his popularity (can you imagine how stupid ridiculous the heat for that would've been?), but even still, even heel v heel, it was Lesnar v Bryan. And for the most part I thought it delivered all ends up. I know people generally don't care for Lesnar's suplex city bit at this point, but as someone who watches about 5% of what WWE pump out on a yearly basis it's hard for me to get too burned out on stuff like that. I mean I don't have any interest in watching this year's Wrestlemania main event again, but I think there's a way to fit it into something compelling. And maybe it's Bryan's very real history of concussions giving it a sort of morbidity that I couldn't look away from, but that stretch where Lesnar was flinging him all over the place sure felt compelling. Didn't hurt that Bryan selling the whole thing was amazing (and that initial lariat looked ugly as fuck). I actually wish they gave us a bit more of Bryan horseshittin' it up early and maybe even built on it a bit, because I can only imagine how interesting Bryan would've made that, but what we got was fun. Some of those Lesnar suplexes were unreal and I loved him shit talking through it. I think at one point he called someone in the crowd a "fucking moron" and another fan front row was yelling for him to just pin Bryan already. And for a spot I'll hate ninety nine times out of a hundred, Brock pulling Bryan up at 2 after the first F5 was great. Everything after the ref' bump was what took this up a level, though. If Bryan is going to be the dude who just punts folk in the dick then I'm all on board because that was the perfect transition. When Lesnar can be arsed he's still amazing as well. Some of his selling in the back half was tremendous, like his initial shock at the ball shot, but it was his leg buckling leading into the Yes Lock that was the moment of the match. Bryan was about as violent here as he's been in his entire WWE run. The stomps to the head that legit left the imprint of his sole on Lesnar's face, those brutal crossface swipes as Lesnar was turning the colour of an undercooked chicken, the kicks to the body and legs as Lesnar was curled up on the mat, just awesome stuff. He came out of this putting up a fight and not kicking out of a single F5 but ultimately looked better than Reigns ever did despite kicking out of, like, three hunner. Heel Bryan should rule. This match did rule.
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