WrestleMania 35: Too Long For Any Night

It’s always amazing to look back a year and see how things have changed.

You see the talent that has changed, the in-ring dynamic shift and maybe some new contenders in the world title picture. At WrestleMania 35, there was some of that on this show from the celebration of Kofi Kingston’s championship win to the women’s division closing the show in a triple threat match. Other things don’t change, though, like a bad preshow match and poor formatting. Regardless of the year, WWE is always in its own world and doesn’t seem to change with the times.

WrestleMania 35 had a four-match preshow, which included two horrible battle royals. I was very much impressed with the true opening match of the night for the Cruiserweight Title between Tony Nese and Buddy Murphy. If there were ever two guys in recent history who realized that they needed to open strong and set a tone for the evening, this was them. Go see this match whenever you can and skip the rest of the preshow.

Hawkins and Ryder won the Raw Tag Team Titles over The Revival in a match that had no build and featured two guys who hadn’t been on TV for probably months at that point. Furthermore, Hawkins had a losing streak that was probably as legit as Goldberg’s streak in 1998. It was a good story to have them win, but it doesn’t make sense how we even got to this point.

Carmella won the Women’s Battle Royal, which at the time I was fine with, because her title reign, while booked horribly, was sabotaged by the usual Charlotte and Becky storytelling. It’s only a bad decision now considering that they never did anything to follow up on her winning, per usual. The finale was Braun Strowman winning the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, last eliminating the two idiots from Saturday Night Live.

The main broadcast begins with an appearance by our host Alexa Bliss, which I am perfectly fine with in more ways than one. She gave us our first “WrestleMania Surprise:” Hulk Hogan. I’m all for the nostalgia pop, but I can only take a Hogan return pop so many times at this point. This immediately gives way to our Universal Title match.

Seth Rollins beat Brock Lesnar in the official WrestleMania 35 opener. I liked the match at the time, but feel it lost some of its luster when you consider that they did the same match again four months later at SummerSlam. Both times Rollins’ reign was horribly booked. This was the big superstar crowning moment for the night, but in hindsight, would you book Austin and Rock for the WWF Title again just months after their WrestleMania 17 match?

AJ Styles vs. Randy Orton was the one I wanted to see the most during the show because they are two of my favorites in the company. The have chemistry together and it ended up being a good match. However, it sucked for the live crowd because the lights were in their eyes for 85% of it. Styles won with a phenomenal forearm.

The SmackDown Tag Titles four-way between Shinsuke Nakamura, Rusev, Sheamus, Cesaro, Alistair Black, Ricochet and the Usos was a great showcase that barely lasted 10 minutes. Sadly, all of these men remained underutilized. Usos finally get a win on the main card of a Mania.

Shane McMahon defeats The Miz in a street fight that was better than it should have been. I loved them fighting across the whole row of international announce teams because I always find that five-minute introduction piss break annoying. The final spot of the suplex off the platform was a good visual, but when Corey Graves screams “IT’S A WRESTLEMANIA MIRACLE” after Shane’s arm magically lands on top of Miz’s body for the three count, that just kills the moment.

The Women’s Tag Team Title match should have had just been Sasha and Bayley defending against Beth Phoenix and Natalya rather than another four-way. Hell, Tamina and Nia Jax weren’t really even in the match. The IIconics winning would have been fine if it wasn’t for the same finish we see in every multi-person match where in this case, Phoenix does her finish on Bayley only for Peyton Royce and Billie Kay to throw her out and score the pin. Somehow, winning the titles actually ruined the IIconics, as they barely defended the gold before losing to Kabuki Warriors, and have been MIA ever since.

Kofi Kingston vs. Daniel Bryan was something I never realized that I wanted until it happened. The storyline was great going in, which was almost a reversal for Bryan from his WrestleMania XXX story. Meanwhile, Kofi was perfect for his role. The fans were behind him and demanded a changing of the guard. While his reign would prove to be lackluster due to bad storylines and a real shitty four-second ending, it doesn’t take away the magic that was in the air. Kofi celebrating his first WWE Title win with his family was a true WrestleMania moment and easily match of the night.

Samoa Joe beat Rey Mysterio in less than a minute. The introduction of the international announce teams was longer than the match.

Roman Reigns defeating Drew McIntrye was a good match, but it was still missing something. Despite this being Roman’s first major match back since beating cancer, I don’t think it would have hurt him to lose, especially now that we know where McIntyre ended up at WrestleMania 36. Perhaps the Big Dog will acknowledge this (highly unlikely) and challenge McIntyre for a future title shot.

The Triple H and Batista No Hold Barred match was a good brawl and fitting end for “The Animal.” But it was soooo long. If they had cut a few minutes off this match, it would have been even better. Give those few extra minutes to another match that could benefit and then you have two good matches rather than two ok matches. This is a recurring theme that Vince McMahon never addresses.

The only comments I’m going to make on the Angle vs Corbin match is this: I have nothing against Baron Corbin, who is a great heel, but this match was disrespectful to Kurt. He requested that John Cena be his final opponent, which would have been a rare full circle moment in wrestling, but McMahon decreed that Angle would put over the up-and-coming Corbin on his way out to pay off their feuding Raw GMs storyline.

Finn Balor bringing “The Demon” to WrestleMania 35 against Lashley was great, but it lasted less than five minutes. If you are going to have matches like this and Joe vs Mysterio, then why bother having a 14ish match card?

For the historic main event, the match was laid out well, but the execution missed. There is no doubt that this was a big moment in wrestling history, but it didn’t live up to the hype. The quality of the match and the bad finish (with Ronda Rousey seemingly kicking out of the pin) overshadowed the fact that Becky Lynch made history at the end of the night holding up both Women’s Titles to close the biggest show of the year. The finish, whether botched or planned for a future angle or whatever, just didn’t work for the main event of a WrestleMania. Corey Graves even said “I’d love to see a more conclusive ending to a WrestleMania main event.” Regardless, Charlotte, Rousey and Lynch all gave their best effort trying to entertain a very tired crowd.

WrestleMania 35 goes down as a successful show overall. WWE needs to reevaluate their formatting of these big shows because fans don’t want to see a 14-match card on a show that runs over seven hours. It’s too much to handle.

Even though WrestleMania 36 was split over two nights, don’t be fooled that WWE learned its lesson. That only happened because of the coronavirus pandemic changing life as we know it. Hopefully, WWE will continue doing WrestleMania over two nights going forward.