NIGHT ONE
-Everybody I was watching this with loved Rick Boogs. Tough act to follow. Referred to as "Rick Rude meshed with Freddy Mercury and given the Bane venom."
-It is a shame that his injury really put this one off. You couldn't really tell at first if he was just selling because of the kayfabe injury they had pushed in the lead-up and it almost seemed like it took Shinsuke a bit to figure it out himself before speeding up the finish. That was a bummer.
-The Usos never have a bad match on a big stage but this one probably won't be on any Hall of Fame highlight reels in the years to come.
DREW MCINTYRE v HAPPY CORBIN
-Found out later on that the video packages were being shown to fill the time that commercials were being aired on the lower tier of Peacock. Pretty shitty reasoning but I get it. Definitely didn't need a six minute retrospective of this feud though fuck my life.
-It was exactly the match everybody thought it was going to be which is great for Battleground, not so much for Wrestlemania.
-Missed Drew kicking out of the End of Days because it took me far too long to find the clip of him hitting his cock on the top rope doing a dive at Mania last year.
-The sword thing at the end was kinda dumb.
-I appreciated the Dominik tribute gear after the fact but coming in I didn't put two and two together.
-Hearing commentary talk about the Pikachu card is what forced me to go to my commentary muting mind palace after the fact.
-This was rather clunky and oddly enough the majority of the clunk came from the two most experienced guys in the match.
-It pains my soul to heap praise on Logan Paul but he was really good in this match. He never looked panicked during the couple points of miscommunication.
-After losing his headband earlier, I appreciated him going back and retrieving it and at least trying to keep it on before it eventually fell off again.
-The turn by Miz at the end seemed forced but if this ends up being a Summerslam match it probably would turn out pretty good.
-I kept forgetting they were in Texas with some of the stuff around the entrances. Had to put some of the references and gear choices together afterwards because I'm fairly dense.
-Didn't hear Graves' commentary barb live because frankly I had stopped listening to Dollar Tree Riddler last match.
-However, I will die on the hill that in the home of the Dallas Cowboys the fact that Becky Lynch went full Leeloo Dallas was pre-meditated.
-This was the first match thus far that felt like a Wrestlemania match with all the things that both women were trying, even if not all of them landed flush.
-I was kinda upset we didn't get a shotgun blast sounding hair whip seeing how I built it up to my compatriots once they saw Bianca twirling her tonsorial weapon during her entrance.
-The leap up on the K.O.D gave me Leaping Tombstone vibes and it was fucking awesome. Just deserved road back and a fitting end to this story arc in my opinion.
-For being the drip lord he claims to be, Seth coming out in attire more resembling Nature Boy Paul Lee than Nature Boy Ric Flair was disconcerting. I saw someone even make a Jimmy King comparison from Ready to Rumble and that ain't far off either.
-Also, the constant need to shoehorn "Freakin'" into both his nameplate and every mention of Seth's name was stupid.
-When the lights went off initially I for a split second thought it was going to be Bray Wyatt as his mystery opponent.
-For every WWE stan that couldn't stand Cody's aesthetic when he was in AEW, they sure loved when he did the *checks notes* same fucking thing for Wrestlemania.
-Even amidst all the tie-ins, call-backs, and wink-wink nudge-nudge moments in this one, it was one hell of a wrestling match and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
-There are very few positives that came out of this match.
-Neither woman seemed happy to be in the death slot of the show and it showed.
-If this was just a grudge match and not for a title, I could have seen this being given the Goldberg/Brock Survivor Series 2016 treatment and just put it to bed. Instead, this went for 18 minutes and it felt like 18 fucking hours.
-I really hope that this doesn't drag on much longer because if it does those who give this company their time on a weekly basis are going to be subject to some really shit promos and even less-inspired in-ring work.
-I'm going to be perfectly honest in saying that a one-on-one singles match was REALLY far down the list of things I thought would come of the KO Show segment, let alone one that went as long as this one did.
-Austin taking a suplex on the concrete was when I knew that we weren't getting a 2 minute stunner and sayonara type of affair.
-Kevin Owens got to fulfill a dream and fully deserved that spot to do so. The trend of "I took a picture with Wrestler A a decade ago and look at us now" continues and I hope it never ends.
-But there has to be a reminder of how age catches up to us all in the fact that Stone Cold did not catch every single beer thrown at him. Peak Austin would snag a Steveweiser thrown like a knucklepuck that would clip the top turnbuckle and he'd still snare it like fucking Brooks Robinson. (OLD MAN SPORTS REFERENCE ALERT)
-There were also several single chugs with one poor beer just slowly dumping by the wayside. Come on Steve, think of the children!
NIGHT TWO
-I got to my television late for Night Two given that I knew I wasn't missing anything from the pre-show or another canned Mark Wahlberg intro. Because when I think of Texas, I think of Mark Wahlberg.
-When they eventually break up RK-Bro, which a lot of people thought was happening tonight, one can only hope something comes out of it. They're too fun as a unit to just piss it away and then have one blow-off match and call it a day. I'm glad they won and didn't implode on this night.
-The Street Profits/Gable Stevenson pairing made little sense to me. Did I miss something?
-If they are going to rush Stevenson to the main roster, he's gonna need some help. His Wrestlemania moment looked better suited on Raw Underground. I just hope Chad Gable doesn't get buried in the process come the summer.
-Really wish I had missed this and not the better part of the first match.
-There couldn't have been high expectations here and yet somehow they still dipped under the bar.
-It seems WWE wants Omos to be a giant that can do cool stuff but he can't do anything cool.
-I am genuinely surprised this match went more than six minutes.
-Who had Knoxville/Zayn going longer than the main event on their Wrestlemania bingo card?
-This was everything delightfully stupid we wanted it to be. Knoxville didn't hurt Sami like he potentially could have and vice versa. It was an episode of Jackass in a wrestling ring. Hope Sami's payday was commensurate to the performance he put forth.
-Wee Man bodyslamming Sami will live rent-free in my brain forever.
-Loved the Party Boy gimmickry, hated him no-selling and outright laughing at Sami after he got hit with a closed fist right hand. Just act knocked out and roll to the floor.
-All hail the Giant Mousetrap in all of its goofy ass glory.
-This could have been on a pre-show either night had WWE went that route.
-The fact that on WWE's official highlight reel of Night 2, the clip they chose for this match was half of Sasha and Naomi's entrance speaks volumes.
-Everything with Rhea and Liv makes you want to scream "AND IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII"
-I legitimately had no inkling who was going to win this match and the way it went until the end didn't give me much of a thought until afterwards I kept seeing "This is Sasha Banks' first Wrestlemania win" and things made more sense.
-Edge's entrance was great. AJ getting color inadvertently before he got to the entrance ramp was pretty funny knowing now that he didn't get too too messed up coming out of the tunnel.
-I think they tried to go the same route match-wise as Seth and Cody did on Night One but it didn't work as well.
-There was definitely match of the night expectations here and while it didn't stink by any means outside of the ending spear there was tons of meat left on the bone.
-Unlike some of these other matches where there should be some finality to the proceedings, I could see some faction warfare with these two over the summer with Damian Priest entering the chat.
-Love the Big E tributes by Kingston and Woods.
-Cut for time (had to get all 14 of those video packages in) on Night One, only gets 1:40 on Night Two.
-The best thing I saw about what they are turning poor Pete Dunne into with the combo of Sheamus and Holland is Scrappy Doo. They've taken a genuinely great technical wrestler and made him a "Why I Oughta" extra from Newsies. It's maddening.
-Glad Pat got a song he wanted for his Wrestlemania entrance and that WWE went that extra mile to get him Seven Nation Army. It would've still been cool but much less so with him coming out to generic auto-tune rock song #5 from the Create-A-Superstar suite.
-He hit all the classics he hit during the Adam Cole series of matches. No need to reinvent the wheel.
-The McMahon/Theory dynamic lets people's minds wander into the deep waters unnecessarily. But having Vince ringside meant that Cole didn't have him constantly in his ear and could just fanboy the entire match for his friend. I had to go back and watch it a second time to get the full exuberance having neglected the commentary the first go-round.
-After winning against a youthful Austin Theory, McAfee loses to Vince after taking a crappily punted football to the gut. That sucked.
-Stone Cold Stunner Ratings: Austin Theory 10/10, Pat McAfee 9.8/10, Vince McMahon Whatever the lowest number recorded by mathematicians ever is/10
-This had the big fight feel that it was supposed to have, but then unsurprisingly they didn't deviate from what they've done in their other big fight feel matches from the past decade.
-It finally felt like it was ramping up to that main event crescendo when things fell apart.
-Paul Heyman "playing scared" only for it to be a ruse has been beaten into the ground in not only this feud but with this match.
-Watching Roman have to go full Riggs and send things home early wasn't ideal but it could have been a lot worse given the circumstances.
-Having a champion reign (pun intended?) for this long is refreshing in this era of short attention span television. I just hope that there is a plan to build somebody up as a credible killer to dethrone Roman and not just feed him to Rock in Hollywood. That would not be a fitting end to this tale.
FINAL THOUGHTS
-The camera cuts are so frequent and egregious that people who have no baseline to work from in terms of watching wrestling are commenting on how unnecessary it is to have close to 20 cuts in 20 seconds you've jumped the shark.
-Please can the AR graphics. They bring nothing to the experience in any way, shape, or form.
-When the crowd is dead that is the time commentary should be trying to fill that dead air with things to try to bring the television viewer out of the headspace that "Oh, this crowd is dead" not during the high points of matches that already have our engagement.
So there is my hopefully digestible two cents on the Wrestlemania 38 experience from a fairly casual perspective. If you got this far give the old Bleeding Your Colors twitter a follow @BEWHYCE and if you are on the old Facebook that little linkskis is right HERE.
Image Credits: Wrestlemania Logo (WWE)