Match Ranking, After

Hello! I Promised a Part Two to my Match Rankings Blog- so here it is, I'm both going to rank and compare to my "Before" blog basically to see how wrong I was. This is a bit similar to my Mania Review, but this is purely on the match quality now as opposed to the way it was built and every single match is on a level playing field- and to the absolute best of my ability I'm going to try and eliminate bias from the equation.

9. A.J. & Paige v The Bellas (Predicted: 8th)
"Give Divas a Chance" that chance just happened to be in arguably the worst spot on the card in I think the shortest match of the night. That wouldn't even have been that bad if the title was on the line so it actually meant something. But what we got was a pretty clunky match in my opinion, it was pretty much summed up by A.J. nearly  botching a Tornado DDT that didn't look smooth at all- I said I'm going to try and eliminate bias from the equation- but I will make this statement and I'll stick by it- if something happens to prove me wrong I'll be over the moon... The Bellas (either of them) will never be involved in a "Great" Match. They may have good one's here or there but I can't ever see a scenario where I would go "You Know that Bella Match Stole the Show". Given the limited time they had they didn't use it all that well in my opinion- I at least thought given they were selling an injury angle with A.J. that that'd come into play but it meant absolutely nothing.

8. Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal (Predicted: 9th)
I never really like what you'd label a "traditional" battle royal where everyone starts off in the match. It's just too many moving parts to contend with at the start and until you get to the back-end of the match there isn't any kind of story. The way I see it the main guys in terms of spots should have been Big Show, Ryback, Axel, Miz and Mizdow and those were the guys I featured prominently (in different ways) in my Battle Royal- but Big Show winning after we'd had the great Mizdow moment just felt like a huge anti-climax and left me cold.

7. KiddSaro v Los Matadores v The Usos v The New Day (Predicted: 5th)
As I said in my Review, this match trod a fine line between being good and being a complete cluster. Unfortunately I think the moment where Nattie put Torito into a Sharpshooter and we had Naomi jumping onto everyone it crossed that line- and once any match does it's incredibly hard to salvage it. There were some good moments, but considering the guys involved if there weren't I'd be incredibly surprised- and it is bizarre that Cesaro has been on the Pre-Show two years in a row because while there are others he along with Harper are two guys I'd push to the moon if I were in charge. In short the reason why I've ranked this so low was because they tried to pack too much in and the 4-Way with so many moving parts didn't do anyone any favours.

6. John Cena v Rusev (Predicted: 4th)
It may be because I'm British, so this match was definitely not aimed at me- but this just left me a bit cold. The end of the Fast Lane match where things seemed to click between these two meant I had relatively high expectations for this match but in all honesty I don't know what I was expecting from this match because it was going to be the patriotic win with Cena taking all of his best shots but powering through it all because Murica. I guess the problem with this match was we didn't have a stipulation that meant this match could get violent to fit the build, so it felt like a bit of an Anti-Climax.

5. Randy Orton v Seth Rollins (Predicted: 3rd)
I said it in my Review, and I'll say it again now- I thought this match felt a bit too rushed. Yes, We did get a really cool RKO- but given the story we had in the build to this match, which WWE invested a lot of time into and had it main eventing RAWs much to my chagrin I thought we'd get a lot more of a story in this match and I definitely thought they'd get more time and spots. That's why I've ranked this somewhat in the middle because although we did get the good ending to it all, and overall it was pretty good for what it was- it could and should have been a lot more in my opinion.

4. The Undertaker v Bray Wyatt (Predicted: 2nd)
I said it in my Mania Review that I'm honestly not sure what I expected from this match, I love Bray- but as I said in my "Worst Mania Build Ever" blog nearly a week ago now there's only so much of a story you can get in a build when only one guy is actively promoting it as was the case in this match. The whole build was centered around Bray calling The Undertaker out- so I thought Bray would be a lot more dominant than what he was- because after Brock won last year we (within kayfabe) wouldn't know if Taker had anything left in the tank and he'd take all of Bray's moves and we'd genuinely believe if they told the story right that Taker would lose again- and considering the guys involved that's a formality. I expected a slow paced match, but I do think it trod the line between being slow/methodical and being too slow- for me personally it didn't cross that line but I would understand those who say it did. This was bumped up a spot or two because of "that" moment which is what you'd call a "WrestleMania Moment".

3. IC Title Ladder Match (Predicted: 1st)
I said in effectively Part 1 of this Blog that one of the things that could hold this back is the weight of expectation on it headed into the match. Everyone spoke of this match as the one match that was a guaranteed 5* match. Then when you factor in the fact that they had a pretty limited time frame as far as Ladder Matches go, and they had to stick to "just" Ladders- it was the opener, but it wasn't so good it was unassailable as a match; and do think this match suffered from any kind of meaningful story headed into the match. Yes, they all wanted the Belt- but aside from that and the traditional babyface/heel stuff there was hardly anything that really meant anything- especially from a casual perspective who doesn't follow along on Twitter so doesn't necessarily know the hype there was at some point between Bryan and Dolph.

2. Triple H v Sting (Predicted: 7th)
I do think I was right to an extent that I ranked this match so low on my "Before", because the match itself was pretty ordinary. It was a slow paced match- while Sting was in the Shape of his Life I don't know how many times he's wrestled since he left TNA before Last Night but I do think "Ring Rust" was a factor so for some of the match. That said, I had goosebumps when all the pieces started to fall into place- when DX came out I genuinely thought for a second Booker T and Samoa Joe would come out, then I remembered the Main Event Mafia doesn't exist. When the nWo came out that was a proper moment to remember- and it truly became the whole of the Monday Night Wars into 1 Match- it truly was WCW v WWF(E). Then when Shawn came out and Superkicked him this match was made. I'll liken this to The Rock v Hogan in that if you take the crowd out of the equation it's a pretty ordinary match, but put the crowd in it's an instant classic. Take all of the outside influences on this match out of the equation it is a 7th placed match- put all that stuff in and it's 2nd.

1. Brock Lesnar v Roman Reigns (v Seth Rollins) (Predicted: 6th)
That last sentence is somewhat applicable here, without the Rollins Cash-In this may not have been the #1 Match. That said I thought even before Rollins came out these two told the best story of the night in my opinion. I said I had an open-mind for this match, and it's not going to go down as one of the best matches in Mania history- but for what it was it was great. Lesnar killing Roman for the majority of the match, and not because Brock is a former UFC Guy but when he's in a match it looks like he is legitimately going to kill whoever he's facing. Then we had Roman's flourish- and after the 2 Spears I was genuinely on the edge of my seat thinking Roman had won, at the end of the day the best thing WWE can get a fan to do is suspend their disbelief and abandon their pre-conceptions that they had into the match, and that's exactly what they did. Then when you factor in the finish with Rollins I genuinely loved it.

Thanks for reading as always, we're now very much into the final stages of Mania Week- so feel free to have a look over any of the blogs I've done this week and stay tuned for the last few that'll be up later on today and tomorrow. Thanks again for reading, I'll happily debate with you over this list- or for that matter any of the blogs I've done this week- and very much like an Oscars Speech I'm going to thank you again.