Unfortunately, as triumphant as we pro wrestling fans may have felt coming away from the 2014 World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame ceremony, WrestleMania 30, and Monday Night Raw the next day, we have also had to come to terms with the tragic death of a man who, for many of us, was a childhood hero.
In one of my previous blog entries (which you can read for yourself here), I attempted to predict winners of the matches scheduled for WM30. I faced two challenges in doing so seeing as how I not only tried to use logic to determine who the winners would be (I, of all people, should know that logic and wrestling go together about as well as scrambled eggs and chocolate pudding) but also to try and figure out the rest of the card since only half the bill was known when I published the aforementioned blog. As it would turn out, I am not a clairvoyant when it comes to match outcomes but I wasn't too bad in terms of figuring out what matches were going to take place. What follows is a comparative rundown of my predictions versus what actually happened at WM30.
1) Tag Team Championship Match: The Usos (Jimmy & Jey) (C) defeated Los Matadores (Diego & Fernando), RybAxel (Ryback & Curtis Axel), and The Real Americans (Jack Swagger & Cesaro)
Prediction: The Usos
It seemed highly likely to me that a tag team championship match would get on the card somewhere, although I wasn't certain which teams would be involved outside of The Usos. With a lineup as packed as WM30 was, one of them was going to wind up relegated to the pre-show and sure enough it was this particular match. (In my mind it was a toss up between this and the Divas Championship.) Somewhat conspicuous by their absence were the team of the Rhodes Brothers, Cody Rhodes & Goldust. I can only take that as a sign that their time as a pair is over, which is bothersome to me because they made a great team, as you would expect.
2) Daniel Bryan defeated Triple H
Prediction: Daniel Bryan
No real shocker here, even though I know some in the IWC (short for Internet Wrestling Community) were thinking Triple H would get the nod to further infuriate the fan base only to have something transpire during the show leading to Bryan getting into the main event for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. The match lasted just shy of 30 minutes, making the task of one of these guys wrestling again later on in the evening that much taller of an order. Even with an hour's rest between bouts, having two main event level matches in one day is an extraordinary tribute to the conditioning of someone like Daniel Bryan.
3) The Shield (Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins & Roman Reigns) defeated Kane & The New Age Outlaws (Billy Gunn & Road Dogg)
Prediction: Kane & The Ascension
I was going in the right direction in putting together the dynamic of this match but I did not anticipate The New Age Outlaws being put with Kane to face off against The Shield. (When I first heard of it I couldn't fathom the idea of Kane - corporate or otherwise - being aligned with two of the primary members of Degeneration X, then I was reminded that for a brief moment Kane had formed a tag team with X-Pac and the two of them had won the WWE Tag Team Championship together.) I had it in mind that this might be an opportunity for new blood to be brought into the upper tier of WWE's roster; truth be told, young talent did get elevated here, and it was Ambrose, Rollins & Reigns. Those three were hot before WM30 but now they are truly at the top of charts when it comes to popular Superstars.
4) Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal: Winner - Cesaro
Prediction: Cesaro
No kidding around here, I'm fairly impressed with myself in having accurately predicted the winner of this match. It's anything goes when you talk about a battle royal, so to have been able to accurately say Cesaro would come out on top is quite cool to me. I admit that I got lucky because Cesaro wasn't an announced entrant in the match yet when the opening bell rang there he was. With that, you have no one but two guys who pulled double duty at WM30, Cesaro and Daniel Bryan.
5) John Cena defeated Bray Wyatt
Prediction: Bray Wyatt
The story that has been conveyed around these two is that Wyatt is attempting to break John Cena in such a way that he has no choice other than to abandon his chipper, boy scout ways and embrace a state of mind that is much, much more visceral and dark. From that perspective, this match was very successful in what it accomplished as there were points where Cena looked to be teetering on the edge of his own character. I'm not sure if this feud will continue but at the very least it made Cena interesting for once in what seems like forever.
6) Brock Lesnar defeated The Undertaker
Prediction: The Undertaker
Well, THAT didn't go at all how I expected...
Suffice to say, neither did most of the pro wrestling world. Be that as it may, according to Forbes there were apparently a number of betting websites that began getting a lot of action on Lesnar within an hour of WM30 starting.
The Undertaker's undefeated streak at WrestleMania stood at 21 victories and now his WM record stands at 21-1. That one loss bothers me, and it bothers me a lot. I'm not saying that Taker should never have lost at WM as it was bound to happen eventually (provided he didn't retire beforehand, of course). What bothers me is that the loss was to Brock Lesnar, a guy who for all intents and purposes stands to reap the least possible amount of benefit from having scored that pin fall. I do not get why he was the one to be rewarded with that opportunity as it makes no sense to me from a booking perspective. All I can say is I hope he does something significant for wrestling in the future, otherwise this will go down as a terrible blemish on all involved.
7) Vickie Guerrero Divas Championship Invitational: AJ Lee (C) defeated ALL the Divas
Prediction: AJ Lee
Putting this match so late in the card, especially after what was essentially the end of an era that will never be duplicated, is one of the most absurd pacing decisions I've ever encountered. Fans tend to make fun of Divas matches as being bathroom breaks during a show because the contests aren't generally something to which anyone looks forward. They're like getting a gift card to a store in which you never shop; sure, it's a gift but you didn't want it and you're likely to never use it for anything other than to maybe buy someone else a gift they in turn might not want themselves.
That said, this wasn't a surprising outcome. There was no clear rival to Lee going into WM30 and the Divas division is mostly geared towards promoting the Total Divas show these days and that's quite sad in my opinion. There are some talented wrestlers in WWE's employ who just happen to be women, and I feel like they get relegated to disrespectful positions because of that.
Consequently, this seems to have been Vickie Guerrero's last appearance with WWE as she has decided to pursue other interests rather than remain with the company. What's more, the following night on Raw, AJ Lee lost the Diva's Championship to Paige, who is now the NXT Women's Champion and the WWE Divas Champion. That's a lot for her to carry seeing as how prior to Monday night only a portion of the WWE audience was aware that she existed, but I have a feeling she'll handle it well.
8) WWE World Heavyweight Championship Triple Threat Match: Daniel Bryan defeated Randy Orton and Batista
Prediction: Batista
In pro wrestling vernacular, there exists the term "overbooked". What that means is that there's potentially too much going on in a given angle or match that the whole thing becomes muddy, difficult to follow, or altogether pointless. It's more common than you'd expect as there seem to be times where people involved in the creative aspect of wrestling write their material to where there's no convenient resolution. This is why you end up with a WrestleMania main event that involved 4 wrestlers (one of whom got carted out on a stretcher half way through the match only to return), 2 referees (the second of which hadn't been seen in months since the point in time he was implicated in having rigged Daniel Bryan's victory over Randy Orton at the 2013 Night of Champions pay-per-view), and Stephanie McMahon in its outcome.
Yes ("YES!"?), there were a LOT of moving parts here but I think the final product was a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to a storyline that has lasted in the area of 7 months. That kind of long-range booking is almost unheard of anymore, and to see it play out to fruition was really something else. You had all the major players involved, they all did their part, and in the end Daniel Bryan walks out of WM30 as the WWE World Heavyweight Champion.
All things totaled, I was able to accurately predict 4 of the 8 matches from WM30. 50% might not sound that great but as any baseball fan will tell you, a .500 average is nothing to scoff at. I'll take it, even though it represents a drop off from my 6-2 record last year in trying to guess the outcomes of the matches held at WM29.
I can't wrap up this entry without speaking on the sudden death of James Hellwig, who was better known as the Ultimate Warrior. Warrior died earlier this week while at a hotel with his wife, having been inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and appeared on Monday Night Raw within three days prior. He was an intense individual, inside and out of the squared circle, and as the Ultimate Warrior he left an indelible impression on a generation of young pro wrestling fans, myself included.
As a kid, when you read comic books you never expect there to be an issue where a character like Spider-Man, for example, dies. Sure, he may get beat up, bleed, and be on the cusp of mortality but he never actually expires. He gets up, he heals, he perseveres, and he overcomes. This is an unrealistic presentation because comic book characters exist in a vacuum, a conveniently self-contained universe where the laws of physics and nature don't always apply. So it is that when one of our heroes expires, we're left wondering why him, why now - just plain why?
We're all born and some day we'll all die. Like it or not, that's how it works. It doesn't matter if you're a person who's name isn't known to more than 5 others or if you're a celebrity like the Ultimate Warrior, death comes for us all. We're not guaranteed our next breath - try as though we may to fight it, there's nothing to be done when your time is up. Warrior knew this, which is why his comments during Raw are especially poignant.
"Every man's heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe their final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others and makes them believe deeper in something larger than life then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized. By the story tellers, by the loyalty, by the memory of those who honor him and make the running the man did live forever. You, you, you, you, you, you are the legend makers of Ultimate Warrior. In the back I see many potential legends. Some of them with warrior spirits. And you will do the same for them. You will decide if they lived with the passion and intensity. So much so that you will tell your stories and you will make them legends, as well. I am Ultimate Warrior. You are the Ultimate Warrior fans. And the spirit of the Ultimate Warrior will run forever!"If nothing else, Warrior's passing should be a lesson to us all that life is too short to spend it holding onto grudges and the sins of the past. Our lives are but moments in time and often undervalued until it's too late. We should all strive to make the best of every second of every day, because to do otherwise is to insult the gift that is each of our lives.
- Ultimate Warrior
