WrestleMania 40: Winners and losers

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Cody Rhodes wins WrestleMania 40. The Rock … not so much.

The Showcase of the Immortals has come and gone for the 40th time. For 40 years the WWE has put together WrestleMania as their version of a season finale, and this years’ didn’t disappoint. From the opening bell of NXT Stand and Deliver to the finale of Night Two of WrestleMania, matches had both importance and gravity behind them. Let’s get into some of the winners and losers from this Weekend of the Immortals.

Winner: Cody Rhodes and the main event of Night 2

WWE had their own version of Avengers: Endgame on Sunday night in the main event, with Cody Rhodes facing Roman Reigns for the Universal championship in a “Bloodline Rules” match, which means anything goes and anyone can interfere. From the moment the bell rang, this felt like a big fight. The orchestral entrances of both Rhodes and Reigns had the gravitas of a superhero finally meeting the big bad villain in their fated rematch, and in the ring, the two didn’t disappoint. It’s clear that they both know each other’s wrestling style, and Reigns’ ability to slow matches to a physical pace while talking SO MUCH SHIT is the perfect heel move. Rhodes is phenomenal as the babyface, the good guy who doesn’t stop fighting despite all the interferences.

Now, let’s talk about the interferences. Because Rhodes and Seth Rollins lost the tag match on Night One, anyone could interfere and help Reigns or Rhodes. We got essentially a who’s who of Bloodline lore in the run-ins. Jimmy Uso comes to the aid of the Tribal Chief? Out comes Jey to spear Jimmy off the WrestleMania stage through a table. Solo Sikoa makes his presence known? John Cena runs out, rehashing the loss he took to Sikoa last year at Crown Jewel by putting Sikoa through a table. The Rock, Seth Rollins, The Undertaker. All made appearances during the match, coming together to aid or defeat The Bloodline.

In the process, we get my favorite moment of WrestleMania weekend: Reigns is in the ring with a chair, but is faced with two options: hitting Cody Rhodes, or getting revenge for a decade of pain by hitting Rollins. Reigns chooses Rollins, making sure that hate led to his ultimate downfall. Rhodes wins, and the story is complete. This was cinema from start to finish, stories being told with every interference and motion. A hell of a way to do a main event.

Loser: Seth Rollins

This has nothing to do with his loss to Drew McIntyre for the World Heavyweight Title — that was always going to happen. It’s not like Drew, right in the middle of a blood feud with C.M. Punk, was going to leave the company because he didn’t get the belt.

For me, the worst part of Rollins’ weekend came during the Night 2 main event, and more specifically how flat his big moment felt. During the cavalcade of overbooked madness that saw everyone and their brother hit the ring to help Roman or Cody, we got The Shield music hitting like a ton of bricks.

Now, deep down we knew Jon Moxley wasn’t going to appear — but that music still carries a ton of weight. Rollins has more history in WWE with Reigns than anyone who was involved in that main event, and due to a mix or surprise, shoddy camera work, and bad timing it was an absolute mess.

All we got to see was Rollins sliding into the ring in his old Shield gear, having a chair thrown in his face — and that was it. Seth got the same treatment a sad undercarder gets at the rumble when they run in to their music only to get tossed in three seconds to laughter. It was made even worse by the fact it appeared Seth was seriously hurt in the spot, which again was barely caught on camera, because his eye was swollen totally shut when he stood to congratulate Cody on his win.

Rollins is one of the most efortlessly charismatic guys WWE has in their main event picture. He’s a self-started in a way much of the manufactured talent at the top isn’t. He deserved a hell of a lot more than being an afterthought in that match so Rock, Cena and Undertaker (for some reason) got to be a part of it.

Winner: Sami Zayn

In a perfect world this was Sami Zayn beating Roman Reigns for the championship in 2023, but I’ll take getting his WrestleMania moment by taking the Intercontinental Title off Gunther.

I could write novels on my respect for Sami as a wrestler, and as a man. In an era where so many people are deathly afraid of hurting their meal tickets he’s unabashedly himself outside of the ring and not afraid to stand for the things he finds important. The entire “Sami for Syria” movement has done critical work for refugees, children, and getting humanitarian aid into the country — and he continues to stand with Palestinian citizens, raising awareness of the damage being done to innocent civilians in Gaza.

This background is important, because in the old WWE this kind of stuff would rocket you off a card. Instead he got the biggest win of his WWE career.

It also helped that Sami vs. Gunther was an absolute banger. The best pure wrestling match of the weekend and both guys came off looking like a million bucks. This allows Sami to continue being a critical player at the top of the middle card, while it opens Gunther to pursue a world title — which seems like the next logical step for him.

For me, this was my No. 1 match of mania — and it was more emotional than Cody winning the title.

Loser: The Rock

This is James here, which I mention as a preamble because I don’t want to drag J.P down in my hating.

The Attitude Era was The Rock to me. While most of my teenage friend group gravitated towards Austin, The Rock was always my guy. I still have tattered brahma bull shirts and weird jerseys when WWE made sports jerseys out of every wrestler. I mention that to say that I really love The Rock … most of the time.

Everything The Rock did this weekend was bad for me.

It has nothing to do with Rock being heel in the lead up to this, and everything about how transparent and manufactured it felt. This entire injection of Dwayne felt as if it came about because he’s on the WWE board, and the company needed a mainstream pop in the main event. Not because he actually wanted to be a part of this.

Everything The Rock did was uninspired and soulless. His match on Night 1 was fine, but lacked any real intensity. On Night 2 he was resigned to mostly giving smoldering looks and taking a chokeslam than anything tangible. It felt particularly jarring hearing the over-the-top, effusive commentary from Pat McAfee squawking about “THE FINAL BOSS” only to feel like what we got was an old wrestler who was trying to fake his interest, when he really actually wanted to be the one to take the belt off Roman but fans hated the idea too much for them to go through with it.

This just didn’t work for me and it’s a shame.

Winner: NXT 2.0

In its’ inception, NXT 2.0 was panned. It wasn’t like old black and gold NXT, made up of independent wrestlers who were signed to the WWE brand. This NXT was going to be made up of largely former college athletes, in the hopes that with the time and care given to them on NXT, they would become the next Roman Reigns or Bianca Belair.

Well, the bet paid off in a big way this weekend, with NXT 2.0 stealing the show on Saturday. Highlighted by Trick Williams (who played football at South Carolina), the WWE’s second brand had a card full of fun matches and their own WrestleMania moments. Williams and former friend Carmelo Hayes main evented, becoming the first Black men to main event a card over WrestleMania weekend. Oba Femi (who did shot put at the University of Alabama) defended his title in a fun triple threat match of big men hitting each other very hard. Roxanne Perez, one of the original NXT 2.0 stars, reclaimed her womens’ NXT title. Finally, Ava Raine (who has a famous Brahma Bull as a father) introduced a new NXT women’s midcard title, another belt for an always growing roster. This weekend was proof that the risk they took to switch up NXT was an overall success.

Loser: Drew McIntyre

Imagine being such a hater that you lose your title mere seconds after winning it because you were so focused on hating. You’ve just put yourself in the mind of one Drew McIntyre, who defeated the broken and battered Seth Rollins to win the World Heavyweight championship. Instead of celebrating with his family and friends like he started doing, he walked over to commentary, and started trash talking one CM Punk, who was on commentary during the match. These two had beef, but McIntyre took it one step too far, causing Punk to beat him up. Judgement Day’s music hit, and we have a new World Heavyweight Champion, mere minutes after McIntyre finished the job. Let this be a lesson to you kids out there: don’t let hatin’ get too far out ahead of the main goal.

Winner: Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson

WrestleMania is made for moments like we saw on Night 1 with two legendary Eagles players turning into luchadores for a night to help Rey Mysterio win. I phrase it like that because “Jason Kelce helped Rey Mysterio beat his son” sounds really dark.

This is exactly how I want WWE to use surprise guests. I don’t need people working full matches who have no business in a ring — but I do want small iconic moments that mean everything to the host city and we’ll remember forever. Kelce and Johnson gave us that.

Even though there were pre-Mania reports that Kelce had been in contact with WWE it was still a really fun surprise.

10/10 — no notes.